The Forty Foot is a promontory on the southern tip of Dublin Bay at Sandycove, County Dublin, Ireland, from which people have been swimming in the Irish Sea all year round for some 250 years.
In former times it was kept solely as a gentlemen's bathing place and the gentlemen's swimming club was established to help conserve the area. Owing to its isolation and gender-specific nature it became a popular spot for nudists,but in the 1970s during the women's liberation movement, a group of female equal-rights activists plunged into the waters,now it is open to women and children as well. The gentlemen's swimming club still exists and is open to both genders, it expects voluntary contributions to the upkeep of the area.
James Joyce and Oliver St. John Gogarty once resided at the Martello tower together. It is now the James Joyce Tower and Museum. The opening section of Joyce's Ulysses is set here, with the characters Stephen Dedalus and Buck Mulligan being partly based on Joyce himself and Gogarty, respectively.