Kilmainham, Clondalkin, Rathmines, Rathfarnham, Ranelagh and Donnybrook.

SECTION XIX

The Southern Suburbs - Kilmainham, Clondalkin, Rathmines, Rathfarnham, Ranelagh and Donnybrook.

From Islandbridge on the upper Liffey to Ringsend on the lower, the great girdle road of Dublin sweeps in a huge semi-circle. For the first two or three miles it is known as the South Circular Road, then as Harrington Street and Adelaide Road, until at last it meets and becomes identified with the northern bank of the Grand Canal. Each successive suburb hangs, as it were, from this long chain, like pendants from a necklace.

Islandbridge is the first crossing over the river above Kingsbridge. It was originally called Sarah Bridge from the christian name of the Lady Lieutenant at the time of its opening, and was built in the century before last. At Islandbridge were the old waterworks for supplying the north of the city. The south was sufficiently provided for by the cutting made from the Dodder, but ancient engineering shirked the difficulties involved in carrying one stream over another. So the original aqueduct did not cross the Liffey, and when the further bank of the river began to be more thickly inhabited, the corporation constructed a special pumping station here to supply the new demand.

Soon after passing the Royal Hospital entrance and the grim front of Kilmainham Gaol, the route is crossed by the tramline leading to Inchicore. Some four miles out along this road, which is the great southern highway to Cork, Waterford and Limerick, is the village of Clondalkin, remarkable as possessing that typically Irish relic of the remote past, a round tower.

There are some eighty or so of these erections scattered over Ireland, usually on the site of some old religious foundation. They were there when Strongbow’s men marched through the country, for Giraldus Cambrensis expresses his admiration of their great height and graceful proportions. There were once strange theories as to their origin. Some writers maintain that the ancient Irish practised sun-worship on these tall pillars. However, they may be ascribed with certainty to the early Christian period, when the Danes first began to trouble. They are high enough to serve as watch towers to give notice of the approach of raiders, yet strongly built so as to provide a temporary refuge for the monks with all their treasure of jewelled shrine, holy relic and illuminated manuscripts, until the native clansmen should muster for the rescue.

clondalkin1.gif (13526 bytes)Clondalkin tower (pictured on left) is a good specimen of its class, though much shorter than the majority. It rises some eighty-four feet, and is a solid mass of masonry for the first twelve feet from the ground: then there is a very narrow doorway, and the tower becomes hollow for the rest of its height. The heavy compactness of the base and the elevation of the entrance were designed to frustrate any attempt to break down the walls or burst in the doorway by battering rams. Being made of stone throughout, the building was proof against fire.

It is possible to ascend to the top by means of ladders linking the three floors or stories of the interior. The ascent, however, is both dark and awkward, for there are only two small windows on the way up and one section of the journey has to be performed in profound gloom. The top story is better lit, having four windows facing the four points of the compass. The use of the round towers as look-out places is exemplified by this arrangement, which is well calculated to sweep the horizon in every direction.

Through the deep-set windows there is a pleasant view of the broad, well-wooded, fertile plain, in which Clondalkin lies. The roof of the tower is formed by a conical cap of stone, constructed with great skill. The walls are two or three feet thick. The whole is so strongly built that a great gunpowder explosion, which destroyed an adjoining factory in 1787, did not produce the slightest effect on the tower. Very few thousand-year-old buildings could survive such a trial.

With all its durability, however, it could not defy the fiery heathen, against whom it was designed. Either by storm or treaty, most probably the- former, the Danes took Clondalkin and established there a fortress and palace for their kings under the name of Dunawley or “Olaf’s Fort.”

One can imagine the scene of sanguinary triumph at the foot of the tower, the monks, some meekly praying, others defiant and bloodstained, dragged from the interior to fall beneath the axes of the huge, half-naked Norsemen. These old grey stones must have been dabbled with blood more than once in their” history.

After passing the turning to Inchicore, the South Circular Road crosses the Grand Canal by a highpitched bridge, fancifully called after the Venetian Rialto, with which it has nothing in common except its sharp slope. All the canal bridges around Dublin have this hump back.

The next suburb is Dolphin’s Barn, a curious name, of which there is no particular explanation. It may possibly have rural associations, for Dolphin is an occasional surname in Ireland, and some former member of the family may have had a farm here. The name is ancient, for the village is so called in the accounts of the old watercourse, which made its entrance at this spot into the city.

A mile and a half from Dolphin’s Barn, on a road leading to Clondalkin, is Drimnagh Castle, one of the oldest inhabited structures in the district. It was the stronghold of the Barnewalls, a great family among the nobility of the Pale. The southern part of County Dublin, being dangerously close to the raiders of the mountains, has an extraordinary number of these grey old fortresses. Usually, beside the central keep, they had a bawn, or fortified enclosure, into which the cattle might be driven for safety, whenever the O’Byrnes were reported to be out on a foray.

Further on the tramrails diverge to Harold’s Cross, remarkable only as the scene of the arrest of Robert Emmet after he had indiscreetly returned to Dublin to say farewell to his beloved. It is said that Philpot Curran, father of the lady, was not aware of his daughter’s attachment, until after the catastrophe had happened.

The Harolds were a small mountain sept, who were among the first to acknowledge the English supremacy.

The next branch leads to three well-known suburbs, Rathmines, Rathgar and Rathfarnham. The “rath” in these names is the Irish for a fort or circular earthwork. It is embodied in hundreds of local appellations.

The old fortifications usually survive in the shape of low grass-covered ramparts enclosing a central space, where, according to rustic tradition, the fairies dance nightly and gold is buried under the soil in great crocks, to be had for the digging by anyone bold enough to hazard the curse believed to go with elfin treasure. The raths were really the sites of defensible villages. The earthen dyke, probably crowned with a stockade, protected the wooden huts of the clansmen and sheltered their cattle nightly against the raids of the neighbouring tribe. In the case of these three Dublin suburbs, however, the old “fairy forts” have been built on, and their position cannot be traced.

At Rathmines, in 1649, the royalist viceroy, Ormond, who was besieging Dublin, was utterly defeated by a sally of the Roundhead garrison. A story is told of the battle, which shows the boorishness of the new republican manners. Ormond wrote to Jones, the Puritan commander, asking for a list of the prisoners he had taken in the fight. He received the following laconically insolent answer :-” My Lord, since I routed your army, I cannot have the happiness to learn where you are, that I may wait upon you.-Michael Jones.”’ There are the remains of an ancient castle in the vicinity, but it has been modernized almost out of recognition.

Rathgar and Rathfarnham are pleasant districts, still possessing some of their original woodland. Between them in a deep and picturesque glen flows the Dodder, now a true mountain stream, clear and sparkling, with a little silvery cascade every three or four hundred yards. At Rathfarnham there is a castle erected by Archbishop Loftus towards the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Ireland was slowly beginning to settle down, so that Loftus’s house marks the commencement of the transition from the old feudal stronghold to the unfortified mansion of later times.

Cldse by, at Terenure, commences the great military road built to curb the restless O’Byrnes and O’Tooles of Wicklow. it runs straight as an arrow over a shoulder of the mountains to Blessington, eighteen miles away, and penetrates into the heart of a wild and lonely district.

Before its construction, Wicklow was the refuge of outlaws, who lurked in the recesses of the hills and defied arrest. These men,‘who were mere bandits in the eyes of the authorities, were the heroes of the peasantry. Like Robin Hood and Rob Roy, they are the theme of innumerable ballads and stories.

A stirring tale of devotion is told in connection with Michael Dwyer, a Wicklow rebel, “in arms and :out on his keeping,” as the legal phrase would describe him. With a couple of companions he was surrounded in a hut by a body of soldiers, who were gradually closing in on their prey. The case seemed desperate. Dwyer saw nothing for it but a last struggle in the open against hopeless odds. But the days of self-sacrifice were not yet past. One of his followers deliberately rushed out and drew the fire of all the attackers on himself. He fell riddled with bullets, but, while the soldiers’ muskets were still empty, the others burst forth from the hut and, before anything could be done to stop them, had passed the line of their enemies and escaped scot- free.

After this long digression it will be necessary to return to the South Circular Road, or rather, its Harrington Street and Adelaide Road continuations. Charlemont Street, going off obliquely to the right from the former, leads to Ranelagh, formerly called Cullenswood, or Colony’s Wood (Boscus. de Colonia in mediaeval Latin).

Here the infant colony from Bristol was almost stamped out by the O’Byrnes while enjoying itself in the open one black Easter Monday in 1209. The date is remarkable, for it suggests that the familiar Bank Holiday, as by law established at the present time, has been spent in much the same way any time these seven hundred years. In fact we are told that the settlers were “hurling at ball,” which probably means that they were playing hockey. The Irish form of this game is called “hurling” to this day.

Annually, for several centuries after this misfortune, the city forces marched to Cullenswood on Black Monday, bearing aloft an ancient ebon-hued banner, which was believed to strike terror into the heart of every O’Byrne and O’Toole that beheld its tattered folds. After a review two tables were laid, one for the mayor, the other for the sheriffs. The civic officials then dined thereat, encompassed at a little distance on every side by a living wall of the armed youth of Dublin, with faces turned outwards and; weapons ready for instant action. The old form, Cullenswood, still appears in the names of the streets, and the ancient timber has not yet wholly disappeared.

Ranelagh in Dublin, like Ranelagh in London, was subsequently a popular place of entertainment, where balloons went up and fireworks were exhibited and ladies and cavaliers ogled and flirted with each other. It is not easy to say whether the English metropolis borrowed the name from the Irish, or vice versa, though probably the guttural “gh” at the end of the word bespeaks a Celtic origin.

Adelaide Road soon debouches on to the bank of the Grand Canal, a great waterway, which once played a very important part in Dublin life. Now, save for the passage of an occasional boat laden with turf cut in the bogs of Queen’s County, it is almost deserted. In some parts of the southern suburbs, ‘especially where the great storm of 1903 has spared the rows of trees on either side, there is a distinct suggestion of Dordrecht or Amsterdam about the Grand Canal. There are the same quiet waterside streets and tall old-fashioned houses.

Before the advent of railways, the canal was used for the transport of passengers, particularly for short distances. It had two advantages over the coaches. It was cheap and commodious. The fare was about two pence a mile, whereas the coaches demanded three pence. The travellers were neither so cramped nor so much exposed to the elements as those who went by road. But the delay at the innumerable locks made the pace very slow. It averaged two miles an hour, and twenty miles was a long day’s journey.

ortobello Harbour, near the bridge of that name in Rathmines, was the usual starting-point. There is a good picture of a passenger canal boat in the National Gallery. The canal also supplied the city with water, when the old cutting from the Dodder became insufficient for a growing metropolis.

The road, which passes over the first bridge now encountered, leads to the celebrated village of Donnybrook, now an ultra-respectable and fashionable locality. The scenes of turbulence which gave the place its notoriety, were enacted at the great fair, which was held annually on the green beside the Dodden Everyone knows the story of the man, who said he was “blue mouldy for want of a bating” and trailed his coat through the fair, defying anyone to tread on the tail of it.

Half the rioting was due to the city factions, which, under the influence of excitement and strong drink, fought out their old quarrels, not only at Donnybrook, but at every other fair held anywhere near Dublin. The police was very inefficient as a check on disturbers. Like Dogberry of old, they were mostly parish watchmen, and seemed to have modelled their conduct after the maxims of that worthy. In the face of any possible tumult, the guardians of the peace used their best endeavours to keep out of harm’s way.

Finally Irishmen grew ashamed of such continually recurring disorders. Some fifty years ago the corporation bought up from the holders the ancient patents of King John and his successors, by which the fair was authorised. The annual gathering was suppressed, and Donnybrook relapsed into its present somnolent state.

The ivy-clad remains of an old castle, that of Simmonscourt, may still be seen in the grounds of its modern namesake near Anglesea Road, Donnybrook.

The next bridge carries the main road to Kingstown over the canal. This crowded highway is quite modern. The older route was by Donnybrook. An interesting illustration of the danger of old-time travelling is furnished by the name of an old barracks to the north of Northumberland Road. It is called Beggarsbush, the bush which harboured the “sturdy beggars,” who solicited alms by day and demanded them at the pistol point after dark.

Beyond here are Sandymount and Irishtown, already dealt with in Section XVI.

To Chapter 20. To Chart Index.