North Wall, North Lotts

CHAPTER XII.

The North Wall and the North Lotts.

Custom House Quay dates from 1791 when the new Custom House was built. (The name Custom House Quay had been given for many years previously to the quay where the Old Custom House stood from 1621 to 1791 beside Essex Bridge. This quay received in i8 17, two years after Waterloo, its present name of Wellington Quay. Wellington Bridge, called the Metal Bridge, and the Wellington Obelisk in the Ph~nix. Park date front the same time, being recognitions of ~lington’s fame in his native city.)

The North Wall Slip was on the quay, a little to the east of the present Old Dock gate. The Old Dock is over a hundred years old, but George’s Dock, called after George IV., was opened by that sovereign in 1817, and the Inner, or Revenue, Dock the largest of the three, dates from the same time. From this point we are in the district of the Dublin Port and Docks Board, more anciently the Ballast Board, and the peculiar uniform of the Quay Police, who are its officials, is to be seen from this to the ” Point of the Wall.” The King’s Excise Store in Mayor Street was also opened in 1821. Five ferries ply between the North Wall and the southern bank of the river.

There is a long row of stores, sheds and wharves here belonging to steampacket companies. All the great Irish railway companies have stations at the North Wall, for almost all the passenger traffic and much of the goods traffic of the Port of Dublin is carried on there. The garden of the London and North Western Railway Company’s Hotel is a green oasis in this desert. The Harbour Master’s garden is another.

The North Wall Extension, dating from 1875, and since enlarged, contains berthage for tbe biggest fourmasters; also the new and fine Alexandra Basin, called after the present Queen, which could hold all the old Docks; and, best of all, for Dublin, the prosperous ship-building yard of the Dublin Dockyard Company, established a few years ago, by Messrs. Walter Scott and Smillie, and doing more work every Day.

The Graving Dock, Customs Watch House and Hundred Ton Crane are also features of the Extension. The road beside the Great Southern Station, once the extreme eastern limit of Dublin, is marked on old maps as containing Shalloway’s Baths and Halpin’s Pond, while the neighbouring sandbank was called Brown’s Patch. These places have disappeared with the march of improvement in the Port of Dublin.

The embankment of the Liffey at this point, begun in 1717, was completed in 1729 by the erection of the North Wall. That large portion of Dublin bounded by the North Wall, East Wall, North Strand and Amiens Street was reclaimed from the sea about that time. It includes the greater portion of the North Dock Ward and of the Catholic parish of St. Laurence O’Toole. It is called the North Lotts because the Corporation in 1717 drew lots for the distribution amongst themselves of the land to be acquired here by the construction of the North Wall. They also shared the land amongst themselves in portions called lots. There were dry lots and wet lots, as may be seen by inspection of the curious old map on which this district is divided into squares, each containing the name of the fortunate grantee. The dry lots are those which were in fact reclaimed. The wet lots are those which, though marked on the map as granted, still remain covered by the tide. But the proprietorial rights of the grantees in the latter have always remained; and quite recently the Corporation granted compensation to a Dublin gentleman, the direct descendant of the original grantee, who owned a wet lot inside the Northern Railway in the space now being reclaimed.

The North Lotts district is sometimes humorously called Newfoundland on account of its having being reclaimed from the sea, and there is actually a Newfoundland Street within its limits. - On the exact spot where Newfoundland Street and Nixon Street are now buit, Campbell’s Map of Dublin, 1811, marks an “Intended Floating Dock,” never constructed. The Corporation also honoured itself by conferring on the new streets laid out here the names of Mayor Street, Sheriff Street, Guild Street and Commons Street, after the Lord Mayor, the Sheriffs, the Guilds of each trade of which the Corporation was then composed, and the Commons who elected them.

Wapping Street is reminiscent of the kindred London dock district sung in Wapping Old Stairs. Fish Street is apparently a recollection of the street of the same name near London Bridge.( The Monument, the tallest isolated column in the world, erected by Wren to commemorate the Great Fire of London, stands on Fish Street Hill.).

Seville Place, a long section of. the North Circular Road, seems to derive its name from the capture of Seville by the British in the Peninsular War in 1812. Oriel Street is from Lord Oriel (Speaker Foster), Canning Place, beside Jane Place, is perhaps from the great statesman, George Canning. Whitworth Row (1821)- William Carleton, the Ulster novelist, lived at No.4 Whitworth Row. An unpublished novel of his exists in MS., entitled Anne Cosgrave. is from Charles, Earl Whitworth, and Coburgh Place (1822), like Coburgh Gardens, opened in 1817, and now the beautiful and extensive pleasure-ground at the rere of Lord Iveagh’s house in Stephen’s Green, takes its name from the family of Saxe Coburgh to which both the mother and the husband of Queen Victoria belonged. (Princess Charlotte, only child of George IV., was married in 1816 to Prince Leopold of Coburg. She died in 1817, and he afterwards became Leopold I., King of the Belgians Coburgh Gardens had been previously the grounds of the Earl of Clonmell’s town-house in Harcourt Street.)

Coburgh Place was always a separate thoroughfare from Seville Lane, even before the railway was made. The Church of St. Laurence O’Toole was completed in 1853, and this district was formed into a new parish1 having previously belonged to the Cathedral parish. The Spencer Dock, where Sheriff Street crosses the Royal Canal, was opened by Earl Spencer, Lord Lieutenant, on the 15th of April, 1873.

It is easy to understand the names of the East Road, and the West Road, but the origin of that of Church Road (to which the definite article is usually prefixed by the people of the district) is very singular. St. Laurence O’Toole’s Church was built in 1853, the Protestant Church of St. Barnabas close by in 1870. There was no church in the neighbourhood when the road was first named Church Road early in the eighteenth century. But the road was called after a church which it was intended should be built here, an intention never fulfilled. This is clear from inspection of a very strange old map of this part of Dublin, made for the Corporation in 1717, which marks as existing a great number of other roads and places, some destined never to be reclaimed from the sea, others on existing dry land like the “Church Road.” On this map we find Market Road called after a Market which, like the Church, never took shape save in the imagination of those who made the map. On a spot still covered by the tide, as it was two hundred years ago, when the map was drawn, we find Island Road and Island Quay, to be called after the adjacent island of Clontarf.

(This map, of which a later edition was produced showing the Royal Canal, represents as to be reclaimed all the space still covered by the sea between the East Wall and Clontarf Strand Road, westward of a line drawn from the Wharf to a point opposite at Clontarf. That line was to have been a new coast road called “Island Key,” a continuation of the “East Key” (part of the East Wall). It was to have crossed each end of Clontarf Island, leaving the centre of the Island still separated from the mainland by a lake or small portion of the sea. There were to have been three other roads, parallel to this new coast road, connecting the East Wall with Clontarf Road, and all three traversing the space where the tide still ebbs and flows.

(1) Island Road, a continuation of the East Road; (2) Market Road, a continuation of Church Road. And (3) Hollybrook Road, a continuation of the West Road, and intended, no doubt, to reach Clontarf Strand in the district of Hollybrook. Within the last few years a real Hollybrook Road has been made in that part of Clontarf, not on land reclaimed from the sea, however, but running off the coast road.

Besides all these extensive changes there was to be a “New Canall,” running close by the East Wall, and obviously representing the course of the Tolka from its mouth at Annesley Bridge to a point beyond the North Wall Extension, an item which must always be taken into account in projects of reclamation here. The coming of the Great Northern Railway has changed the conditions of the reclamation, yet the latter seems to be actually following the exact plan of that “New Canall’5 of 1717.)

But it is satisfactory to note that the projectors, however, extensive their plans for reclamation from the sea, did not contemplate that abolition of the Island, a place with a history, which has unfortunately been effected in our own days.

The West Road was much more extensive in older times than it is now. It ran from the seashore to the junction of Sheriff Street with Commons Street. The construction of the Royal Canal cut it in two and the southern’ half received its present name of Oriel Street. That Oriel Street and the West Road were once a single thoroughfare may appear somewhat surprising to those who know the district now, but the truth of the fact will be at once evident to anybody who looks across the Royal Canal at this point from either side. No road in this part of Dublin, and that is saying much, has suffered as much demolition as the northern half of the old West Road.

The fruitful source of such demolition in the North Lots or “Newfoundland” is the making of new lines. of railway. At present the West Road starts from the seashore at the eastern side of the Great Northern Railway. West of the railway line is Stoney Road, misspelled Stony on the Ordnance Survey Map, called after Dr. Bindon Stoney, Engineer to the Port. and Docks Board, who carried out the Extension and Basin at the North Wall on so grand a scale.

About half way between the sea and the canal the West Road is suddenly transformed by the junction of several railways into a hopeless chaos of ways (some of which are no thoroughfares) which confronts the bewildered traveller. By patient study the explorer discovers that there are only two outlets, one through Ossory Road, leading to Newcomen Bridge and the North Strand, and another by Hawthorne Terrace to Church Road.

The fate of absorption by railways, already mentioned as assigned to a London district in one of Dickens’s stories, has also befallen the southern end of Church Road. This road once joined Seville Place at the corner opposite to St. Laurence O’Toole’s Church. First the Canal effected a slight severance more than a century ago. Then came the railways, and, Blythe’s Avenue, dated 1863, has acquired a peculiar air of detachment, and, although it is well inland, the ships in the Spencer Dock seem to form a part of it.

The same remark applies to the end of Lower Oriel Street. Anybody who walks up Church Road from the sea with the intention of reaching Spencer Dock will find himself compelled to make a considerable detour, with some climbing, into the East Road. The last road, being the shortest and most easterly of the three, East, Church and West, has held its own best in the desperate struggle for existence of the thoroughfares in this neighbourhood.

Another desolate no-thoroughfare is East Mayor Street which once ran to the East Wall beside the longg-lost Florence Place. It is now like Ulubrae in Horace or “the back of God speed ” in Anglo-Irish. It is Tadmor in the wilderness or the desolation of Balclutha in Ossian.

The most interesting building in this district is Castle Forbes, Upper Sheriff Street. It is a tall old house, standing as directly on the street as Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables which it recalls in many ways. The stone containing the inscription “Castle Forbes, 1729,” in the curling letters and numerals of the eighteenth century, is at some distance from the house. If that date refers to the existing building, Castle Forbes is probably the oldest house on the north side of Dublin, and is surpassed in age by only a very few years by any old house on the south side, of which there are still some in the Liberties. Old maps of this district of North Lotts mark another old house called Forbes Castle (in ruins) on the East Road; to which perhaps the date on the stone is equally applicable; also the martially sounding names of Fort William in Upper, Sheriff Street and Fort Crystal, a very handsome building long vanished, where Church Road meets the sea.

There is still Fort Lodge on the West Road, and Fort Crystal Terrace. Northcourt Avenue, Lower Middle and Upper, off Church Road, misspelled Northcote Avenue on some maps, was, formerly called North’s Court from a house here.

But only Castle Forbes remains, and it was probably the oldest, for the date is about the earliest at which a house could have been built here, although the existing building scarcely looks as much as a hundred and eighty years old. It looks much taller, viewed from the side, than from the front. The door in Sherifff Street is modern, the old front door being on the side remote from the street. The house must have been very conspicuous when it was the only building in this district, as it was for many years. Now it is surrounded by buildings and chimneys, but is still remarkable for its ancient and quaint aspect. It was evidently built by some one called Forbes. We find members of that Highland clan in Dublin a long time ago. Perhaps the builder of this relic of the early days of the Hanoverian succession was George Forbes, who was Lord Mayor in 1720. It was afterwards for many years the residence of the Carolin family who have been long connected with the commerce of Dublin. Some years ago it was the office of a glass bottle company, whose works adjoined it.

It is now in possession of Messrs. Martin, whose name has been honourably identified with the Port of Dublin for more than a century. Though a little the worse for wear it is still in pretty good preservation, and its great age merits that attention to its future existence which we hope it will receive.

(In Sheriff Street was situated the Prison where the French prisoners of war were confined, who were captured in the great War beginning with the Revolution and ending in the, fall of Napoleon.)

The East Wall which bounds this district of North Lotts runs along the seashore from Annesley Bridge, North Strand to the extremity of the North Wall. From its eastern angle a fine view of Clontarf, Howth and the northern portion of the Bay is obtained. The East Wall is sometimes called the Wharf Road from the Wharf, a slip apparently constructed more than a century ago for the use of bathers and still so used. There is a stone platform here used by divers called from its form the Smoothing Iron. The great depth of water is secured by the Tolka current which runs between the mainland and Clontarf Island.

To Chapter 13. To North Dublin Index. Home.