Fairview and Marino.
CHAPTER XIV. Fairview and Marino Passing beyond the old city boundary at Ballybough Bridge, one of the first objects of interest is the Cathol...
About this chapter
CHAPTER XIV. Fairview and Marino Passing beyond the old city boundary at Ballybough Bridge, one of the first objects of interest is the Cathol...
Word count
591 words
CHAPTER XIV.
Fairview and Marino
Passing beyond the old city boundary at Ballybough Bridge, one of the first objects of interest is the Catholic parish Church of Fairview, which is a little more than half a century old. The building which was its predecessor, previously a Dominican Convent, is on Fairview Strand, a little beyond Fairview Avenue. This parish corresponds mainly with the old parish of Clonturk, which takes its name from a townland on the high road to Swords. The balustrade in front of Clonturk House, Drumcondra, belonged to old Carlisle Bridge. Although the latter half of the word resembles the Irish torc, boar, the meaning of Clonturk is said to be “plain of the Tolka,” of which turk is a corruption.
Close by the Church is Philipsburgh Avenue, which perhaps derives its name from Philipsburg on the Rhine where the Duke of Berwick was killed in 1734. On old maps the name of this avenue is Ellis’s Lane. It was the principal road of the suburb of Annadale, once chiefly inhabited by the Dublin Jewish colony. In many old houses here and on Richmond Road the door did not face the street directly, and this is said to have been a usage of the Jews of that time who had their Synagogue in Marlborough Green.
There is a strange story of a Jewish tombstone in this district becoming the hearthstone of a Christian. The old Jewish burying ground, founded in 1718, is at Fairview, and on its little mortuary chapel the odd inscription confronts the passer-by :- “Built in the year. 5618.” This date corresponds to the year of the Christian era 1857-8, the Jewish year beginning on the 24th of September.
Croydon Park, at the end of Fairview Avenue, was, until a few years ago, the residence of the family of Staveley, connected with the county of Limerick, who lived here for over a century. Merville Avenue is a name a few years old for Big Gun, called after a tavern here, just as the Cross Guns at Phibsborough, formerly situated at the corner of the present Cemetery Avenue, have given name to a townland. Marino is reached immediately after. The piers of the grand gate designed by Cipriani still bear the dragons of the Caulfeilds and their warlike motto, but the house built by Thomas Adderley and presented by him to his step-son, the Volunteer Earl of Charlemont, is quite thrown into the shade by the imposing new Novitiate of the Christian Brothers, erected in a commanding position on a height inland, and one of the most conspicuous buildings on the north side of Dublin. The Caulfeild family. left Marino in 1876, and the last Earl died in 1892, but the Viscounty passed to his cousin, the son of Edward Houston Caulfeild, the last Marshal of the Dublin Marshalsea.
Marino Crescent, built in 1792, is said to have been erected by one Ffolliott, a painter of Aungier Street, who, having some disagreement with Lord Charlemont, built this row of houses in order effectually to shut out the view of the sea from Marino House. Martin Haverty, the author of a painstaking and accurate History of Ireland, based on original documents, resided for many years at No. 21 Marino Crescent. He died on the 18th of January, 1887, at 40 St. Alphonsus Road, Drumcondra. In the fifties William Carleton, the Ulster novelist, lived at No. 3 Marino Terrace close by. He died in 1869 at No.2 Woodville beside Milltown Park.