Grattan Bridge, Old Essex Bridge.

CHAPTER IV.

Grattan Bridge, Old Essex Bridge and the Pill.

Having disposed of the highways to Ratoath, Navan, Slane, and Naul, the next great highway on the north side of Dublin which presents itself, when passing from west to east, is the most ancient and important thoroughfare which has been for many centuries the road from Dublin to Ulster and its capital, Belfast, and the principal channel of communication with Scotland.

Nowadays this road may be said to start from the City Hall and Dublin Castle, crossing the Liffey at Grattan Bridge. But this condition of the road did not begin until 1676 when Essex Bridge was built and Capel Street some years later, both receiving their names from Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, who was Lord Lieutenant 1672-7. Arran, now the Queen’s, Bridge, and Ormond, now Richmond, Bridge were built a few years later in 1683.

Capel Street was the fashionable promenade of Dublin before Carlisle Bridge was built, and was the home of lottery offices as long as the State allowed them. Before the building of Essex Bridge the northern highway started, like all the roads on this side, from the only bridge over the Liffey, the Old Bridge at Church Street, and turned to the north-east at King Street and thence to the present Bolton Street.

Old Essex Bridge was a very important feature of Dublin life for more than a hundred years. It occupied the place of the present O’Connell Bridge as the principal bridge of Dublin until 1794 when Carlisle Bridge was built. It was also the bridge next the Custom House and Port, or last bridge, as Butt Bridge is now.

The equestrian statue of George I., now in the Mansion House garden, Dawson Street, was originally erected during the King’s lifetime, in 1722, on old Essex Bridge, but when the restoration of that bridge Was begun in 1753, the statue was removed to Aungier Street, from which it was removed in 1798 to its present position.

There is an old Dublin affirmation: “It is as true as Essex Bridge,” that structure being regarded as a good type of a great concrete reality. The present bridge, named after Henry Grattan, was built on a much wider scale than Essex Bridge, and is constructed on the level system like O’Connell Bridge. It dates from 1875.

The quays were embanked about 1717, and a memory of the previous condition of the riverside is preserved in the name of Strand Street which ran by the water’s edge. About 1720 were built Lower Ormond Quay, formerly Jervis Quay, and Upper Ormond Quay, the latter on the site of the Pill or Estuary of the Bradoge.

This little river which we met at Channel Row and crossed going into Stonybatter rises in Cabra, near Liffey Junction Station, close to Broome Bridge, called after William Broome, a director of the Canal Company. It flows past the junction of Faussagh Lane and Quarry Lane, lately named Connaught Street and Annamoc Road, crosses Cabra Road, passes the back of Charleville Road, along Grangegorman Lane, under the Prison and the Broadstone Terminus, along the middle of Henrietta Street and Bolton Street, under the site of Newgate and Halston Street (Bradoge Lane), under Ormond Market, entering the Liffey at the end of East Arran Street (Boot Lane). It becomes a sewer from the spot where it enters the city proper.(Like the River Paddle on the south side of Dublin, or the Swan River in Rathmines.)

A street near the mouth of the river, Pill Lane, renamed Chancery Street, derived its name from the Pill or estuary of the Bradoge. Before the embankment of the Liffey in 1717 the Pill was quite a large river-inlet or harbour. The district adjoining was also called the Pill, and we read that in 1641 Charles I. granted the Pill to the City of Dublin, which then lay south of the Liffey. This estuary was important at a very early period as being the “Little Harbour of St. Mary’s Abbey.” (Besides the Pill or estuary near Ormond Market there was Usher’s Pill near Usher’s Island on the south side of the Liffey.)

In 1684 Ormond Market, now awaiting demolition at any moment, was built beside the Pill and called after James Butler, the first Duke of Ormond, who played so large a part in the history of the Stuart period both in Ireland and England. Ormond Market was long the chief home of the Dublin butchers, celebrated in Walsh’s interesting *Ireland a Hundred and Twenty Years Ago *already mentioned. The butchers were Catholics, and in the days of guilds, were the Guild of the Blessed Virgin, perhaps from their proximity to the site of her old Abbey. They waged continual warfare, the fighting taking place mostly on the bridges, with the French Protestant or Huguenot silk-weavers of the Earl of Meath’s Liberties, once the Liberties of the Abbey of St. Thomas a Becket.

(Few would expect to find a reference to the Dublin “Liberty Boys” in such a work as Scott’s *Antiquary; *yet they are referred to in that romance in a dialogue between Edie Ochiltree and Francie Macraw, two old soldiers of the Black Watch or 42nd Highlanders. The Liberty Boys had successfully resisted an attempt of General Dukes, the Commander in Chief of Ireland in the middle of the eighteenth century, to cover the graves of their relatives with lime in Bullv’s Acre Graveyard, Kilmainham.).

This feud did not originate, however, in difference of religion, but was the result of a dispute occurring so far back as 1607, between Oxmantown and Thomas Street, and relating to precedence in the array of the city muster.

We catch quite a picturesque glimpse of this part of Old Dublin in a passage of the Reports of the Deputy Keeper of the Records’ in 1424. In that year a garden is* *mentioned, opposite the ” Pole ” water, near Oxmangreen, in the parish of St. Michan, between the land of St. Mary’s Abbey on the east and the public highway (Church Street) on the west.

The word Pill is of Irish origin and is the same as Peel in the Isle of Man, or Poul in Poulaphuca or Pollanass Waterfall, or Pwll in such Welsh place names as Pwllheli, Llanfairpwllgwyngyll or Braich-y-pwll.

It is a pity that the new name of Pill Lane, considering the history, of the name, was not Pill Street, instead of Chancery Street, if the inhabitants did not like the word lane, which is disappearing fast from Dublin street-names, the name only but not the thing Jervis Quay and Jervis Street were called after.

Sir Humphrey Jervis, Lord Mayor in 1681, who obtained this part of the estate of St. Mary’s. Abbey as a reward for his services in building Essex Bridge with the stones of that famous old religious house, which he literally pulled down for this purpose. The Chapter House still exists, however, as an underground store.

The bridge had to be rebuilt in 1755 and many believed that its comparatively rapid decay was a judgement for the impiety of Jervis, who died in a debtor’s prison.

In Jervis Street was born Sir John Gilbert, who wrote the best *History o/ the City o/ Dublin. *It is, however, a History of South Dublin exclusively. Dublin north of the Liffey is altogether ignored; even St. Mary’s Abbey, St. Michan’s Church, the Dominican Convent and Oxmantown receive no notice.

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