Centre of the North City

CHAPTER VIII

The Centre of the North City.

Having disposed of the great northern highway the next thoroughfare to be traversed in the northern half of Dublin is the finest street in the city, and one of the finest in the world. On the vexed question of what is the present name of this street, it is perhaps best not to enter. But the condition of the name-plates must be a source of surprise to every stranger. They bear the old name which is fast becoming undecipherable, while the proposed new name, from the great man whose statue adorns one end of the street, has never been placed upon them, as this is barred by a perpetual injunction of the late vice-Chancellor, granted on the 11th of J uly 1885.

The street first appears, as Drogheda Street, early in the eighteenth century, a narrow thoroughfare extending from the country road to Clontarf, now called Great Britain Street, to Abbey Street near the river, where there was no bridge until the end of that century; there was, however,, a ferry at this point.

Drogheda Street and several streets adjoining were called from Henry Moore, Earl of Drogheda. The full list is Henry Street, Moore Street, North Earl Street, Of Lane, afterwards Off Lane and now Henry Place, and Drogheda Street.

(This was following a precedent set in London in the reign of Charles II. when George Street, Villiers Street, Duke Street, Of Alley and Buckingham Street were named after George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. Harry Street, Duke Street and Grafton Street, in Dublin, seem to mark a similar origin of names from Harry, Duke of Grafton, a son of Charles II., who was killed fighting at the siege of Cork in 1690. Tangier Lane, off Grafton Street, is from Tangier in Morocco, a British possession in that King’s reign. It was that sovereign who, in 1661, conferred the earldom of Drogheda on Henry Moore: and the widow of Charles, the second earl, married Wycherley, a well-known dramatist of the day. Lady Drogheda bequeathed this estate in North Dublin city to Wycherley, but her will was disputed, and the law-suit ruined the playwright, who was confined for sevc~n years in the Fleet Prison.)

Charles, second Earl of Drogheda, died in 1679 in his new house in North Earl Street. The old Dublin residence. of the family was in Mary’s Abbey.

In Rocque’s Map of Dublin, 1756, the name Drogheda Street is confined to the narrow old street running from Henry Street and Earl Street, the southern corners of which two streets were then quite close to each other, to Abbey Street close to the riverside; while the fine new wide street from the New Gardens (Rutland Square) and newly-built Hospital to the site of Nelson’s Pillar was called Sackville Street. The name was taken from Lionel Cranfield Sackville, the first Duke of Dorset, who was Lord Lieutenant from 1731 to 1737 and from 1751 to 1755.

The assertion has been sometimes made, but without any reasonable foundation, that the name came from that of the Duke’s younger son, Lord George Sackville, who, although a man of ability, incurred some discredit as he was accused of cowardice or insubordination at the Battle of Minden in 1759. But he had not attained to much fame, good or bad, when the name was conferred on the new street. The old, or Drogheda Street, side of the street, is the eastern side, as it was widened by extending it westward.

Old Drogheda Street was widened from the New Gardens to where the Pillar stands now, and the name of Sackville Street was conferred on the splendid new street by the Right Hon. Luke Gardiner (grandfather of the first Lord Mountjoy), who did so much to improve and beautify the north side of Dublin. Gardiner had purchased this estate from the Drogheda family.

The long unbroken row of more than thirty houses, from Britain Street to Henry Street, forming the new western side, was called Gardiner’s Mall. A mall or walk ran in the centre of the street, just as such a walk runs now in the centre of O’Connell Bridge. The fine new street, containing the most beautiful private residences in Dublin, must have been quite an attractive place. It was the last suburb on this side, for Great Britain Street was the country.

Almost the whole of Dublin was on the southern side of the Liffey; and the nearest bridge by which this point could be reached, until the end of the century, was Essex Bridge, a long way off. No.10 Sackville Street, on the old side, was the residence of the Earl of Drogheda, and many other noblemen resided in the street. About eighty years ago the famous musician Logier lived at the present No. 50, now Messrs. Gill’s, and the Dorset Institution, a few doors away, commemorates a successor of the Duke of Dorset from whose surname the street derived its name.

The opening of the new Custom House in 1791 brought about great changes in this part of Dublin. Carlisle Bridge, joining Sackville Street with College Lane, now Westmoreland Street, named after another Viceroy, was built in 1794 and did not give place to the present splendid O’Connell Bridge until 1880.

(Frederick, fifth Earl of Carlisle, from whom the old bridge was named, was a poet, and a relative and guardian of Byron, who at first satirized him, but afterwards expressed regret.)

It ceased td be the last bridge, or bridge next Dublin Harbour, in 1879, when Butt Bridge was built and called after Isaac Butt, who died at Roebuck on the 5th of May in that year. The adjoining Loop Line Railway Bridge was erected in 1893. Shortly after the opening of Carlisle Bridge the remaining piece of Drogheda Street was widened westward like the upper or northern portion, by the Wide Streets Commissioners, (A Design of theirs, never executed, was to make a new street from York Street to St. Patrick’s Cathedral) and the whole street from the Rotunda to the bridge was called Sackville Street.

The column to the memory of Nelson, which is one hundred and thirty-four feet high, was erected in 1808, the foundation stone having been laid by the Duke of Richmond, Lord Lieutenant, on the 5th of February in that year. It was designed by William Wilkins of Norwich, but the statue of Nelson is by an Irish sculptor, Thomas Kirk, R.H.A. Nelson’s Pillar was erected by public subscription and cost £6,856. It was profusely decorated with flags on the centenary of Trafalgar.

For a very long time the project of removing the Pillar, which many condemn ~s an obstruction to traffic, has been mooted, but it has never taken definite shape. The Pillar is a fluted Doric column with a spiral staircase inside, and openings for light. A fine view is obtained from the top.

A few years after the Pillar came the General Post Office, a work of Francis Johnston, as another new feature of the district, and, in 1809, apparently because the new Pillar began to be recognized as a landmark, Sackville Street was divided into Upper and Lower, starting from this point. (Denis Florence McCarthy was born in 1817 in the house which is now the Imperial Hotel. Shelley stayed for some time at 7 Lower, and De Quincey at 18 Upper Sackville Street) The Pillar looked much better when newly erected than it does now after the smoke of a century. Immediately after its erection, its mountain granite surface was of a dazzling white.

Carlisle Bridge was the scene of many executions in 1798; amongst others of that of Dr. John Esmonde who lived in the County of Kildare. His eldest son inherited the family baronetcy and another was a respected Jesuit, Father Bartholomew Esmonde, who died in 1862.

The majestic statue of Daniel O’Connell, the liberator, was unveiled on the 15th of August, 1882, a Volunteer centenary. It was cast by the great sculptor, John Henry Foley, who was born in No.6 Montgomery Street, not far off, on the 24th of May, 1818.

The statue of Sir John Gray was unveiled in 1879. He was instrumental in giving Dublin its present fine water supply and was many years proprietor of the Freeman’s Journal, the oldest existing Dublin newspaper, which was founded by Lucas in 1763. The statue is by the late Sir Thomas Farrell, who was born in Mecklenburgh Street, also in this part of Dublin.

(Two other statues in this part of Dublin are from the chisel of Farrell; that of William Smith O’Brien, the Young Ireland leader, on the south side of O’Connell Bridge, unveiled in 1870; and that of Sir Alexander Macdonnell in the lawn of the Education Office, unveiled 14th August, 1878. Macdonnell had been Resident Commissioner of National Education from 1839 to 187,1: He had a very distinguished academic career at Oxford, winning four University prizes, Latin and English, verse and essay, a feat only once before accomplished.)

On the north side of the Pillar the statue of Father Theobald Mathew, the Apostle of Temperance, was unveiled in 1893. It was sculptured by Miss Mary Redmond and represents him in his Capuchin habit.

At the northern end of the street, next to the Rotunda, the memorial is now being erected to Charles Stewart Parnell. It is by Augustin St. Gaudens, a sculptor who is classed as an American, but was born in Dublin of a French father and Irish mother. This monument will be probably the last of the range of memorials in the centre of this fine street.

Sackville Place and Lane in this neighbourhood bear names of similar origin to that of the street, as also does Mount Sackville, the finely situated residence at Knockmaroon, now well known as St. Joseph’s Convent. But Sackville Garden and Sackville Avenue, which are not very far from the street, have a different origin.

Sackville Place was formerly Tucker’s Row, and was for some time called Mellifont Lane, from Mellifont Abbey, a famous religious house which was afterwards the residence of the Earls of Drogheda. Cole’s Lane seems to derive its name from the maiden name of one of the earlier Countesses of Drogheda. From this lane to Moore Street an extinct street called Greg Street ran a hundred and fifty years ago. It seems to be represented nowadays by Riddall’s Row.

Nelson Lane (re-named Earl Place in 1896) and Nelson Street date from a year or two after the erection of the Nelson Column. Moore Lane, running behind Gardiner’s Mall, was called, up to 1773, Brickfield Lane, and there were really brickfields there, a thing not to be easily realized from its present aspect. From this runs Sackville Lane, and off it there is a lane bearing the extraordinary name of Cadslough. The name has been in the Directories for many years, and is to be found on maps of more than seventy years ago. The depression in the ground seems to indicate that there was a “lough” there once, like the Yellow Pool or Lough Buoy, now called Bow Street, off North King Street.

Elephant Lane, leading to Marlborough Street, was apparently named from a shop or mart called the Elephant. We read, in a Dublin trial in 1821, of purchases made at “Chebsey’s of the Elephant in Sackville Street.” There has been a house bearing an image of an elephant for many years in another part of the street, near the corner of Middle Abbey Street. But the name Menagerie Lane is found on old maps near Elephant Lane.

(There was a menagerie in the eighteenth century in the space not built upon until the beginning of the following century, between this lane and Earl Street. A large elephant is said to have been burnt here in an accidental fire. It was not customary a hundred and fifty years ago to bestow names on many lanes in Dublin, and the maps of that time merely mark the name Stable Lane on a great many lanes which now bear particular names, amongst others Cathedral Street, Nelson Lane (Earl Place) and Thomas’s Lane in this district. Gregg’s Lane became Findlater Place in 1881)

The latter became Tyrone Place in 1870 as it leads to Tyrone House; but, as this old Irish name was appropriated by the neighbouring Mecklenburgh Street more than twenty years ago, Tyrone Place was changed to Cathedral Street in 1900 - three names in thirty years.

It runs by the pro-Cathedral, of which the first stone was laid in 1815 in Marlborough Street on the site of the town mansion of the Earls Annesley. When the Cathedral was opened in 1826, the old Church in Liffey Street, behind Bewley and Draper’s, then the Paving Board, was deserted. Both Metropolitan Churches were dedicated to the Blessed Virgin. During the building of the Cathedral the Most Rev. Dr. Troy, Archbishop of Dublin, took up his residence at 3 Cavendish Row; and his Coadjutor and ultimate successor, the Most Rev. Daniel Murray, resided in Cumberland Street from 1815 to 1827 in the house next to Mecklenburgh Lane, now No. 39. The present condition of the neighbourhood of the last-mentioned house affords a striking indication of the decay of Dublin within the old city boundary.

Before Drogheda Street, Moore Street and Of Lane were laid out the fields there bore the name of the Ash Park, being one of the “parks” of St. Mary’s Abbey, seemingly named from ash-trees which grew there. Terpois Park occupied the site of Jervis Street; and that known as the Black Wardrobe of Middle Abbey Street. North Prince’s Street is nearly two hundred years old, and its name is probably derived from the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II. Lower Ormond Quay was Jervis Quay. Bachelor’s Walk and Lane and (formerly) Bachelor’s Quay seem to derive their names from some long deceased capitalist called Batchelor. Bachelor’s Walk formerly included a part of what is now Eden Quay. No. 11 was the residence of Captain John Neville Norcott D’Esterre, a Town Councillor and ex-officer in the Navy, mortally wounded by O’Connell in a duel at Bishopscourt near Naas, on the 1st of February, 1815.

The back lane here called Lots seems to be quite unchanged since it was made. The name is from the “lots ” drawn by which reclaimed land here was distributed.

The house No.65 Middle Abbey Street, bears a curious memorial of the troubled year 1882. On the night of the 25th of November in that year there was an affray between police and secret society men in Middle Abbey Street, in which one of the former was shot dead, and one of the latter severely injured. Several shots were exchanged, and one of them struck the brass number-plate 65, leaving a triangular perforation which still remains.

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