The Old Road to the Sea.

CHAPTER IX.

The Old Road To The Sea

Great Britain Street, Summer Hill and Ballybough Road are a very old thoroughfare, but were quite rural until about the middle of the eighteenth century, when houses and intersecting streets began to be built. This was the old road to the sea, and Ballybough Lane, the predecessor in - title of Ballybough Road, was the coast road before the building of Annesley Bridge in 1797.

Ballybough Bridge, where this old highway crosses the Tolka, was built so far back as 1308 by a benevolent and public-spirited Provost of Dublin, John le Decer. His office was equivalent to that of Lord Mayor. Decer’s bridge was swept away by a flood in 1313 and the present dates from 1488, being one of the oldest bridges in Dublin.

Before a bridge was built here, the Tolka was crossed by “the fishing-weir of Clontarf,” which plays such a prominent part in the Battle of Clontarf. We are told that many of the pagan enemy were killed at this old Danish weir, and that many were drowned in the Tolka, the tide being at its flood at five minutes before six o’clock on that day. The road or path from Dublin to this weir, started in those days like all the North County roads from the present Church Street, and the “ford of the hurdles, where the first bridge was afterwards built. “The Liffey was then unconfined”, and spread out widely, and the sea flawed over the space where now stand the Custom House, Amiens Street, the Northern Railway Terminus, and all the adjacent streets lying between them and the sea. The main battle ground extended from about the present Upper Sackville Street to the River Tolka, and beyond along the shore towards Clontarf. The Danes stood with their backs to the sea; the Irish on the land side facing them.”

Dr. John Brennan, more famous as a literary man than as a physician, lived at No. 192 Great Britain Street. No man could be more vitriolic in his writings and words, and his poem on the four provinces of Ireland is unequalled in bitterness. His epigram on a brother physician in Dublin was:-

Name the grave you wish to be buried in

Before you send for Dr. Sheridan.

Summer Hill, formerly known as Farmer’s Hill, contained many fine residences a hundred years ago. Lord Ffrench lived here and some other Irish peers. There are rows of very large old houses on the eastern side of the street, especially between Rutland Street and Buckingham Street. Though not much of a hill, the rising ground is quite apparent. The steep piece of waste ground in Lower Rutland Street on which the school is now being built, has long been popularly called Bunker’s Hill; nor was this the only memorial of American Independence in the district; for the little street called Buckingham Place was Washington Street early in the nineteenth century, and there was also a Washington Row here.

Langrishe Place was the property of Sir Hercules Langrishe, Bart., of Knocktopher, a member of the Irish Parliament, who died in 1811. Like Luke Gardiner Lord Mountjoy, his Dublin neighbour, Sir Hercules was an advocate of Catholic Emancipation, which not even Lucas, Charlemont and Foster were prepared to concede. Hutton’s Lane, now Place, is called after the old Dublin firm whose factory adjoins it. There was a place off Summer Hill punningly called Lane’s Lane.

John Cornelius O’Callaghan, author of the Irish Brigade in the Service of France and the Green Book, lived in Upper Rutland Street, as did George Petrie at 21 Great Charles Street. The short new street called after Robert Emmet is in curious juxtaposition to that which takes its name from John Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare, his contemporary; for the two were wide as the poles asunder in politics. North Summer Street (1809) is called Moor Street in old maps.

No.9 North Summer Street was the residence ninety years ago of the Hon. Mrs. Whitehead, a sister of the first Lord Ffrench, and the home in boyhood of her son, the Rev. Dr. Whitehead, afterwards Vice-President of Maynooth College.

Rutland Street and Buckingham Street both date from the last decade of the eighteenth century, and take their names from Viceroys of a few years earlier. 36 Upper Buckingham Street was the residence of John O’Donovan, the eminent Irish scholar, and of his adventurous son Edmond, a pupil of Belvedere, afterwards famous for his daring journey to Merv. (Edmond O’Donovan was born at 49, now 55, Bayview Avenue, on the 13th of September, 1844 He lived afterwards at 39 North Strand.)

The last six houses of Summer Hill are called Duke Row, and are named, like the adjoining Portland Row, from the third Duke of Portland who was Prime Minister, 1807-9. Until a few years ago the eastern side of Portland Row was called Caroline Row. The name dates from 1795, being the year after the marriage of the lady who wished afterwards to have inscribed on her tomb:-“Caroline of Brunswick, the injured Queen of England.” Great Brunswick Street was named at the same time. The little chapel of St. Joseph and the charitable institution adjoining were founded in 1836 by Dr. Blake, afterwards Bishop of Dromore, and James Murphy, a pious layman who died, almost a centenarian, a few years ago. Meredyth Place, renamed Empress Place some years ago, dates from 1798.

North William Street and Clarence Street, both a little over a century old, are evidently called after William, Duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV. Watty Cox, editor of the Irish Magazine, a celebrated political character of a century ago, lived at a house called Cox’s Cot in North Clarence Street.

The convent in North William Street was ninety years ago tenanted by Mrs Aikenhead and the pioneers of the Irish Sisters of Charity. It was then for many years a Carmelite Convent until the sisters removed to Hampton House, Drumcondra. For the last half-century it has been occupied by the French Filles de Charite of St. Vincent de Paul. The Convent Chapel was used from the first, like St. Joseph’s, Portland Row, as a Chapel of Ease for the Cathedral parish.

In 1867 the district bounded by Drumcondra Road, the North Circular Road, the North Strand, and the Tolka was erected into a separate parish and this was the parish church. It had been separately administered for a long time previously, and the church and parish were named after St. Agatha, the Sicilian virgin and martyr, by Cardinal Cullen, who had passed the most of his life in the Irish College, Rome, which adjoins the Church of its patroness, Sant’ Agata dei Goti. New St. Agatha’s Church in North William Street was opened on the 25th of October, 1908.

The Ordnance Survey map marks the “Osiers” on the Royal Canal bank at the end of North Richmond Street, but the willows have long since disappeared. Clarke’s Bridge, by which this ancient thoroughfare crosses the Royal Canal, is called after Edward Clarke, a director of the Canal Company in 1791 when the bridge was built.

Long before the time of the Canal the old maps mark a solitary building, the only house on the road for a very long distance, called “The Redd House.” a name often given to a house built of red brick, then an unusual material. It stood near the site of Clarke’s Bridge. On the western side of Ballybough Road and extending towards Clonliffe and Jones’s Roads lies a townland with the singular name of Lovescharity, spelled thus in one word in the Ordnance maps and Townland Survey book. Love’s Charity and Love Lane adjoining are apparently named from somebody surnamed Love. Smithborough is now called Love Lane, while old Love Lane is now Sackville Avenue.

(Smithborough is also the name of a town in Monaghan. There are many other single-word names of streets in Dublin, such as Dolphinsbarn (1396), Grangegorrnan, Broadstone, Mullinahack, Mountbrown, Warrenmount, Portobello, Gibraltar, Rowserstown, Mockenstown, Phibsborough, Stoneybatter, Coombe, Pigtown, Cadslough, Blackpits, Newmarket, Rehoboth, Tripoli, Pimlico, Spitalfields, Lotts, Mespil, Nickleby, and Uxbridge.).

The last name and that of Sackville Garden, whose name-plate bears the date 1815, are evidently derived from the Rev. Sackville Ussher Lee, a clergyman residing at Exeter, who was an owner of property here. Up to a few years ago the first six houses of Ballybough Road were called Edward Terrace. They date from about 1815 and the name probably came from Edward, Duke of Kent, son of George 111., and father of Queen Victoria. From him the present King received his name

The next piece of the road was Foster Street, called, like Oriel Street not far off, from John Foster, afterwards Lord Oriel, the last Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. Charlemont Parade is called after his fellow-patriot who lived at Marino. Charleville Avenue, formerly Bayview Parade, and Charleville Mall seem to have had some association with the family of Bury, Earls of Charleville, a title which became extinct in 1875.

Spring Garden Parade and Street, besides challenging an obvious comparison with Summer Hill, are called after an old “tea-garden,” a place of recreation tong obsolete both here and in London, where there was also a Spring Garden.

The name Mud Island, often popularly bestowed still on the district lying beside this part of Ballybough Road, is to be found in Cooke’s Map of Dublin, 1821. It was a recognized place and even had its own king, but there is no ground for asserting that King’s Lane, now Avenue, was the royal residence. That is said to have been situated seventy years ago in Bayview Parade, now Charleville Avenue.

The name of Carey’s Lane here was changed in 1883, when an individual of that name became prominent by turning Queen’s evidence; and in the same year the name of Brady’s Row, off Mountjoy Street, was abandoned, as that was the surname of the best known member of the Invincibles, who was executed.

Poplar Row has been sometimes called Sandy Row of late. The name suggests the 12th of July in Belfast. Here is Taaffe’s Place and the Ordnance Map marks a district here with the odd name, for a city locality, of Taaffe’s Village from the owners of the property. Hackett’s Buildings adjoining, at a point on the North Strand Road where Baths (sea) are marked a century ago, were also called from the former proprietors who lived first here and afterwards in Amiens Street.

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