The Forty Acres, Anglo-Norman Magnates

Introduction.

The buildings of the International Exhibition of 1907, impressive in the vastness of their extent and boldness of their design, appear to have arisen at the command of a magician’s wand. A year ago their site was pasture land, the one oasis left in the western portion of the Pembroke Township. Although preparations were being made for its conversion into a public park, the ground still presented a most rural appearance, even preserving some remnants of the primitive fences, consisting of mud banks surmounted by thorn hedges, which formerly bordered the road from Dublin to Donnybrook. So long as it remained, this green spot served to remind the passer-by that the suburb in which the International Exhibition has been erected is a modern extension of Dublin, and that Donnybrook and Ball’s Bridge were of old time far removed from city life. But with the disappearance of this landmark the very existence of the fields which once separated the metropolis from the river Dodder is liable to be forgotten, and the traditions of the district tend to become discredited. At such a moment it seems not inopportune to add to local recollections the authority of history, and, synchronizing as that moment does with the opening of the International Exhibition, it may not be considered inappropriate to select the site of that great industrial enterprise as the centre of this historical sketch.

Note. Except where mentioned, the authorities will be found in the Author’s “History of the County Dublin,” Part II., pp. 1-63.

Chapter I.

The Forty Acres and Anglo-Norman Magnates.

No more suitable point can be taken for a survey of the Pembroke Township than the townland of the Forty Acres on which the architects of the International Exhibition have laid its heavy weight. Around that townland in a circle lie the districts of which the Township is composed - to the north - west and north Baggotrath and Ringsend, to the east Simmonscourt, Sandymount, and Merrion, and to the south and south-west Donnybrook and Clonskeagh. Close to its eastern border flow the waters of the river Dodder, which intersects the Township, and to the south-west and north-east are high roads leading from the metropolis.

The Forty Acres which are the subject of some of the earliest deeds relating to the vicinity have an ancient history - a history which creates a desire for information as to their more remote past. What changes those acres have witnessed. In the days of ancient Erin they formed part of a tract of rich land through which the Dodder, as now, pursued its course, sometimes in peaceful current, at others in angry flood, and over which a shadow was thrown by lofty forests which merged in “the mast bearing territory of Cualann,” and stretched away into what is now the county Wicklow. The introduction of Christianity and the raids of the Norsemen had in turn an effect on their surroundings. The introduction of Christianity resulted in the erection, to the south, of a church founded by a holy woman called St. Broc, from which came the place name Domhnach-broc, the church of St. Broc, now corrupted into Donnybrook, and the raids of the Norsemen were probably the cause of the construction, to the north, of a rath which at the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion dominated the country near it. Of these events we would fain know more, but it is not until the time of the Anglo-Norman settlement that the Forty Acres can be disconnected from general history.

From that period, 700 years ago, the designation of the Forty Acres has been recognized, and it is possible to picture the changes which the passing centuries made in the districts encompassing the townland. In the early days of the Anglo-Norman settlement the Forty Acres appear as the northern boundary of the lands of Donnybrook, then comprising many hundred acres, and extending to the south-east beyond Booterstown. The owner of these lands was one of the most illustrious of the Anglo-Norman magnates, Walter de Rideleford, Lord of Bray, a brave and noble follower of Strongbow, who had been assigned by his leader wide possessions in the counties of Dublin and Kildare. By him the Forty Acres were dedicated to holy uses. Amongst the benefactors whom the church found in the new proprietors, the name of Walter de Rideleford is written large, and a tithe of such lands as he acquired was almost invariably given to one or other of the religious houses of his day. His offering for Donnybrook was the Forty Acres, and the establishment on which it was conferred, the Priory of All Saints or All Hallows, the site of which is now trod by the students of Trinity College. To the Priory the Forty Acres were granted for ever, and the only consideration reserved was an annual rent of a pound of pepper to keep in memory the piety of Walter de Rideleford and his wife, Amabilis, a lady of royal blood, whose name was joined with his own in the deed.

Before the middle of the 13th century the male line of the grantor of the Forty Acres had become extinct, and the lands of Donnybrook had passed through the hands of Walter de Lacy, Earl of Meath, one of the most prominent men in the Ireland of his time. His connection with Donnybrook possibly arose from the marriage of his brother, Hugh de Lacy, Earl of Ulster, to a daughter of the last Walter de Rideleford. These brothers were great magnates, the sons of Hugh de Lacy, Earl of Meath, who had been accused of designs to usurp the regal prerogative, and Walter de Lacy, who has been described by an Irish writer as the most bountiful foreigner in steeds, attire, and gold that ever came to Erin, was possessed of vast property. Under him the lands of Donnybrook were held by one William Messett. He was of kin to Peter Messett, who enjoyed the feudal barony of Lune in the county Meath, and was a trusted adherent of the de Lacys, and subsequently Peter Messett’s representatives, members of the families of Verneuil, Talbot, and Londres, succeeded him as tenants of the Donnybrook lands.

At that period as at present two roads leading from Dublin ran through the districts now embraced in the Pembroke Township. Starting from Dublin Castle, the southern extremity of the mediaeval metropolis, a single road led to “the common pasture of the citizens called the Green of St. Stephen,” now St. Stephen’s Green Park. At that point the two roads branched off. One road followed the line of Lower and Upper Leeson Street, Morehampton Road, and the Stillorgan Road, crossing the Dodder by “the ford of Donnybrook.” The other road followed the line of Merrion Row, Lower and Upper Baggot Street, Pembroke Road, and Blackrock Road, crossing the Dodder by a fragile structure of wood which then represented the solid masonry of Ball’s Bridge. The second was the more important thoroughfare. By it Dalkey, at that period the port of Dublin, was approached, and travellers and merchandise were continually passing along the way which led to that place, then a bleak and dreary road, relieved only by an occasional cluster of cottages and one or two fortified dwellings.

All the districts comprised in the Pembroke Township began in the 13th century to assume definite form. To the south of the Forty Acres lay the homes of Walter de Rideleford’s men of Donnybrook, with the church of St. Broc in their midst - a small town probably enclosed with walls, and in charge of a bailiff. These men of Donnybrook were the farmers of Walter de Rideleford’s lands, who instead of living in isolated houses on their farms as they would at present, congregated together for the purpose of mutual protection. They comprised, under the feudal system introduced by the Anglo-Normans, free tenants who paid rent in money, service tenants who rendered specific services in addition to, or in substitution for, money payments, and betaghs or labourers who were given small allotments of land instead of wages. In order to benefit by the services of the last classes a portion of each estate was reserved by the landlord in his own hands, and a manor house in which the business of the estate could be transacted, was generally considered indispensable. At Donnybrook there does not appear to have been a manor house, or, at any rate, one of any importance, and probably Walter de Rideleford administered the affairs of his Donnybrook estate from his castle at Bray, the place from which he took his feudal title, or from “the house of Christinus the Ostman,” outside the walls of Dublin, which had been presented to him at the time of the Anglo-Norman settlement.

Between Walter de Rideleford’s village and the Dodder lay the fair green, for even at that early period Donnybrook Fair, the carnival of Dublin, had become an annual event. The right to hold a fair rested with the citizens of Dublin, to whom the necessary permission had been granted by King John. The licence was conveyed through Meiler Fitz Henry, a descendant of Henry the First, who was then justiciary or viceroy of Ireland, and as the latter was a brother-in-law of Walter de Rideleford it is possible that the selection of Donnybrook as the place for the fair was due to his influence. The fair was at first held in May, beginning on the vigil of the day of the Invention of the Cross, but was subsequently changed during the 13th century to December, beginning on the vigil of the Translation of St. Thomas the Martyr, to March, beginning on the vigil of the Translation of St. Benedict the Abbot, and finally to August, beginning on the vigil of the Decapitation of St. John the Baptist. Its duration was originally limited to eight days, but was subsequently extended to 15 days.

Further to the south of the Forty Acres, beyond Donnybrook, were the lands of Clonskeagh or the meadow of the white thorns, then sometimes called Little Rabo, the ancient form of the name of the adjoining district of Roebuck. As at present these lands were divided by the Dodder, and from very early times a mill was situated upon them. Not far from Clonskeagh, on the eastern side of the river, were lands held at one time by William Talbot and Henry Verneuil, the latter being a loyal vassal of the Crown who had gone to England to the assistance of the King during the war with Louis of France and the barons. Adjoining the holdings of William Talbot and Henry Verneuil, to the east of the Forty Acres, lay the lands now comprised in Simmonscourt, held under Walter de Rideleford, by one of his Kildare tenants, Frambald Fitz Boydekyn, of Castledermot. Near Frambald’s lands were others called Colcote and beyond them to the east Walter de Rideleford’s “meadow of Merrion.” Stretching back from Merrion towards the north along the sea, where Sidney Parade, Sandymount, and Irishtown are now situated, there was a succession of marshes, rabbit warrens, and sandy hills, enclosing lands near the banks of the Dodder, where the Star of the Sea Church now stands, called Scallet Hill and the Salt Grass, and terminating in the point on which Ringsend stands.

Opposite these lands, on the western side of the Dodder, lay, beyond “the meadow of Richard Olof,” the lands of the Rath, afterwards known as Baggotrath, which bounded the Forty Acres to the north-west and north. The lands of the Rath extended in the other direction as far as the line of Leeson Street, Pembroke Street, Merrion Street, and Denzille Street, and were bounded by lands belonging to the See of Dublin, by the Green of St. Stephen, by lands belonging to the Convent of St. Mary de Hogges, the site of whose buildings College Green occupies, and by the Steyne, which stretched along the bank of the Liffey from the site of Westmoreland Street to the Dodder opposite Ringsend. Within the lands of the Rath, as well as within the whole of the area now comprised in the Pembroke Township, agriculture was the life of the inhabitants. The only houses were those of the tillers of the soil, and it is not until the close of the 13th century, as the history of Baggotrath discloses, that there is any indication of residents with a wider sphere of occupation.

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