Portions of the Parishes of St James and St Jude

Portions of the Parishes of St James and St Jude.

(Formerly included in an extinct Parish called St. John of Kilmainham.)

These parishes contain the modern townlands of Butchersarms, Conyngham Road, Dolphinsbarn, Dolphinsbarn North, Goldenbridge North and South, Inchicore *(i.e., *the island of berries) North and South, Kilmainham *(i.e., *the church of St. Maighnenn), and Longmeadows, and portion of the Phoenix Park.

**

Dolphin’s Barn**

The district known as Dolphin’s Barn, which lies to the west of Harold’s Cross between that place and Kilmainham on the South Circular Road, formed portion of the lands belonging to the Priory of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem at Kilmainham. It was originally called Karnanclonegunethe, and probably derived its present name from the Dolphin family, members of which are frequently mentioned in deeds of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries relating to Dublin.

One of them, David Dolfyn, who was in 1237 about to be sent to England with treasure belonging to the State appears to have been a tenant of the Kilmainham Priory, as it was found necessary to provide that he should not be summoned to the court of the Hospitallers during his absence, and a further indication of his connection with the neighbourhood is the fact that his companion on his journey was to be John de Kilmainham.

During the succeeding century many mills were erected in the Dolphin’s Barn neighbourhood owing to the motive power provided for them by the city watercourse which, as stated under Harold’s Cross, passed through the district. This adaptation of the course for purposes other than a domestic one led to frequent complaints as to the contamination of the water. Particularly in the beginning of the seventeenth century, when, owing to the influence of Sir Thomas Roper, Baron of Bantry and Viscount Baltinglas, from whose family a place near Dolphin’s Barn called Roper’s Rest obtains its name, a mill “which caused much filthred” was allowed to stand on the course without interference.

But when it was proposed to erect a tuckmill in its place the Corporation awoke to a sense of their duty and ordered Mr. Mayor at the first beginning of any nuisance or corruption to have it pulled down with the help of workmen and labourers.

At the time of the Commonwealth the village of Dolphin’s Barn contained “two very fair houses,” a mill, and five thatched cottages. It was then completely separated from Dublin, and portion of the lands were known as Chillam’s Farm from a Drogheda family of that name which had owned it before the rebellion.

Its population was returned as numbering seventeen persons of English descent and fourteen of Irish. After the Restoration one of the houses rated as containing three hearths was occupied by William Budd, and another rated as containing two hearths by Sampson Holmes.

During the early part of the eighteenth century Dolphin’s Barn was celebrated on account of the hurling matches which were played there, and the death there in 1761 of “an eminent tanner and weaver,” Mr. John Stephens, may perhaps indicate that it still preserved its character as an industrial centre.

The great event in the neighbourhood in the later part of the eighteenth century was the construction of the Grand Canal which completely altered its appearance. As first designed the canal started from James’ Street, and the channel which leads from the Liffey at a point near Ringsend, and joins the original channel between Dolphin’s Barn and Kilmainham, was a subsequent addition.

Before the advent of railways the canal carried passengers in what were known as fly-boats. These boats were light and narrow, and obtained their name from their being drawn by two or more horses which were ridden and proceeded at considerable speed. For this traffic the harbour with the adjoining hotel (now a private hospital) at Portobello, on the channel leading to the Liffey, was opened in 1807, but until then the fly-boats started from James’ Street.

In the accompanying picture one of the fly-boats is shown going to the latter place, and passing through a lock near a bridge on the South Circular Road, which from its shape has become known as Rialto Bridge, but which was originally named Harcourt Bridge from the first Earl of Harcourt who was Lord Lieutenant when the canal was opened (1). **

The Kilmainham Vicinity**

*With special reference to Island Bridge and Inchicore. *

As stated in the introduction, the Circular Road, by which the Metropolis is encompassed, has been adopted for the purpose of this work as the boundary between the county and city of Dublin. This limit entails the omission of more than one locality which in former times was completely isolated from the city with an existence of its own, and above all of Kilmainham which adjoins Dolphin’s Barn on the north.

There in the middle ages stood, in the midst of green fields, the great Priory of the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, and even in the eighteenth century its successor, the present Royal Hospital, had at its gate a country village. But these pages are only concerned with the history of Kilmainham so far as it relates to the portion of the Kilmainham lands on which now stand the suburbs of Dublin known as Island Bridge and Inchicore.

Kilmainham is said to have obtained its name from the foundation in Celtic times of a monastery on its lands by St. Maighnenn. It was in the eleventh century the place of encampment for the Irish forces under King Brian before their encounter with the Danes at Clontarf, and at the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion during the siege of Dublin an Irish army again took up its station there.

Under Anglo-Norman rule the great Priory of the Hospitallers was established at Kilmainham, and subsequently its possessions were largely increased by a gift of lands from the Tyrrells of Castleknock. This gift included in addition to the lands a moiety of the river Liffey “as far as the watercourse near the gallows,” which stood where the entrance to the Phoenix Park in Parkgate Street is now situated.

The name Island Bridge has originated in the construction of a bridge across the Liffey near a point where an island exists in that river. Before the erection of a bridge the Liffey was crossed where Island Bridge is now situated by a ford known as Kilmahanock’s Ford, and it is not until the reign of Henry VIII. that the existence of a bridge near Kilmainham is mentioned. It is then referred to in connection with “the rebellion of Silken Thomas in 1534, during which the O’Tooles took advantage of the general disturbance in the Government to descend from their mountain home on the somewhat distant lands of Fingal.

As we are told, on hearing of this foray, the Dublin citizens sallied out with the intention of intercepting the return of the O’Tooles at Kilmainham Bridge, which was the route the O’Tooles had taken, but for some reason the citizens advanced from thence to Grangegorman where they encountered the O’Tooles at a wood called Salcock and were defeated with great loss.

Again, a year later in the month of November, Sir William Skeffington, who was then Lord Deputy of Ireland, when on a journey from Trim to Dublin, heard that a party of the Geraldines were lying in wait for him near the bridge of Kilmainham. Torrential rain was falling at the. time, which had deprived the footmen in his company of all power of resistance by relaxing their bow strings and washing the feathers from their arrows, but with the help of the ordnance, which as chance was were good pieces that day,” Skeffington, who was known as the gunner, passed the footmen over the bridge, which he says was extremely narrow, without the loss of a single man.

There were then two mills of considerable importance near the bridge and no doubt many residents; but much of the adjoining lands, including those of Inchicore, and some of those now enclosed in the Phoenix Park, were covered with wood, and in these woods the Geraldines had hoped to conceal themselves until the moment for action arose.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, while Sir Henry Sidney was Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1577, an arched stone bridge was thrown over the Liffey at Island Bridge, but the surroundings had not improved.

After the dissolution of the religious houses the possessions of the Priory at Kilmainham had been leased by the Crown to various persons, with the result that at the beginning of the seventeenth century ruinous houses and waste places abounded there.

About the time of the Rebellion of 1641 the neighbourhood was occupied principally by an industrial population. The mills, which were then known as the island mills, had become so extensive as to be worth a rent of £200 of the money of those times, and were the principal means for supplying the army with corn.

They had come into the possession of the Crown, and a grant of them which was made to Sir John Temple, then Master of the Rolls, who has been noticed under the adjacent parish of Palmerston, gave rise to much controversy. The lands at Island Bridge were then cultivated by market gardeners, one of whom alleged great losses during the rebellion, and stated that his son had been so barbarously treated “that he languished and died”.

Soon after the Restoration the lands of Inchicore, Island Bridge and Kilmainham were enclosed in the Phoenix Park, which was then designed and made by the Duke of Ormonde, but this arrangement lasted only for about twenty years, and the Phoenix Park was then reduced to its present limits.

While enclosed in the Phoenix Park the villages and public thoroughfares existed as they had done formerly. During the Commonwealth the mills had been described as consisting of two double mills and a single mill, and after the Restoration they were leased, together with six fishing weirs near Island Bridge, to the Lord Chancellor, Sir Maurice Eustace, the owner of the adjoining lands of Chapelizod.

At the latter time there were some twenty houses and cottages at Island Bridge, the principal inhabitants being Benjamin Boulton, whose house had three hearths, and a miller called John Harris (Doubtless a house at Island Bridge belonged to him, or to some member of his family, on which Austin Cooper tells us there there the letter H, surmounting the letters I and A, divided by a heart, and the date 1684.) whose house had two hearths; but at Inchicore, although before the Rebellion a substantial brick residence had stood on the lands, there was only a single inhabitant whose house was rated as containing but one hearth.

About this time the place of execution was moved from its old site on the ground near Parkgate Street to Kilmainham, where a gaol then existed.

Later on houses began to be built by Dublin citizens in the Kilmainham neighbourhood, and during the eighteenth century it continued to be a favourite residential locality. At Island Bridge resided in the early part of that century Sir William Fownes, who numbered Dean Swift amongst his friends and admirers, and furnished the Dean with a scheme for the foundation of an asylum for lunatics.

Fownes was possibly attracted to Island Bridge by the fact that he held at one time the office of ranger of the Phoenix Park. He was a knight and baronet who had filled the office of Lord Mayor of Dublin, and represented in Parliament during the reign of Queen Anne the borough of Wicklow, and during the reign of George II. the borough of Dingle.

His exclusion from Parliament during the reign of George I. was doubtless due to his political opinions being in accord of those of his friend the Dean, who pronounces him to have been a wise and useful citizen as well as a man of taste and humour, praise which he would not have accorded to a political opponent. Sir William Fownes, who died in 1735 at a very advanced age, and was succeeded in his baronetcy by his grandson, is now represented by the Tighes of Woodstock.

His house at Island Bridge was quite rural in its surroundings, which included a straw house and a granary, in addition to gardens, and a path called the Mount walk overlooking the Liffey, and was handsomely furnished, as is evidenced by the mention of brass grates and door fittings and of pictures which covered the walls of every room.

After Sir William Fownes’ death his home passed into the possession of one of his sons-in-law Robert Cope of Loughgall. Cope and his wife “who entertained this covetous lampooning Dean much better than he deserved” enjoyed in a special degree Swift’s favour, and at one time their house at Loughgall was the only country one which Swift could tolerate. Besides the house at Island Bridge Cope succeeded through his wife to property in Dublin near College Green, where Cope Street and Fownes Street commemorate the connection of himself and his father-in-law with that vicinity.

At Inchicore the Annesley family had at that time a house which is frequently referred to in the famous Annesley peerage case. It stood not far from an inn from which the townland of Butchersarms takes its name.

It was the residence of the claimant’s father Arthur, fourth Lord Altham, at the time of his death in 1727, and was subsequently occupied by the claimant’s uncle, the defendant in the suit, Richard, fifth Lord Altham, who also succeeded on the death of his cousin to the titles of Earl of Anglesey and Viscount Valentia.

The Annesleys were not the only residents near Kilmainham connected with that extraordinary legal struggle. At the time of the trial, in 1743, Sir William Fownes’ house at Island Bridge was occupied by one of the judges before whom the suit was tried, John Bowes, then Chief Baron of the Exchequer and afterwards Lord Chancellor of Ireland, of whom more will be told under Drumcondra where he subsequently resided, and a house at Kilmainham was the home of one of the counsel for the defendant, Simon Bradstreet, a lawyer of great eminence.

Bradstreet contested the Parliamentary representation of Dublin in the year 1737, but unsuccessfully, although we find him, in order to promote his candidature, engaging a band of music to play once a week at the Basin for “the entertainment of the ladies and gentlemen and the rest of his fellow-citizens.” On him a baronetcy was conferred to which his second son, Sir Samuel Bradstreet, who has been noticed under Booterstown, succeeded on the death of his elder brother. The house at Kilmainham long continued to be a residence of the Bradstreet family.

Sir Simon Bradstreet, who, as has been already mentioned, was buried at Clondalkin, died at Kilmainham in 1762 and his widow was also residing there at the time of her death in 1779.

The increase of inhabitants did not interfere however with industrial enterprises. The mills at Island Bridge still maintained their importance and had advanced with the times, as appears from an advertisement in 1738 which offers them for sale, together with the salmon weirs and island in the Liffey, and states that they were provided with French and other stones for grinding corn and preparing flour.

A brewery had also been established at Island Bridge by John Davies, who died in 1704, and another was afterwards owned there by Richard Pockrich, one of the most extraordinary characters Ireland has ever produced, who dissipated a great fortune in promoting such visionary schemes as transforming bogs into vineyards and men into birds.

The market gardens had given place to a celebrated nursery where pine-apples, then a new delight, and the finest flowers could be procured. It was owned by one Andrew Haubois, and possibly his house was known by the sign of the “Black Lion,” as a lady of the period records that garden mould could be purchased at a house with that sign at Island Bridge.

The neighbourhood had then however some more serious drawbacks than manufactures. As in the case of Crumlin, races on the commons, which existed at that time at Kilmainham, attracted there very undesirable people, and in 1747, during an attempt to suppress the races, the soldiers were called out and several persons were shot.

But even more disagreeable was the presence of the place of execution for the county, near which a windmill was destroyed in 1763 from a rather remarkable circumstance, the heating of the iron work during a storm.

The house at Island Bridge which had belonged to Sir William Fownes was bequeathed by Robert Cope to his second son who bore the same name, and who died there in 1765. Amongst other residents at Island Bridge in that century may be mentioned in 1720 Robert Crowe, in 1724 Robert Curtis, “resident chirurgeon of the Royal Hospital,” in 1736 Lieutenant William Cox, in 1738 Edward Ford, in 1746 William Noy, an attorney and justice of the peace, in 1749 Michael Jones, in 1764 Anthony Green, in 1768 Captain Thomas Pennefather, who became connected with the place through his wife, a member of the Goodwin family, the members of which long held a responsible position in connection with the Royal Hospital, in 1786 Thomas Keightley, and in 1799 Sir John Trail.

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