Part of the Parish of Grangegorman

Part of the Parish of Grangegorman.

This parish, which is mainly a city one, contains land which formed in mediaeval times a manor of the Priory of the Holy Trinity.

It is now divided by the Circular Road, and outside that road it embraces four townlands, viz : Cabragh (i.e. the bad land) and Grangegorman, Middle, North, and South. **

The North Circular Road and its Vicinity**

Such lands in the parish of Grangegorman as concern this history join on the north the parishes of Finglas and Glasnevin. These lands appear to have been at the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion, like those of Glasnevin, a possession of the Priory of the Holy Trinity, and soon afterwards the priory acquired the remaining lands in the parish by deed of gift from Hugh Hussey, Lord of Galtrim, who had become possessed of them by a grant from the Crown.

On their southern side the lands given to the priory by Hugh Hussey were only separated from the priory house beside Christ Church Cathedral by the Liffey, which was crossed at that point by the old bridge; but, notwithstanding their proximity to the canons’ house, the Grangegorman lands, which were constituted a manor, were provided with a manorial residence, comprising a hall and several rooms.

Its site is now indicated by Manor Street, near the Richmond Asylum, and where the north end of Manor Street lies there was in the fourteenth century a village of 16 cottages, whose inhabitants included three ploughmen, a plough-driver, two carters, a lime-burner, and a thrasher.

The manor house at Grangegorman was maintained independently of the priory house, and when the prior went to it provision was made by the Grangegorman servants for his entertainment. Thus in the summer of 1346, when he was conferring there with three of his neighbours, wine, ale, and bread were bought for him; and in the autumn on two occasions at night similar purchases, with the addition of larks, were made on his account.

As a cellarer was included amongst the Grangegorman residents, and brewing was carried on there, it is remarkable that the purchase of wine and ale should have been necessary; possibly the cellarer’s duties lay at the priory, and the Grangegorman ale was not of a sufficiently high quality for the prior. Besides the cellarer, the staff residing at Grangegorman included an overseer and 10 servants, in addition to the farm servants, who included a bailiff, two foremen, two carters, and six ploughmen.

In the part of the lands which concern this history, where the modern Cabragh Road runs, there was in mediaeval times a wood known as Salcock’s Wood. It is said to have been the scene of an engagement between the citizens of Dublin and the O’Tooles, who were returning from a foray into Fingal ; and at a later period it provided a feeding-ground for swine, as well as valuable timber, and was carefully fenced and guarded. It is recorded that in 1493, on the feast of the Ascension, the ditch was broken down, and eight cows put into the wood, without leave, by an inhabitant of Little Cabragh, and that about the same time two ash trees were cut down by the wife of Donald Swinard.

Fifty years later the priory covenanted to give one of its tenants eight oak trees and four ash trees from the wood for building purposes; and in the lease of Much Cabragh to John Parker it was provided that he should be allowed to carry away annually six cart-loads of timber from the wood, and to keep 40 swine in it, as well as to hunt, hawk, and fish there and elsewhere in the lordship of Grangegorman. He was also permitted to have six cart-loads of furze, which appears to have grown in large quantities between Grangegorman village and Glasnevin.

At that time the chief land-marks in the parish were the road to Cabragh, now known as Manor Street, Prussia Street, and Old Cabragh Road, and the road to Ashtown, now known as Aughrim Street and Blackhorse Lane. On the road to Cabragh, near a place known as rotten row, a headless cross was to be seen; and on the road to Ashtown, a place known as the long mile’s-end marked the traveller’s progress.

After the constitution of the cathedral establishment of Christ Church, Grangegorman manor appears as the residence of the Right Hon. Francis Agard, who at the time of his death was the virtual ruler of Ireland. Beside the manor and farm of Grangegorman there were leased to him by the chapter of the cathedral a barn, a kiln, and a sheepfold, a moiety of an orchard, and a meadow called Garget’s mead, in which the chapter reserved a right to graze four horses.

Like most prominent men in the Elizabethan age, Agard rendered service no less in a military than in a civil capacity. He appears in 1548 serving in Scotland under Lord Seymour de Sudeley as captain of a troop of horse, in 1566 rendering good service in the expedition against Shane O’Neill, in 1569 venturing his life as governor of the Wicklow tribes, in 1574 acting as head of a commission in Munster, and in 1576 allaying unrest in the eastern part of Leinster. In the autumn of the following year, 1577, his death took place.

Of him all men spoke highly. Queen Elizabeth, to whom he was well known from his frequent visits to her court, relied on his experience and judgment more than on those of any other of her Irish officials ; and her lord deputy, Sir Henry Sidney, spoke of Agard as his “fidus Achates,” and said after Agard’s death that a greater loss could not “in any sort have chanced with him.”

At Grangegorman, Agard was succeeded by one of his sons-in-law, Sir Henry Harrington, a cousin of the famous Elizabethan writer, Sir John Harrington, and a brother of the first Lord Harrington, of Exton. In governing the O’Byrnes and O’Tooles-a task to which he also succeeded - Harrington came frequently into notice, and alternated between a policy of coercion and persuasion. In the field he proved himself a brave, although somewhat foolhardy, commander, but in his civil administration he relied usually on bribery, and brought on himself the censure of Sir John Davies for permitting “the barbarous customs of the people.”

At that time Salcock’s Wood had been divided, and the plots were leased to various persons. In 1574, on account of his generosity to Christ Church Cathedral and renovation of a chamber adjacent to it, the Bishop of Meath was given one of these plots, and in 1594 no less than seven of them were let, the tenants including an alderman, an organist, a servant of the solicitor-general, and three clergymen. Amongst the covenants provision appears for a supply of sillabub in summer, and the repair of “the common gate.”

Agard left three daughters, and after the death of Harrington, which occurred in 1613, Grangegorman appears to have passed to the representatives of Agard’s eldest daughter, who married one of her own kinsmen. About the year 1630, when the Lord Ranelagh of that day was negotiating for its purchase, the manor was in the market, but at the time of the rebellion of 1641 it was still in the possession of the Agard family, then represented by John Agard.

In the Commonwealth surveys it is returned as containing 500 acres under crops and 300 under grass, with an old stone-house which was valued at no more than 40 pounds. When the rebellion broke out a large farm at Salcock’s Wood was in the possession of one Richard Mason, whose livestock included 39 cows and nine horses. Of these he was despoiled, and in a deposition made four years later he laboured to implicate in that act Henry Segrave of Little Cabragh and one Clarke of the Bay in Mulhuddart parish.

After the Restoration the village of Grangegorman is returned as containing over 40 houses, two being rated for four hearths and four for three, and the manor house, which was probably rebuilt, became the residence of Sir Thomas Stanley, one of Henry Cromwell’s knights. Like many of Henry Cromwell’s friends, Sir Thomas Stanley proved to be a good royalist, and represented in the Restoration parliament the county of Louth.

With Tipperary and Waterford he was much identified, and appears to have been a friend of Valentine Greatrakes, famous for curing various ills by stroking the part affected. On his death in 1674, Sir Thomas Stanley left more than one son, and a daughter who married Henry Monck, an ancestor of Viscount Monck. His possessions at Grangegorman passed to his youngest son, Sir John Stanley, who is now remembered as Mrs. Delany’s uncle, and when Sir John Stanley was created a baronet by William the Third, he was described as of Grangegorman. But Sir John Stanley’s life was passed in England, where, through the influence of the Granvilles, he obtained various offices, and his principal connexion with Ireland was during the viceroyalty of the Duke of Shrewsbury, when he filled the office of chief secretary.

In a letter to Swift, who regarded him with no less love than esteem, he writes as one who was an utter stranger to the country, and says that it is “the most eating, drinking, wrangling, and quarrelsome one that ever he saw.”

In the early part of the 18th century Grangegorman became the residence of Sir John Stanley’s nephew, Charles Monck, who married a granddaughter of Sir John Stephens of Finglas, and through her became possessed of Charleville, in the county of Wicklow. At the time of his death, in 1751, the northern part of the parish of Grangegorman had few, if any, houses upon it, and probably one of the earliest to be erected was the Female Orphan House, which was built in the opening years of the 19th century.

To Chapter 9. Ball Index. Home.