Reginald Street, The Coombe

The very pretty Reginald Street and Gray Street and their associated squares were built in 1880-1882 by the Dublin Artisan’s Dwelling Co. The company was established in 1876 and was chaired by one of the great Victorian philanthropists, Sir Edward Cecil Guinness. It went on to build over 3,600 dwellings around Dublin, which were intended to house the working class of Dublin. Initially, rental costs meant that they were only feasible for skilled labourers, although a (cursory) analysis of the 1911 Census shows that the majority employer of the residents was the brewing industry, so Guinness’ plan to house his workers appears to have worked out well.

Reginald Street

The small squares off the Reginald Street/Gray Street result in the whole forming a cruciform pattern. Houses in these squares are single storey and likely followed the typical three room plan; front door into the living room with a contained scullery leading out into the rear yard, and two bedrooms off to the side. Despite being a couple of minutes from a very busy Meath Street, the whole area exudes calm.

The Sacred Heart Statue at Reginald and Gray St was a fountain. The plaque reads: “Erected by the Parishioners of St Catherine’s to honour the glory of God and in commemoration of the centenary of the Emancipation 1929

The street names give plenty of notice that this was the Earl of Meath’s Liberty. Reginald Brabazon was the 12th Earl of Meath when the complex was built. No matter how much the romantic in me wishes that Reginald married a Gray, the street he intersects, this is not the case, and Gray Street is more likely to be named after Sir John Gray, the man responsible for bringing clean water supply to Dublin from the Vartry reservoir in the Wicklow mountains. Rather appropriately, the intersection of Reginald and Gray featured a fountain. This was replaced with a statue of the Sacred Heart in 1929, ostensibly to commemorate the centenary of Emancipation, although it can’t just be a coincidence that this is also the year of the death of Reginald, an arch-Unionist and Imperialist. Divine intervention couldn’t save the statue from collision with a lorry, and the current version was that restored to mark the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1975. More on the statue and the pope’s visit, including some attractive photos, are on the Built Dublin Site.

Reginald has the last laugh though. The eponymous street ends in Meath Terrace, and he is also remembered in three of the four squares in the complex: Brabazon Square, Reginald Square and Meath Square. For good measure, the eastern edge is flanked by Meath Street, and Earl Street is nearby. Vota vita mea

Notes

Christine Casey has more details on the Artisan’s Dwelling Co, including some sketches of typical houses and a floor plan of a bungalow, described above. Casey, C (2005) The Buildings of Dublin, Yale University Press

A Long Lane

Long Lane was longer

While it doesn’t make (as) much sense now, Long Lane was a very appropriate name for the street that ran from New Street/Clanbrassil St to Wexford St. Its length was originally 500 metres, but this was bisected by Bride St/Heytsbury St when that street was laid out in 1846.

Long Lane exists on Rocque’s map of 1760 and the plan of the city in 1797. This area was the Earl of Meath’s Liberty, and the most significant building on the street was the Meath Hospital. This was built on the south side of Long Lane in 1821, moving from its earlier location in The Coombe (the portico of the original building still stands in The Coombe). The hospital was built on what Rocque’s map calls “Naboth’s Vineyards”, which had been bought by Dean Swift in 1722 (it was also called Dean’s Vineyards). Writing in 2008, Walsh states that the wall between the hospital and Long Lane includes sections built by Dean Swift.

The site was purchased from him after a donation of £6000 from Thomas Pleasants, whose money went to build the new hospital. He did not live to see the hospital opened. Money had been sought from the Duke of Leinster and Lord Powerscourt, but in the end Pleasants was the main benefactor. He was rewarded with a street in his own name nearby.

The northern side of Long Lane had on the early maps a Cabbage Garden marked on an area of about two acres. This included the site of the current DIT building on Kevin St., and my own office. Strangely, the recording of brassicas at this site continued onto the early Ordnance Survey map, which seems rather quaint. After its bisection by Bride St., the eastern end of Long Lane initially retained its original name. Buildings here included St Sepulchre’s Marshalsea, now the site of a modern apartment complex, and of course St Kevin’s Church, now a ruin. However, by the end of the century, the eastern end of the lane had been renamed Camden Row. The cabbage gardens were also gone by this stage; replaced by saw mills. The Earl of Meath’s legacy is still visible in a row of houses on the remaining section of Long Lane known as Meathville Terrace.

Notes:

• Peter Gatenby (2005) The Meath Hospital, Dublin, Dublin Historical Record, 58(2), 122-128.
• David Mitchell (1989) A Medical Corner of Dublin (1711 to 1889), Dublin Historical Record, 42(8), 86-93.
• Dave Walsh, The Ghosts of Archbishop Marsh, Swift and Stella, Dublin Historical Record, 61(2), 194-196.

 

 

Crooked Staff now Ardee Street

Brewer’s House, looking south down Ardee St

The Brewer’s House on Ardee St still stands despite all around it descending into chaos. To the west and north, new apartment complexes with pint-sized sitting rooms and now-vacant office blocks were thrown up in the boom. To the south and east, the brownfield remains of the Newmarket Square complex, where rebuilding in the 1990s has, in the words of Christine Casey, “if anything worsened matters than what was there before”. Still the house stands tall, even if one side of it has plastic sheets dangling from it, protecting the chimney stack of its old next door neighbour, ripped away by St Luke’s Avenue, the extension to Cork St. The house and ruined buildings to the rear are the legacy of what was one of Ireland’s oldest breweries: Watkins.

Watkins’ Brewery

Watkins’ Brewery dates from the early eighteenth century, and along with Jameson Pim & Co probably pre-dates their more famous neighbour at St. James’ Gate. The brewery was located on Lord Meath’s estate; who is still remembered by some street names: Brabazon Place off Newmarket Square, at the rear of the site, Meath St nearby and of course Ardee St itself. Watkins were particularly well known for their XX Stout and their porter; eagle-eyed among you will spot an advertisement for Watkins’ Extra Stout in this image from the National Library of Ireland. But the continuing rise and rise of Guinness meant that the competition steadily closed down. In 1904 Watkins merged with Jameson Pim & Co, and by 1937, the company intended to go into voluntary liquidation. It must have been a hard decision for Alfred E Darley, descendant of Joseph Watkins, to end his family’s business. That the company lasted this long is a testament to its success in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the company had a profitable export business. What happened after closure is unclear to me. In 1943 The Irish Times carried an article about a High Court order allowing Dublin Corporation access to the basement of the premises, still owned by the company. The basement had been designated by the Corporation as an Air Raid Shelter, and the company were refusing access.

Old and new signs for Watkins’ Buildings

On the north side of the intersection with Cork St., there are a row of cottages known as Watkins’ Buildings, which were built by the company to house workers locally. Casey describes them thus: “rows of attractive artisan dwellings in brown and red brick of c. 1880.” These houses therefore were built in a similar period, if not slightly earlier, thank those built on Bride St and St Patrick’s by the Guinness Trust.

Watkins Buildings (Informatique on Flickr)

The Eighteenth Century: Crooked Staff

Booter Park (Lawlor, 1931)

A map of the site where Watkins’ buildings are now located exists. Drawn in 1749, it is called Booter Park (Lawlor, 1931) and was bound by the Coombe to the north, Ardee St to the west and “bounded towards the East and the South upon the lands now in the tenure of the Right Hon Henry the Earle of Meath”, according to a document from 1669. The Coombe is visible in the bottom left (north-east) of the map. This was the heart of the Earl of Meath’s “Liberty”, which was a fashionable quarter during the eighteenth century. The Earl of Meath had a townhouse, Ardee House, located near the Coombe Hospital. The name Ardee itself comes from the fact that the Sir Edward Brabazon was elevated to the Peerage of Ireland by King James I as Baron Ardee in 1616. He established Killruddery at Bray soon afterwards. Edward’s son was subsequently elevated again by King Charles I as Earl of Meath in 1627. The patchwork of land ownership in this area is clear from a map setting out the plan for Newmarket itself (Frazer, no date), which distinguishes between “Earle’s Land” and “Church Land”.

Both of these maps show that Ardee Street originally had the name is “Crooked Staff” (you have to read Staff twice to check you don’t read Street). I wonder if this name comes from the area’s proximity to St Patrick’s Cathedral, whose Dean owned the land. Looking at Rocque’s map from a decade later, it’s clear that the street has a kink in it right about where the present-day Cork St intersects it.

Plaque commemorating 1916 site

Regular readers of this blog (I always wanted to say that) will know that I like to connect a plaque with the street being discussed. The Irish Times reported in October 1949 that in a ceremony presided over by W. T. Cosgrave, four plaques were unveiled on buildings

occupied by volunteers during the rising of 1916. The buildings were South Dublin Union, Roe’s Distellery, Marrowbone Lane distillery and Watkins brewery. The plaques bear the inscription: “This building was occupied by Volunteers of the 4th Batallion, Dublin Brigade, Irish Volunteers, against British forces, during Easter Week, 1916. Commanding officer for the area of occupation: Commandant Eamonn Ceannt.”

Watkins’ Brewery itself was occupied by Captain Con Colbert, but on the Tuesday evening of Easter Week, Colbert took his his company to join those at the Jameson Distillery site on Marrowbone Lane (National Library of Ireland). The plaque no longer exists on The Brewer’s House that I can see.

What now?

Plan for Cork St/Ardee St (“The Brewer’s Block”) From Archiseek – click image to go to discussion post.

Three of the four corners of the crossroads between Ardee St and Cork St were redeveloped during the boom. A model of what was planned for the fourth corner, incorporating the Brewer’s House and the site still exists. Although it will probably be a few years before we go as mad again, it is interesting to look at what might have been the final piece of the jigsaw.

References

Ardee St (2014) using Google Maps’ swish new 45 degree viewing option

• Christine Casey, 2005, The Buildings of Dublin, Yale University Press
• William Frazer, Newmarket and Weavers’ Square, Dublin City Council Heritage and Conservation Booklet, Link to PDF (2.4 MB).
• H. J. Lawlor (1931) Booter Park, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Seventh Series, 1(2), 151-155.
• National Library of Ireland, The Main Sites of Activity During the Rising, online exhibition, Link to PDF (843 kB)