Dublin’s Circular Roads – 5

Phibsborough to the Phoeno.

Heading west from Phibsborough, we keep left at St. Peter’s Church. This was built piecemeal from the 1830s as Catholicism asserted itself in post Emancipation Dublin. The present grand gothic structure incorporates the original Catholic school, betrayed by its more fortress like design. The imposing tower, rising two hundred feet, brought the project to fruition in 1910. The splendour of the interior is enhanced by the stained glass windows, including a Harry Clarke from 1919. From here, the North Circular takes on a more salubrious appearance. The street is tree lined and this lazy Sunday afternoon the dappled light grants the illusion of passing through a painting. It is an elegant, if shabby genteel, avenue from here to the Phoenix Park.

I’m just a Cowboy, lonesome on the trail,

Lord, I’m just thinking about a certain female.

Further on, we cross the railway track, laid in the late 1840s connecting Broadstone Station nearer the city with Galway and Sligo out in the wild west. The railway conveyed people and cattle from country to capital (and beyond) for ninety years. Few of either species made the return journey. Inevitably the well grew dry and the railway went into decline. The line closed in 1937, Broadstone station, a neo-Egyptian Victorian pile, remaining as offices and depot for CIE, the transport authority. Eighty years on, the cross-city Luas tramway at last came into being, and this portion of rail line is once more in use.   

To the south is the extensive area of Grangegorman. This was a manor estate during the middle ages with extensive orchards. Dublin city has crept around it but oddly not through it. Grangegorman remains as a large undeveloped slice of the crowded capital. The population of Dublin’s dowdy westside was largely poor and so the area was seen as suitable for siting a variety of the more sombre Victorian institutions. A House of Industry, basically a poorhouse, was established here and around this sprouted the Richmond Lunatic Asylum, the Richmond Hospital and a penitentiary. The area persisted under this cautionary cloud until recently. St Brendan’s Psychiatric Hospital, the largest such facility in Ireland closed its doors in 2013 after nearly two centuries. Major development is underway, incorporating a campus for DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology, or Didn’t get Into Trinity as the joke goes).

Oxmantown and Stoneybatter were other ancient settlements beyond the city walls. How ancient you can tell by the fact that Oxmantown rejoices in a weirdly Viking nomenclature.  A cluster of streets with such names as King Citric, St Olaf and more, hint that this was once the haunt of the Dane. Oxmen denotes East-men, which relative to these latitudes is from whence they came.

For all the Nordic associations, the area’s one mention in song is more Mediterranean.

I’ve wandered north and I’ve wandered south,

Through Stoneybatter and Patrick’s Close,

Up and around by the Gloucester Diamond,

Back by Napper Tandy’s House.

The song is The Spanish Lady and it’s sung by the usual suspects. There’s a touch of the salacious in the places namechecked. The Gloucester Diamond was in Monto, the notorious red-light district back east beyond Summerhill. Stoneybatter has always been edgy in name and nature. Whack for the too-rye, too-rye, lady – indeed. As for Napper Tandy’s house, this was hardly a fixed abode, the eighteenth century revolutionary being inclined to change address a lot to evade the authorities. He was eventually run to ground in Hamburg, taken back to Ireland and sentenced to be hanged. However, at the intervention of Napoleon, he was allowed flee to France, and died in Bordeaux in 1803. 

A detour at Prussia Street, along Manor Street takes us to Stoneybatter. This is a bilingual stew of the original Irish: Bothar na gcloigh. This means Road of Stones, mangled over time to become Stoney-Batter. The irish word for road, bothar, also tells a tale. It literally means cow-path

When I was a cowboy out on the western plain

I made a half a million, working on the bridle reins

Come a cow-cow, yicky come a cow-cow, yicky, yicky, yea!

The area is also known as Cowtown, the Dublin City Cattle Market being held here for over a century until 1973. I fancy there’s a wild west ambience here, if you just squint your eyes, suck on yer cigarillo and tie your horse to the sidewalk rail. Saloon of choice for me is the Glimmer Man. Full of quirks, niches and western charm, there’s a good yard at the back to spark a lucifer and wallow in the ambient gloom of an Irish pub.

The glimmerman of old was a dreaded functionary of the Gas Company in the Emergency years. He could check if the gas was being abused in defiance of wartime rationing. The prevalence, indeed the existence, of this ogre is probably greatly exagerrated in Dublin legend. The reference has expanded to include all types of unwelcome bureaucratic intrusion. Listen to the Radiators sing:

Rattled by the glimmer man, the boogie man, the holy man.

Living in the shadows, in the shadow of a gunman.

This particular oasis abounds in more moderate paraphernalia, from the Labour Party to Players Navy Cut and a suitably retro soundtrack. I’ll drink to that. I prefer to think of the more hopeful implications of the name. A glimmer of hope.

Leaving the Glimmer Man, we return to our circular path. The final section is sylvan and suburban as far as the Phoenix Park. The avenue, lined by elegant if well worn Victorian houses, stops at the park gates, but the vista culminates further on at the Wellington memorial. The giant obelisk, rising to over two hundred feet, is a notable landmark of the city. It was built in homage to the Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, after his success against Napoleon at Waterloo. Wellington is alleged to have disparaged his birthplace by saying that being born in a stable doesn’t make one a horse. The phrase derives from Daniel O’Connell by way of lampooning the Duke’s pretensions. I imagine the thought must have crossed Wellesley’s mind once or twice, all the same.

Bringing the northern semi-circle of our odyssey to a close offers a few alternatives. Technically, the route descends via Infirmary Road to Parkgate Street, where a sharp right onto Conyngham Road takes us along the walls of the Park, above the Liffey valley to Islandbridge. Alternatively, a meander through this quadrant of the Park is very pleasant. The Phoeno is worth a section to itself, so I’ll leave that for another day. I’ll finish with Philo:

Roll me over and turn me around,

let me keep a-spinning till I hit the ground.

Roll me over and set me free,

the cowboy’s life is the life for me.

Dublin’s Circular Roads – 3

From the Five Lamps to Mountjoy   

Crossing Amiens Street

When we’ve finished hanging around the Five Lamps we head north by northwest along Portland Row. The route picks up some of that ol’ Georgian charm, much tarnished now by urban grime and shifts in demographic fortune. At Summerhill, we intersect with the well-worn artery connecting the city centre with Ballybough, further out to the north. This is Poor Town in Irish. Some other names in the vicinity are more optimistic: Mountjoy, Summerhill. But the feeling of Poor Town is all pervasive.

Summerhill

I recall sitting in a car in Ballybough back in the early nineties, waiting for a girl that worked with us. My companion says to me, apropos a dog balanced on three legs by a lamppost: “See that dog? That’s Tony Gregory’s brother’s dog.”

I’m working at Industrial etching on East Wall Road, smoking Players Navy Cut, sweaty and stubbled, jeans and skin stained with acid. Yet, if I were to scratch that mutt behind the ears, that would establish five degrees of separation between me and the apex of power. Me, the dog, Tony Gregory’s Brother, Tony Gregory and Taoiseach Charles J. Haughey. Tony was the eponymous focus of the Gregory deal in 1982, wherein, by guaranteeing support for Haughey’s Fianna Fail government, Ballybough would be guaranteed a tranche of funds. Hey, look at the place now!    

These are the approaches to Croke Park, headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association. The GAA, founded in 1884, fostered a notion of Gaelic sport as a distinct entity. The codification of team sports was a recent phenomenon. Gaelic Football codified the traditional line of football as played here. Fielding (catching) was a feature, a high degree of physicality was allowed along with limited ball carrying, though kicking remained paramount. There was no offside, resulting in an allover hectic game. 

Hurling is akin to hockey, but more physical and expansive. The ball may be caught and carried and propelled aerially. The Scottish version, Shinty, is more earthbound but offers a slight international angle. Burly Australian Rules gives Gaelic Football an international outlet in Compromise Rules. Its success is debatable, but there are some good punch-ups so we won’t give up on it yet.

On match days approach roads become rivers of humanity in high flood. The huge stadium is masked by red brick houses. It’s an impressive confection when it reveals itself. Madeover at the turn of the century, it holds eighty two thousand and is the third largest sports stadium in Europe. All Ireland finals are hosted in September. The Dubs, at time of writing, have just won their third football title in a row. The Cats of Kilkenny have been lords of hurling for an age, though fading now. Galway are current champs.

There are tours of the stadium, encompassing the history of the GAA and an impressive sky walk where Dublin is spread at your feet. The history is deeply entwined with the Nation’s. During the War of Independence, Croke Park was the setting for Bloody Sunday, November 1920.  Following Michael Collins’s strike against Castle spies, the Cairo Gang, British Auxiliary forces and RIC attacked killing two players and twelve spectators including women and children.  Another massacre almost fifty years later would also claim the title Bloody Sunday. The British Army killing of thirteen civilians in Derry in 1969 informed U2’s song. Bono’s intent is stringently non-violent though.

I can’t believe the news today

I can’t close my eyes and make it go away

How long, how long must we sing this song?

I’m more inclined to visit Croke Park for the music. I once walked all the way from Crumlin with several hundred to see Thin Lizzy play a free concert, footing the bill for Dickie Rock. I’ve swam the streets with the rivers of thousands to hear U2, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Bruce Springsteen pound it out under floodlights and soaring stands.

Red Hot Cilli Peppers at Croker

Soft spoken with a broken jaw

step outside but not to brawl

Autumn’s sweet we call it fall

I’ll make it to the moon if I have to crawl

Crossing Summerhill we step onto the North CIrcular Road proper. Despite the occasional rivers of people this is no paradise for winers and diners. Casting around, I notice the Brendan Behan Pub. Once the Sunset, scene of a notorious gangland murder, local family, the Gannons, have given it a once-over and a new name. No chance that Brendan ever popped into his eponymous pub, but it’s pretty certain he would have had it been there in his day. The Hogan Stand is further on, and the BigTree, at the junction of Dorset Street, is a renowned rumbustious meeting spot for Culchie and Jackeen alike.

Crossing Dorset Street

Mountjoy gives its name to the surrounding area. You can see the edge of Mountjoy Square from the North Circular. Mountjoy is the only Georgian Square that is actually square. The land was developed in the late eighteenth century by Luke Gardiner, Viscount Mountjoy, a banker, developer and MP (all the things we so admire these days). When completed in around 1818, it was considered the acme of the new suburban style. The great and the good could escape the cramped conditions of the teeming medieval city, for life in a Rationalist paradise. Dublin’s urban development was at the cutting edge for the times: long straight boulevards, rectangular sylvan squares.

By the end of the nineteenth century the district had gone downmarket. Sean O’Casey drew heavily on the atmosphere of Mountjoy in his plays Juno and the Paycock and The Plough and the Stars.     

Benedict Gardens

By the twentieth century northside Georgian Dublin was in decline, the fashion for suburban development leeching the life out of the inner city.  Mountjoy Square was half demolished by the nineteen sixties. The situation was halted and reversed as Dubliners acquired more appreciation of their architectural heritage. Thanks to the work of the Georgian Society, founded in 1966, and activists like David Norris, Ireland’s stateliest Homo himself, Georgian Dublin reasserted itself as a defining factor of the city. Although there is a danger this is becoming a little too precious, it is a vast improvement on the near bombsite landscape of Dublin’s sixties and seventies development.

A hungry feeling came o’er me stealing

and the mice were squealing

in my prison cell

Mountjoy Prison is sandwiched between the North Circular and the Canal. Referred to by residents and potential clients with some irony as ‘The Joy’. Built in 1850, it originally accommodated prisoners bound for Van Dieman’s Land. Such had been the condition of Ireland in the Famine years that they might have been considered the lucky ones. Built in the style of Britain’s Pentonville, it became Ireland’s largest prison, adopting a bleak, isolationist regime. Forty six prisoners were exectued before the abolition of the death penalty. Kevin Barry is perhaps the best known. He was hanged in 1920, aged eighteen, during the Irish War of Independence.

And the Auld Triangle

Goes jingle jangle

All along the banks of the Royal Canal

Famous residents include Brendan Behan, who was born nearby in 1923 and incarcerated during the Troubles as an IRA member. He was released in 1946. His play, The Quare Fellow, from 1954, is  set in the prison, taking place on the day leading up to the execution of an inmate. It evokes a strong stance against capital punishment. The last hanging in Ireland happened the same year. Behan himself was overfond of the Drop and his waxing artistic success was offset by declining health. He died aged only forty one in 1964, the year capital punishment was abolished. Still, his ghost can be heard whistling softly hereabouts.

Scar tissue that I wish you saw

sarcastic Mister know it all

close your eyes and I’ll kiss you cause

With the birds I’ll share this lonely view

Dublin’s Circular Roads – 2

From Spencer Dock to the Five Lamps.

Heading north on Guild Street, the Royal Canal to our right seeps towards the Liffey. A new city, linear and rational is being stamped over the old North Wall docklands. That’s the feeling crossing Mayor Street where the Luas Red Line takes passengers arrow straight from Connolly Station to the Point Village. The Point Depot at the eastern end of the Docks is the major venue for indoor concerts. I saw Bob Dylan there some years back. A man with a hat playing piano. I could have spent the evening out in the real world, where the Liffey melts into the sea. I could have sat contentedly and watched the river flow, the memory of Bob’s music stronger in my blood.

At Ferryman’s Crossing, a rusty reminder of the old days rises in the form of a decrepit crane. The old docklands peep through, first the palimpsest, then the ancient script itself. It’s still being written. Often the same old story. Sheriff Street runs parallel to the quays but remains remote from the modern narrative there. The area has a rough inner city reputation.

The Church of St. Laurence O’Toole marks the start of Seville Place. It was built in the Famine years and opened in 1850. Along Seville Place, the grandly named First to Fourth Avenues suggest New York. In fact, these are short, cottage lined cul de sacs. Under the railway bridge we reach Amiens Street.

This street provides Dublin’s main transport and communications hubs. Connolly Station, topped by an ornate Italianate tower was opened in 1944 as Dublin station, later named Amiens Street. By 1853 it served the rail link to Belfast. Madigan’s Pub, on the main concourse, was a Mecca for thirsty travelers on long, dry, Good Friday. It is the most central of all bonafide pubs. You would need a train ticket to deserve a pint, of course; a small price to pay. Such quaint customs are now consigned to the slop tray of history, as Ireland’s Good Friday prohibition has been lifted.

A little further off track, Bus Aras, nearer the river, was an early modernist pile. Designed by Michael Scott and completed in 1955, from here you can take a bus to anywhere in Ireland, or all the way to London. Bus Aras and Connolly combine to form a startling urban portal, full of the contrasts of history and architecture. At just the right spot, the panorama includes Victorian Connolly Station, Georgian Custom House, the International Financial Services Centre and the Ulster Bank HQ across the river.

The area is rich in memories from when I worked in Sheriff Street Sorting Office beside Connolly back in the day. This is Ireland’s main sorting office with a constant flow of post by day and by night. Working shift meant being on the Gravy train, one week in three doing all-nighters. Maintenance involved clearing blockages on the various belts and chutes forming the working innards of the building. A blockage was often a good excuse for shop floor workers to decamp to a nearby early opener for a pint. So, having cleared the blockage I’d have to hike off to the North Star or Grainger’s and clear the bar. Later, at dawn, a smoke break on the roof gave a view across the waking city to the mountains beyond.

… back then when everything seemed possible, even there in the Sorting Office, in the bowels of that clanking beast, amongst the trolls and elves of the workaday world. We’d climb onto the high gantry and up the fixed ladder to the roof, Alex, the Bishop and I. We were kings of the world up there, with Dublin spread out beneath us, above us only a rippling sky. (from Kings on the Roof by Shane Harrison)

At more civilised hours we could repair to Cleary’s pub, beneath the bridge, shuddering under the weight of passing trains. Old style boozer of dark wood, sparse light on glinting glasses being raised at the long bar. One more toast before boarding the Gravy Train. Last wet my whistle here with Davin, on our way with to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers at Croke Park farther north.

Monto, bordered by Amiens Street and Talbot Street, was the name of the area in Victorian days. This was Dublin’s red light district until cleaned up by the authorities after Irish Independence. In James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, the area appears as Nighttown, where Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus visit a brothel. Joyce has a nearby street names after him. You can hear his ghost whistle there, maybe catch his silhouette, some foggy night.

The area lives on in song and ribaldry. George Hodnett imagined it for us in his song Monto, immortalised by the Dubliners. The first line name-checks Ringsend, south east in the saltier part of Dublin 4. 

If you’ve got a wing-o, take her up to Ring-o

Where the waxies sing-o, All the day.

If you’ve had your fill of porter, and you can’t go any further

Give your man the order: Back to the quays!

And take her up to Monto, Monto, Monto,

Take her up to Monto, langer-oo! To you!

At the junction of Seville Place and Amiens Street, we’re back on track. Heading North by Northwest is Portland Row, leading to the North Circular proper. Amidst the grimy urban bustle sits the landmark of the Five Lamps, delicate and redolent of a bygone age. It sits on a junction of five streets. Again weirdly suggestive of Old New York’s Five Points, notorious focus for Irish gangs in the mid nineteenth century. The eponymous, though fictional, Dublin gang appear in Bob Geldof’s Rat Trap: 

Just pass the Gasworks, by the meat factory door

the Five Lamp Boys were coming on strong.

Rat Trap is practically the theme song for The Boomtown Rats. Alive with eastside docklands imagery, still it chimes with many listener’s folk memory, namechecking Top of the Pops, the universal Italian cafe and signs that say: walk, don’t walk. Geldof was an alumnus of the International Meat Packers south of the river, near the old gasworks and near our journey’s end. I take it the Five Lamp boys were out of area. Looking for a pint perhaps.

The Five Lamps structure itself was erected with a drinking fountain for the area’s poor. Besides providing potable water the fountain was also intended as an encouragement for sobriety. That was back in 1880. They survived the German bombing of the adjacent North Strand in May 1941. Three hundred houses were destroyed and twenty eight people died. Almost eighty years on the area struggles against less fatal if more persistent misfortune.

There’s screaming and crying in the high rise blocks,

It’s a rat trap Billy but you’re already caught.

The high density housing hereabouts doesn’t actually soar but makes for a queasily crowded environment. It’s time to push on. We’re one kilometer into our epic, only thirteen to go.