1989 doesn’t seem so long ago. But reading the Dublin Insight Guide first published that year gives an Insight into a whole different city, pre-boom, pre-bust. With segments on “Local Heroes,” “Street Characters” and “Games People Play,” it sculpts a city very different to the one we live in today. The guide places a lot of emphasis on the twee side of Dublin, with pictures of old men in pubs, (anyone guess the one featured on the cover? Mulligans maybe?) horse drawn carts and street life. I’ve scanned and uploaded some of the better images, unfortunately the book spread a lot over two pages that wouldn’t scan correctly.
A great snap below, taking in the city from the South East. Long before the Marlborough Street Bridge was even thought of, notice the Odeon Cinema on Eden Quay and the lack of the Sean O’Casey pedestrian bridge.
The below snap comes from a section in the book called “Street Credibility” and looks like a game of handball although it just locates it as “a central Dublin Street.” It looks like the corner of Temple Bar at the back of Central Bank… again, Any ideas? Alongside the picture is a piece dealing matter-of-factually with Dublin beggars, saying “a slightly dilapidated third world capital, almost Asian in its colour, clutter and confusion, and unfortunately poverty. Many tourists are shocked to find Dublin is a city of beggars, many of them are members of Ireland’s traveling community- tinkers, itinerants or travelers as they are known, who number about 16, 000 in all.”
The top of Grafton Street below, with Robert Rice’s on the left and the Gaiety on the right. A stalwart of the Gaiety gets a mention in actor Micháel Mac Liammóir, quoting a time when, in full costume, he was sitting having a pint in Neary’s on Chatham Street. In full wig and make- up, and chatting to the barman, a disgruntled Dubliner bawled across at them “ah why don’t the two of ye get a divorce?” To which Mac Liammór replied “we can’t dear, we’re Catholics.”
Horses also get plenty of mention, both racing and workhorses, claiming “an interest, sometimes an obsession with horses has long been shared by members of all classes of Dublin society.”
In a two page article on Dublin’s bookshops, the below is captioned “Queuing for school texts in Greene’s.” Other stores of note that they mention to have disappeared are The Alchemists Head, (East Essex Street, “dealing with the supernatural, the occult and science fiction,”) and Zee Books (Duke Street, “a quiet basement place strong on second hand, arty and left-wing works.”)
“The state of the Irish economy is desperate, but doesn’t always seem serious… the summer festivals in every town, dedicated to various unlikely subjects, produce prodigious feats of drinking and dissipation.”
The book goes into great detail about Dublin’s street characters. Bang Bang, the Yupper and Brien O’Brien, as does the famous author and character, Pat Ingoldsby below. Apparently the red bandana was a part of an outfit “”sixties-in-aspic, denim flowered and beaded.” A little bit different to now then.
“Shopkeeper from Dublin’s closely knit Italian Community,” the below looks like it could be somewhere down around Smithfield. The book gives over quite a bit to market traders, hawking everything from fish to wrapping paper, and describes “the Dublin saunter” where people would “go to town on a Saturday afternoon with nothing more definite in mind that to stroll around, window shop and to share a drink or coffee with one of those friends you meet by chance on the street.”
The “travel tips” section at the back has some gems too, covering aspects of daily life in the city, giving food recommendations “under £8 -over £18,” and hotel recommendations “under £10 – over £100.” Some of the names have survived, many have not.
Thanks to Rose Murray for the book!
I spent about 9 days just walking around Dublin last year – and near the end of that period I was walking towards Trinity from the O’Connell Street bridge when I had to stop and turn and just take in the view for a while. I had just passed a young boy coming up to his father at a storefront. As they talked with each other, I had a flashback to walking the same street back in 1981 – and just had to marvel at how much had changed while staying so much the same. In 1981, I encountered that flood of beggars including children on the bridge taking their earnings to their father on a stool in the nearest pub. Amazing changes.
What a sight – this was the first book I bought about Dublin (in its green-coloured German edition) to reward myself for having sort of scraped past mathematics in my school leaving exam in Minden, Germany, in 1993. However, what had kick-started my interest in the city was, however, Brendan Lehane’s TimeLife pictorial of Dublin, which was even older and which I borrowed from time to time from our library in the late 80s and early nineties. A totally different world from what I saw on my fisrt visit in 1999, during my time as an ECTS student in Maynooth in 2002 and during more recent visits Many things have changed, but some places still feel a bit like in some of the pictures of those books … parts of Kevin St, the Coombe and the area between the Cathedrals and the Castle on an early Sunday morning…
Would like to take the opportunity to thank you for this blog and the work put into it. When I took my students over on a school trip, comeheretome provided excellent material. Thanks again and every good wish.
Great snaps. I think the boozer is Ryans of Parkgate st.
That last photo is Mary’s Lane. Fruit and Veg place now. Good blog!
Photos are fabulous.
Is the one of the Liffey an aerial shot? I first thought of the top of the Gasometer but the angle is wrong.
Great shot of Pat Ingoldsby in his prime. Love Pat.
http://photopol.blogspot.ie/2011/05/just-pat.html
Yes, you can see the side of the Central Bank in that photo.
The ‘handball’ is at the corner of Cecilia Street and Temple Lane south. The background building was a warehouse (probably for clothing or tailors’ accessories, because what’s now Temple Bar was until development the heart of the rag trade). At the time of the photograph the building had become a kind of bazaar which housed a maze of secondhand shops. it later became Fat Freddy’s pizzeria. After that the interior was razed (although they salvaged the massive old timber beams). It was rebuilt as the apartment building now known as The Granary.
some good photos and info in comments above,i think the two lads on the carts was taken on college st.outside what used to be originally the side entrance to the Ulster bank[opp bank of Irl]now the the Hilton hotel
Finbarr is correct, the building in the ‘handball’ picture is now The Granary, my
home since 1995. And Fat Freddy’s had the best pizza in Dublin.