Come Here To Me!

Dublin City Council have launched a new digital collection called Vanishing Dublin which show ‘features of Dublin that have disappeared or changed utterly during the second half of the twentieth century’.

Some of the change is welcome. Few will miss the deprivation of the tenements. Other images are portals into our civic past – we can imagine the workers from Stoneybatter harrying through Thundercut Alley on their way to work at Smithfield or children rummaging for ‘hidden treasure’ through the debris of George’s Pocket.

The photos also tell stories of communities now dispersed. The residents of the Gloucester Diamond and Chamber Street saw their communities transformed. What remains of where they lived is digitally preserved here for them and their descendants.

The gallery depicts a ‘vanishing’ rather than a ‘vanished’ Dublin – one that persists in the memories of those who walked its streets, worked in its shops, drank and sang in its pubs, and called it ‘home’.

 

Scriven's Alley Racquets Court, John's Lane East, Wood Quay (1950)

Merchants's Arch (1974)

Greene's Bookshop, Clare Street (1971)

Parnell Street (1987)

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Dublin lost one of its real characters this week with the passing of Peggy Keogh.

Born Margaret Keogh (nee Dowdall), of Cabra Road, she will be most remembered for selling Doctor Marten boots to a generation of Dubliners from her stall at the back of the Ilac Centre. For most of the 1970s and 1980s, Peggy Keogh’s stall was the only place in Dublin where you could get yer Docs.

Her great-grand mother started off selling second – hand clothes and furniture in the 1910s in the area where the Ilac Centre now stands.

Tributes have been pouring in on Boards.ie and Biker.ie

Peggy’s son, the actor Garret Keogh, was on Joe Duffy yesterday speaking about his mother’s life.

Her grand children have set up a facebook page in memory of her and are asking people to leave any recollections.

Peggy Keogh (1923 - 2010)

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