Bachelors Way, looking down to Middle Abbey Street and the Oval (Picture credit - Eve Andersson)
A dingy but practical little lane that links Bachelors Walk (entrance just beside the Bachelor Inn pub) on the quays and Middle Abbey Street (entrance between Supermacs and Book Worms).
According to some maps, it used to be called Williams Lane. Confusing as there still is a Williams Lane a stone throws away. Other map mark it as Willams Row.
It is by Williams Row that the lane gets a fleeting mention in Joyce’s Ulysses (1922):
‘Mr Dedalus, tugging a long moustache, came round from Williams’s row. He halted near his daughter.’
Bachelors Way. Bachelors Inn to the left (Photo credit - Eve Andersson)
Tracing the history of the lane through maps:
1848, Williams Lane.
1907, Williams Row
2011, Bachelors Way
Not a particularly picturesque lane, I reckon most people today associate it as a public toilet and a place where junkies occasionally loiter.
Bachelors Way, looking down from Middle Abbey Street. (Photo credit - Ester Esther Moliné)
Click on the book for more.
Click on the book for more.
Donal
Ciarán
Sam
Come Here To Me! 
In a classic piece of Irishness the name sign on the mews lane behind Beresford Place, D1, has two different spellings at each end – “Frenchman’s Lane” at the Gardiner Street end and “Frenchmen’s Lane” at the Store Street end (^_^)
Used to use that lane to cut through for the cinema on Abbey street, you could then meet another lane in abbey street I think and cutting through shops and lanes end up in Henry street. Not sure if my geography is right though.
i used to go down that lane. I was not sure if I would make it through to the other end, it used to be scary.
I’m actually glad to have read this. I don’t think it’s an alley I’d want to wander down alone, and mistakenly might have. Good to know.
I have fond memories of this lane from the ’50’s. I was a cop in Dublin then. There was a back entrance to the Green Rooster restaurant from there. Many is the cold, damp night I slipped into its kitchen for a warming bowl of soup and a chat.
it was also the back entrance to the cosmo snooker hall