A lovely series of lanes just off O’Connell Street.
Today it looks like this:
As you can see O’Connell Street, Cathedral St., Thomas Lane and Cathal Brugha St. form a sort of rectangle. This was not always the case.
This map from 1907 shows that Cathal Brugha St. is a relatively newly laid out street and that before that Findlater Place used to connect with O’Connell Street. On the other hand, Cathederal St. and Thomas Lane remain unchanged.
Findlater Place was known as Greggs Lane (until 1881) as this map from 1848 shows:
Looks the same going back to 1818:
How did Elephant Lane get its unusual name? Frank Hopkins, in the ever wonderful Rare old Dublin: heroes, hawkers & hoors (Dublin, 2002) speculates:
Elephant Lane became Tyrone Place in 1870 before being renamed as Cathedral St. in 1900. The view from O’Connell Street today:
One view of relatively ugly Thomas Lane:
“Cathal Brugha St. is a relatively newly laid out street and that before that Findlater Place used to connect with O’Connell Street”
A consequence of the Civil War? That whole stretch of O’Connell St was intensively shelled by the Free State, firing artillery over open sights from the corner of Henry St. Maybe whenever it was being rebuilt, Cathal Brugha St was laid out at that stage? Liz Gillis’ “The Fall of Dublin” has Brugha coming out of the back of the Granville Hotel (marked on the 1907 map) then getting shot as he ran up Thomas Lane
I reckon that was the case. Hopefully someone with more knowledge of the history of the Dublin street planning/architecture may be able to give us more details.
Has the story of the elephant got anything to do with the fact there is an Elephant over Elverys shop door?
My great-grandmother, Elizabeth French, was born there – 7 Elephant Lane, Dublin, in the early 1860s
My fourth great grandmother Margaret Keating ran a boarding house at 3 Gregg’s Lane in the 1850’s. Later records show her address as 5 Findlater Place. Would this be the same physical location, do you know? Or would it be next door? Do you know if there are any photographs of this location before everything changed in the war?
Sorry for all the questions. You seem really knowledgeable about the area and I’m very curious because it looks like none of it is still there.
to Becca: My great grandfather John Walker may have been born at 3 Greggs Lane in 1858. Haven’t quite confirmed, as he claimed to have been born in Ferrybanks, Waterford.