Hanlon’s Corner marker (Luke Fallon)
Dublin’s thriving cattle market is recalled well into the recent history of the city. In his excellent memoir Another Country: Growing Up in 50’s Ireland, Gene Kerrigan wrote:
The cattle were tended by cowboys on bicycles, men with overcoats and hats, furiously pedaling this way and that, whacking the cattle with their sticks and shouting at them, the bewildered beasts leaving heaps of shit on the road as souvenirs of their passage.
There had been a cattle market in Smithfield since the late seventeenth century, and the sight of cattle being moved through the local streets was a common one, with one nineteenth century publication talking of how “droves of cattle are constantly pushed through the streets to a marketplace called by the somewhat grandiloquent name of Smithfield.”
Work on the development of a new Cattle Market in the Aughrim Street/Prussia Street area commenced in February 1863 and it was officially opened in November of that same year. It became a hive of activity, and from here animals would be driven through the streets of the capital to boats moored along the North Wall. As Joseph V. O’Brien noted, there were moments of “mass excitement and general merriment” on occasions when animals should make a break for it, citing one bull who made it a fine distance, “”reaching Kingsbridge Station and following the railway tracks to Inchicore, stopping only when it charged head on into a train at Ballyfermot bridge, all the while being pursued by mounted constables and sundry citizens.”
Today, two historic plaques in the area mark what was once an enormous local employer. One, affixed to the side of the City Arms public house, appears to be the original marker of the market:
City Arms public house plaque,marking the opening of a market in November 1863 (Luke Fallon)
The rise and demise of the market is well documented in Bernard Neary’s recent local history study, Dublin 7, where he notes that “during the 1920s it was the busiest of its kind in Europe; throughput in one year numbered nearly three-quarters of a million animals”. In spite of this, the following decades were difficult:
During the late 1960s business at the markets started to decline as railway cattle-wagons were replaced by road-transport vehicles and provincial markets grew. The prominence enjoyed by the Dublin Cattle Market in the meat industry began to decline and finally in the early 1970s it ceased operations. However, the death-blow that the closure was forecast to bring to the area, known locally as Cowtown, never materialised.
Much of the site of the market is now occupied by the Drumalee housing estate. In addition to the two historic markers, another reminder of the history of the district is the naming of a nearby cafe, the Cowtown Cafe on the corner of Manor Street and Manor Place:
Cowtown (Luke Fallon)
Click on the book for more.
‘Cowboys on Bicycles.’ Class.
I remember the area as a young child. The cattle market was bounded by Prussia St, Augrim St and the North Circular. The abattoir was across the road on Blackhorse Ave. One of the oul’ fellas haulage contracts was removing lorry loads of paunches to be dumped. The smell….. I wandered up on the loading bay one day against orders. I pulled open a door just a littel to get a peek inside the abattoir. I was’nt exactly sure what went on in there except it involved cows and sheep. I’d see and hear them going in but never coming out.
When I peeked in a cow, in the dim busy light, was stepping in my direction. It stopped. It had big wide eyes looking straight at me and then bang! A figure in rubber boots and a long white blood streaked apron put a bolt through the cows brain. The animal collapsed on the wet floor instantly. I never got out of the truck again when told not to.
Not sure what “Drumalee” refers to (it was always “the Cattle Market” to us, even when humans replaced the cattle) but it could be a corruption of “Droim a’ Laoi” or, in English, “The Calf’s Back”.
As far as I remember Jim Larkin lived in NCR for a time and closing the Cattle Market was one of his plans for the city. He also wanted to create a public park in St. Anne’s, Clontarf. We used to see the cattle waiting to be collected from the top of the 10 bus on our way to the Zoo – 1950’s….
Honor O Brolchain
1950’s, cattle driven from the Cattle Market to the Boat along the NCR. Bulls out front with a personal minder. One a lively fellow made a bid for freedom and found refuge in a hallway of a house on Belvedere Place. A lot of head scratching among the cattle men until a volunteer by the name of Messy Larking found a solution. He went to the rear of the house, gained access, armed himself with a door and managed to get the bull to exit by the front door where he was taken back into custody with a sound beating (to about the same level I received at school). I’m sure Messy scored a few pints on that story for years to come and I have enjoyed the memory of an amazing schoolboy adventure which I was so lucky to witness.
M
I remember Messy Larkin. A big lump of a man. He ended up with a burger van. He used to frequent the trotting track in Portmarnock when it belonged to Hughie Richardson.
Yes amateur boxer but had a colourful career.
I remember this very well from my childhood of the early ’70s when the market started winding down. The trucks dripping with cow shite, the smells of the diesel fumes and the sounds of the cattle. The market was a big field of stalls and barns, and some of the buildings had “Gavin Low” written in big white letters on the roof.
My grandparents – the Barretts – lived on Ellesmere Avenue, across the street.
My father was a drover from the midlands until the late 1950’s. Sometimes he travelled in the lorrys transporting the cattle to the mart. He stayed in the City Arms Hotel and I have vivid memories of the hearty breakfast/ mixed grill served. I was on occasion allowed to travel with him when he himself had lambs to sell at the mart in spring. I don’t know why I was allowed along being a girl, it was an environment for real men. I remember seeing cattle being driven down O’ Connell Street. Busses and the general public just seemed to accepted their presence and never complained, it was just part of daily life. With the increase in general traffic and transport, the Naas road dual carriageway, cattle marts were established around the country which led to the demise of the Dublin cattle mart.