Come Here To Me!

The last days of O’Devaney Gardens (Image Copyright: Peter O’Doherty)

This year, there was considerable political debate in the capital on housing, much of it centered around O’Devaney Gardens and the question of private and public land. A new photobook explores the final years of the flats, through the lens of photographer Peter O’Doherty, and is an important piece of social history in its own right.

O’Devaney Gardens dated from the 1950s, named in honour of Bishop Conor O’Devaney, martyred in 1612. Media reports on the opening of the flats were more concerned with the historic tales of Bishop O’Devaney than the state of the new housing schemes. Many of those moved into the new scheme came from Dominick Street in the inner-city.

Irish Independent, 1955.

Dominick Street, readers of the Sunday Independent were informed, was now “the street that died.” “As the people moved out, Corporation workmen moved in. Doors and windows were bricked up and the old Georgian houses made ready for the demolition squads. When will life return to Dominick Street?” In time, the decline of O’Devaney Gardens was the subject of much media comment.

Last year, Peter O’Doherty published the brilliant ‘Voices From The Flats: O’Devaney Gardens’. It is a fine piece of oral history work, interviewing those for whom the ‘Long Balconies’ were home. Importantly, O’Doherty’s work does not dwell on the negative – and there were things that went wrong – but also captures much of community.

Some of O’Doherty’s documentary photography of the site is now captured within the self-published O’Devaney Gardens, available from The Library Project in Temple Bar and other stockists. It is a moment in time, brilliantly captured, and deserves a wide audience.

O’Devaney Gardens (Image Copyright: Peter O’Doherty)