Come Here To Me!

I’ll be honest though I did know there was a lane beside Centra on D’Olier St, I didn’t know its name or quite how unique it was. Thanks to Pádraig Kelly and hXci for bringing my full attention to it.

Leinster Market is a small, covered lane that links D’Olier Street and Hawkins Street. It was described by in J.T. Gilbert in 1861 as a ‘quaint, narrow old passage, which has very little light even in its open parts, and at either end has to burrow under the first floors of houses that lie right across the way’.

D'Olier St. entrance to Leinster Market. (Photo credit - Matthew S.)

Hawkins St. entrance to Leinster Market. (Photo credit - Matthew S.)

Interior:

Inside view (Picture credit - Brian, Pix.ie)

In the unforgetably named ‘History of the City of Dublin: from the earliest accounts to the present time : containing its annals … to which are added, biographical notices of eminent men … ; in two volumes, illustrated with numerous plates, plans, and maps, Volume 2′ published in 1812:

Leinster Market has been erected within these few years in the vicinity of Carisle Bridge, and leads from Dolier Street to Hawkins Street, through the new buidlings. It is entered by a handsome iron gates, the passages are flagged, and the whole kept perfectly safe and clean. As yet but five of its stalls are occupied for the sale of meat.

On June 09 1953 Miss Bridget Greene an assistant at Skeffington’s confectioner shop in Leinster Market was held up by three youths. One of the gang ‘asked for ice cream’ while another ‘grabbed a mineral water bottle’ and struck her over the head with it ‘in an attempt to reach the till’. Though ‘stunned’, Miss Greene managed to set off a ‘special burglar alarm’ and the youths made off in the direction of Hawkins St. It was reported that this was the third occasion in the last three years in which attempts had been made to rob the till during the day.

On Nov 3 1969, cylinders of gas and drums of diesel oil exploded in a storage building in the alley off Leinster Market. The fire was put out in fifteen minutes.

In 1993, a bronze plaque, of an ‘old guy reading a rumpled up book’, was erected in the lane by the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl to celebrate the characters who use Leinster Market – ‘the gougers, the bus drivers going in for a smoke, and the people walking through’.

Plaque, Leinster Market. (c) Jay Carax

Leinster Market throughout history:

Leinster Market. Late 19th century?

Leinster Market. Early 20th century?

Mapping the lane’s history:

1836

1848

c1907

2011

Between Lower Bridge Street and Winetavern Street, four alleyways used to extend from Merchants Quay to Cook Street,  now only one, Skippers Alley, can be traced today in the modern landscape.

From 1798:

Lower Bridge St.

|Swan Alley| |Skippers Alley| |Chapel Yard| |Rosemary Lane|                 

Winetavern St.

1798

Things looked the same in the middle of the 19th century, though the Chapel Yard has been renamed Adam & Eve (after the tavern and then church situated there):

1836

Today, only one of those four remains – Skippers Alley and it can be seen on Google Maps (just before the ‘M’ in Merchants Quay) It’s quite unusual that Google Maps included such as nondescrript lane, they usually don’t.

The (locked?) entrance to Skippers Alley from Cook Street:

The view from the Merchant Quay side. It doesn’t look like much of an alley anymore:

Rosemary Lane used to be a continuation of St. Michael’s lane. What ever happened to it? I’m not sure. No doubt it was redeveloped at some point. A little bit on its history:

A passage extending from the north-eastern side of Cook-street to the Merchants’ Quay, is styled in a lease of 1403 “Lovestokes-lane,” a name subsequently changed into “Longstick-lane,” and “Woodstock-lane;” but from the early part of the 17th century this locality has been generally known as “Rosemary-lane.” The “Golden Lion” is noticed in Rosemary-lane in the reigu of James I., and in the middle of the last century there was standing in this lane part of the wall of an old cagework house, over the door of which, cut in timber, were two escutcheons, and between them the date of 1600 (J.T. Gilbert, A History Of The City of Dublin, 1861)

Once connected Chapel Lane & Sampsons Lane’s relationship was ended forever, in the late 1970s, with the construction of the Ilac centre.

This development also saw the destruction of a whole host of streets and lanes: Norfolk Market, Horseman’s Row, Mason’s Market, Riddall’s Row, Market Street, Moore Place, Coles Lane, Rotunda Market, Denmark Place, Kanes Court and most importantly Denmark Street which used to be a continuation of Liffey Street.

What the area used to look like in the early 20th century:

Today, only half of Chapel Lane & Sampsons Lane survive:

Between Denmark St. and Moore St, there used to be Coles Lane:

Coles Lane, 1950s. (Picture - Rashers)

Coles Lane, nd. (Tom Cullen)

Looking down what’s left of Sampsons Lane today:

From the other side, looking at where Chapel Lane has been cut off:

I don’t think any other shopping development in the city centre (e.g. Stephens Green S.C. and Jervis St. S.C.) ‘redeveloped’ an area so traumatically as the Ilac Centre which led to the disappearance of at least eleven streets and lanes.

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:

p107

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:

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