Broadstone, Dublin

Broadstone ( _ga. An Clochán Leathan), is an area of the inner city on the Northside of Dublin, Ireland. The area is triangular, bounded roughly by Phibsborough Road and Constitution Hill to the West, North Circular Road to the north, and Dorset Street and Bolton Street to the south-east. The postal district for the area is Dublin 7.

Overview

Broadstone is one of the older parts of the city, being known in earlier times as Glasmanogue. The name 'Broadstone' is descriptive of a crossing of a stream, the Bradogue, located here. The Bradogue rises in Cabra to the north-west and runs to the Liffey at Ormond Quay, but has long been culverted and now runs almost wholly underground. In earlier times the stream was traversed by means of a large oblong stepping stone - the Broadstone, located near to the present-day site of Constitution Hill.

Although small it is home to a number of well-known landmarks such as the Black Church (St. Mary's Chapel of Ease), King's Inns, Broadstone Station, the Blessington Basin, Berkeley Road Church (St.Joseph), and Royal Canal Bank. Much of the area was originally part of the Grangegorman estate, a grand house and grounds owned by the Monck family, amongst others. Monck Place, off Phibsboro Road, still bears the name.

The area presently consists mostly of streets of small red-brick houses built in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a century after the building of Georgian Dublin prior to the Act of Union 1800. One aspect of Georgian architecture retained in these modest homes was the ornate doorways with half-circle fanlights.

Unlike most Dublin suburbs, Broadstone does not have a village centre or main street, and this, along with its small size and tucked-away location means its existence is a surprise to many, even natives of the city. The dividing line between Broadstone and the neighbouring suburb of Phibsboro is something of a mystery, even to locals, with some claiming that Broadstone is simply a part of Phibsboro. This is often used by estate agents to advertise Broadstone properties as being in Phibsboro, which has a better public profile and higher prices. However both the national postal authority An Post and the Ordnance Survey of Ireland clearly identify Broadstone as a separate entity.

Beginnings

First settled by Vikings, the area was probably used for pasture up to 18th century. Descriptions of it at this time are of a boggy, wetland, which likely became a quagmire in wetter weather and the original Irish name 'Glasmanogue' (wet-ground) is thought to refer to this. In 1660 the area was used for military parades and pageants to celebrate the Restoration of Charles II, but it was not until the 18th century that Broadstone really became part of the city proper. Around this time the northern part of the city became fashionable with the 'Quality', and home to many prominent figures. Notable amongst these was the Gardiner family, Earls of Blessington and Viscounts Mountjoy, after which Gardiner Street, Gardiner Place, Gardiner Lane, Gardiner Row, Blessington Street, Blessington Court, Blessington Lane, Blessington Basin, Mountjoy Street, Mountjoy Square, Mountjoy Place and Mountjoy Parade - all in the vicinity - are named.

The Royal Canal

In 1789 Dublin Corporation commissioned the Royal Canal and a harbour built on Constitution Hill, connected to the main canal at Phibsboro by a spur. In many ways the history of Broadstone is the history of this canal. Though the branch line was completed by 1796, it was ten more years before the harbour was opened; construction continued for some years afterwards. The harbour's location was chosen for its proximity to the markets and the law courts. Bolton Street was the preferred site, but high land prices and objections from local residents forced its relocation.

By 1807 a regular passage boat service was operating to Mullingar. In subsequent years the area was a hive of industry, with many hotels and inns and the trade boats using the wharfage and stores at the harbour. The canal was linked eventually with the River Shannon in 1817, after many financial difficulties, and the majority of the main route still exists. In 1810 a reservoir, the Blessington Basin, was dug from the spur to supply water to the locality.

Average annual tonnage on the canal in the 1830s was 80,000 tons and 40,000 passengers.

King's Inns

The King's Inns [http://www.kingsinns.ie/html/home.html] is the oldest institution of legal education in Ireland, founded in 1542 during the reign of Henry VIII, and originally occupied property where the Four Courts now stand. When the Four Courts were built in the 1790s, King's Inns moved to Constitution Hill. The present building, designed by James Gandon, was built opposite the harbour and, like Gandon's Four Courts and The Custom House, was designed with its frontage on a waterfront. Construction began in 1800 and completed in 1823. Famous graduates since the move to Broadstone include Edward Carson, Patrick Pearse, Charles Haughey, Mary Robinson and Michael McDowell.

The Black Church

St. Mary's Chapel of Ease, universally known as the Black Church, was built in 1830 and was designed by John Semple. The nickname is thought to have originated due to the gloom of interior, rather than the dark-grey colour of the exterior - the building has very thick walls and narrow windows. An interesting feature of the church is that is has no distinct walls or ceilings inside, the interior consisting entirely of a parabolic arch.

Legend has it a person walking anti-clockwise with one's eyes closed, two or three times around the church at midnight, reciting the 'Hail Mary' backwards will meet the Devil. However it is highly likely that this was merely an old wives' tale, created on account of the church being Protestant. The striking building no longer has a religious function and is presently used as office space.

The Black Church is mentioned briefly in the novel Ulysses by James Joyce, in the chapter entitled 'Oxen of the Sun', as the location of one of Bello's many sins: "He went through a form of clandestine marriage with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black Church". Joyce lived for a few months in Broadstone, at 44 Fontenoy Street, one of the Joyce family's many temporary homes around Dublin. He stayed there with his son Giorgio from July to September 1909 and again alone from October 1909 to June 1910 while trying to set up the first cinema in Dublin.

It was also used in the title of the first volume of memoirs of Austin Clarke, "Twice Round the Black Church" (1962). Clarke grew up in Broadstone, living on Middle Mountjoy Street. Both Clarke and Joyce attended nearby Belvedere College.

The Midland Great Western Railway and Broadstone Station

In 1845 the Royal Canal was purchased by the Midland Great Western Railway Company for £298,059 with a view to using the land alongside the canal to construct a railway line to the west of Ireland. Broadstone railway station was completed in 1850. This beautiful building was one of Dublin's six original rail termini, the others being Westland Row (now Pearse Station) Amiens Street (now Connolly Station), Kingsbridge (now Heuston Station), North Wall and Harcourt Street (now the Odeon Bar / [http://www.pod.ie/index.php POD] bar and nightclub complex).

Situated at the crest of Constitution Hill directly opposite King's Inns, the station served as the finishing point of the Midland and Great Western Railway. Designed by John Skipton Mulvaney [http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2001/03/25/story645685928.asp] , Broadstone Station is constructed of granite in a neo-Egyptian style.

With Galway projected to become the main port for transatlantic passenger traffic between Europe and North America, the Midland successfully competed with its rival the Great Southern and Western Railway to reach it first. A special fourth class was introduced by the Midland for poor migrants from the west going to Britain for work. The line, which branched out to serve Sligo, Westport, Achill and Clifden, was also used to transport huge numbers of cattle.

It was about this time that the majority of the houses in the area were constructed, as dwellings for workers on the railway. Most of the houses were built by the "Artisan's Dwelling Company", which built many similar estates in Dublin and elsewhere, and houses of this type are now frequently described as "Artisan" cottages, regardless of their origin.

In the days of the railway, the workers started at 6am, had half an hour for breakfast from 8 till 8.30, continuing then till 5.30 or maybe 6pm. In the days before alarm clocks it was usual for one of the workers to act as 'knocker-up', going from house to house in the early morning knocking on the doors of works to signal that it was time to get up. For this he collected the sum of three pence per man each week.

The decline of the canal

The Great Irish Famine of the mid-19th century had caused a huge wave of emigration, and the population of Ireland was reduced from about 8 million in the 1830s to around 4 million a century later. The worst hit were the rural population of the west, precisely the market of the MGWR. There was a brief period of boom in the 1870s as the flow of people from the west peaked, but as the people left, traffic in the other direction reduced markedly. As emigration gradually came to a halt, so did the canal system.

The MGWR was never very interested in the canal business and in 1877 they were given permission by the government to close 150 yards of the branch line and to fill in the harbour, to construct a new forecourt for the station. That removed the need for a movable pontoon bridge, and a new approach road, Western Way, was built by way of Foster Aqueduct. The harbour was no longer needed due to the construction of one larger and better situated at Spencer Dock, and was filled in to become the forecourt of Broadstone Station.

The small reservoir had been made almost redundant by the construction of a new reservoir at Vartry in 1868, and served only the Jameson Whiskey distilleries at Smithfield, until they left the city in the 1970s.

By the 1920s average annual tonnage on the Royal Canal had reduced to 10,000 tons. In 1924 the MGWR amalgamated with its rival, the Great Southern and Western Railway, to enable rationalisation and survival, and in 1927 the bridged section under Foster aqueduct was filled in, and the canal and railway were permanently disconnected.

The decline of the railway

By the 1930s the railway was failing too and the last train arrived from Westport in 1937. In 1944 the Canal and Railway both passed into the ownership of the state transport company Córas Iompair Éireann (CIE), which transferred all its steam locomotives there in 1954. However when steam locomotion ended in 1961, Broadstone was closed. Foster Aqueduct was removed in 1951 to facilitate road widening.

Today the historic building is used as offices by Bus Éireann and the rest of the site is used a parking and servicing area for buses, with the main building mostly obscured by public housing and light industrial buildings.

Modern times

After the closure of the railway came the hardships of the war, rationing, and a prolonged recession. Unemployment and deprivation hit the inhabitants of Dublin's north inner city hard, and the area around Dominick Street, Grangegorman and Broadstone was one of the worst affected by drug abuse, especially heroin. The park at Royal Canal Bank and the disused reservoir at Blessington Street were magnets for delinquents, as was the dereliction around Paradise Place.

The Irish Youth Hostelling association, An Óige, took over the old convent building on Mountjoy Street and this now serves as both the headquarters of the organisation and its main international hostel in Dublin.

Regeneration

The linking canal spur was filled in and made into a long narrow park, Royal Canal Bank, in 1956. The reservoir, however, still exists.

In 1993, after decades of stagnation and neglect, Dublin Corporation's Parks Department began restoring it as a recreational facility, removing 6000 tons of silt and debris, adding a fountain, enlarging the central island for wildlife and undertaking extensive replanting. The Blessington Basin still obtains its water from the canal above the 8th lock, two miles away, but is now a picturesque walled park of one and a quarter acres, with a beautifully paved and landscaped walk around a large oblong body of 4.7 million gallons of water, fenced off by wrought-iron railings, and scattered with sculptures and places to sit.

The large site at Grangegorman is currently the planned future home of the Dublin Institute of Technology, and the area development plan proposes to use the new Grangegorman Campus to join the Grangegorman and Broadstone areas, and to provide numerous facilies and amenities for both collegiate and public use.

This is only part of a massive regeneration project for the north inner city, including the redevelopment of nearby O'Connell Street and Parnell Street as tourism and retail centres.

There have been many calls to have the main building of Broadstone Station restored, and in recent years some have suggested it as a city terminus for the proposed metro system to Dublin Airport, while others have called for the reopening of the old rail line to enable residents of outlying areas along the old route to commute to the city more easily.

ee also

*Rail transport in Ireland
* [http://www.flickr.com/photos/redmum/sets/600285/ Flickr set of photographs from Blessington Basin] [http://www.meathontrack.com Meath on Track railway campaign to open the former Navan Clonsilla MGWR branch line]