Glasnevin

PAINT-A-BOX STREET ON GLASNEVIN HILL

‘On Washerwoman Hill’ by Anna & Isobel Mahon – St Brigids School, Old Finglas Road/ Glasnevin Hill, Dublin 9.

It took me a few hours to realise what this about.

The Washerwoman Restaurant is on Glasnevin Hill which is/was locally known as Washerwoman’s Hill.

It is claimed that the original Washerwoman’s Hill dates back to at least the 1770’s when the female occupants of an Alms House on Glasnevin Hill operated a ‘laundry’ service. Clothes and bed linen were washed for the public in the waters of the Nevin stream.

“The Irish Washerwoman” is a traditional jig known to have been played throughout Britain and Ireland and in North America. Although usually considered an Irish tune, some scholars claim that it is English in origin, derived from the seventeenth-century tune “Dargason”.

A mainly residential neighbourhood, Glasnevin is located on the Northside of the city of Dublin (about 3 km north of Dublin city centre). It was established on the northern bank of the River Tolka where the stream for which it may be named joins, and now extends north and south of the river. Three watercourses flow into the Tolka in the area. Two streams can be seen near the Catholic “pyramid church”, the Claremont Stream or Nevin Stream, flowing south from Poppintree and Jamestown Industrial Estate branches, and what is sometimes called the “Cemetery Drain” coming north from the southern edge of Glasnevin Cemetery. In addition, a major diversion from the Wad River comes from the Ballymun area, joining near the Claremont Stream.

The boundaries of Glasnevin stretch from the Royal Canal to Glasnevin Avenue and from the Finglas Road to the edges of Drumcondra. It spans the postal districts of Dublin 9 and 11,[citation needed] and is bordered to the northwest by Finglas, northeast by Ballymun and Santry, Whitehall to the east, Phibsborough and Drumcondra to the south and Cabra to the southwest.