Talbot Street

THERE ARE MANY PROBLEMS

I recently came across this description of Talbot Street: “There’s a lot of colourful people in this street. Some of them are very interested in you. Especially in your wallet and your phone”

Business owners in Dublin’s north inner city have constantly highlighted Talbot Street’s chronic antisocial behaviour and have constantly complained of under-resourced policing and there have been a number of recents that support their complaints.

The street was named in 1821 after Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, 2nd Earl Talbot, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, from 1817 to 1821. It was previously called Cope Street North and Moland Street. The Moland family owned large areas of land in the area with the Deverell family, with Deverall Place and Moland Place remaining as extant place names.

Construction of the street started around 1840, after the sale of Tyrone House and was further accelerated by the opening of the Dublin railway in 1846. An iron railway bridge, constructed in around 1890 by A. Handyside & Co. of Leeds, runs over the east end of the street. It was built for the Dublin, Wicklow & Wexford Railway line to Amiens Street.

Clusters of early Victorian brick houses survive, including numbers 12 to 19, 28 to 32, 70 to 71, and 77. Numbers 53, 54, 81 and 82 retain their 1860s stucco fronts. A Victorian pub also remains on the street, at number 74, on the corner of Store Street. The former Moran’s Hotel at number 21 retains its 1923 low, classical frontage. Elements of the exterior of the former AIB branch on the corner of Gardiner Street also survive.

51-52 Talbot Street – Located opposite Connolly Station, and with frontage also on Amiens Street, this public house premises pre-dates Talbot Street’s formation, being a late Georgian survival (commenced c. 1830). Described in the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage as making “an important contribution to the architectural quality and variety of the northern part of the Georgian City”, this building has a number of architecturally interesting external features.

An eleven-bay three-storey building with a basement, Talbot House was built in 1842 as a Teacher Training School for women. It was designed as part of the Department of Education) campus, the main entrance of which is on Marlborough Street, and was planned by the chief architect of that campus, Jacob Owen. Bay wings were added by J.H. Owens in 1859, and the building is considered to be of architectural interest. It now functions as office space for the Department.

The Irish Life Mall [now the Talbot Mall] is/was a small shopping centre. Construction began in 1971 after Irish Life bought a set of Warehouses on Talbot Street in order to redevelop the land. It has a number of shops spread around a flat shopping mall and is easily accessible from both Talbot Street and Lower Abbey Street. The mall is part of the Irish Life Centre, which is a conglomerate of retail and office space, and apartments, with underground parking, and has a large frontage on Talbot Street. The car park for the Irish Life Centre is accessible from Abbey Street, exiting onto Beresford lane and Lower Gardiner Street. Note: I am not certain but the mall may have been replace by a single supermarket.

No. 78 Talbot Street (on the corner of Moland Place) is the site of the former Welsh Church or Capel Betel, designed by the architect William Murray (1789–1844), it is now a protected structure.