NORTH OF THE RIVER AS EXPERIENCED BY THE URBAN CARTOGRAPHER

Original Images By William Murphy

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HENRIETTA PLACE AND HENRIETTA STREET

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OLD HISTORIC AREA

Henrietta place (built in the 1720s as part of the development of Henrietta Street) is a laneway off Henrietta Street and it is often used as a rat-run for cars travelling at speed and and for that reason I would advise walking along it at night and it also attracts a degree of anti-social activity. In the 1930s, the Dublin Corporation demolished most of the houses on Henrietta Place and built a social housing complex in their place. The complex, which is known as Henrietta House, is still in use today.

Henrietta House is a significant example of social housing architecture in Ireland. It was designed by Herbert Simms, who was one of the leading architects of social housing in the early 20th century. Simms’ design for Henrietta House is characterised by its simple, functional form and its use of red brick.

Henrietta Street is located off Bolton Street on the north side of the city. It was first laid out and developed by Luke Gardiner, the First Earl of Mountjoy, in the 1720s. A very wide street relative to streets in other 18th-century cities, it includes a number of very large red-brick city palaces of Georgian design.

Henrietta Street was once one of the most fashionable addresses in Dublin, and was home to many wealthy merchants and professionals. However, the street declined in status in the 19th century, and by the early 20th century, it had become a slum.

In recent years, Henrietta Street was the subject of a major conservation project, and many of the houses on the street were restored.

One of the most notable buildings on Henrietta Street is 14 Henrietta Street, which is now a museum. The museum tells the story of the street’s history, from its early days as a fashionable address to its later years as a slum.

CLARKES BAKERY AND COFFEE SHOP IS RECOMMENDED

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CABRA ROAD

Clarkes is an excellent coffee shop and bakery located on Cabra Road, I included one photograph in this series. There was an unfortunate incident here in September 2006 when a worker who was attacked during a gang robbery at the bakery died after slipping into a coma days a few days after the attack.

Cabra is located southwest of the Royal Canal, except for one small piece of land between the canal and railway line, and northeast of the Phoenix Park, and runs southeast to northwest, from Phibsboro at St. Peter’s Church and around the sixth Royal Canal lock, and Grangegorman at Hanlon’s Corner, to Ashtown and Pelletstown; across the canal are the districts of first Glasnevin and then Finglas. The area is often divided into Cabra East and Cabra West, with a notional line of division being the railway line coming from the Phoenix Park Tunnel and going to Connolly Station.

The Bradogue River, a tributary of the Liffey, rises underground at the southern edge of the district.

THE AREA OF CABRA NEAR THE CHURCH OF CHRIST THE KING

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THE BUILDING IS ON OFFALY ROAD AND THERE IS A SCHOOL NEXT TO IT

I had hoped to photograph the interior of the church but all the doors were locked so I could do nothing more than photograph the built environment close to the church.

The Church of Christ the King is a Catholic church in Cabra, Dublin, Ireland. It was built in 1933-34 in the Romanesque Revival style, and is one of the largest churches in Dublin. The church is dedicated to Christ the King, a title that was introduced by Pope Pius XI in 1925. The title “Christ the King” is based on the words of Jesus himself, who said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). The title also refers to the Book of Revelation, which describes Jesus as the “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:16).

The church is located on Offaly Road, in the heart of Cabra. It is a large, imposing building, with a tall bell tower. The exterior is made of limestone, and the interior is decorated with stained glass windows, mosaics, and statues.

I was informed by a local resident that the Stained Glass Windows were by Harry Clarke but as I was aware that St. Peter’s Church on Cabra Road was well known for its Harry Clarke windows I decided to investigate the claim and discovered that National Inventory of Architectural Heritage Site states that the stained glass windows were created by Mayer of Munich.

Note: A bridge in Cabra, north Dublin has been named after one of the State’s greatest stained-glass artists. The Cabra Road Bridge in Dublin 7 has become The Harry Clarke Bridge, following requests from local residents. Clarke’s work is displayed in the nearby St Peter’s Church in Phibsborough. He created more than 160 stained-glass windows for religious and commercial commissions throughout Ireland, England, the US and Australia. He also illustrated books for Harrap and Co in London.

DO PEOPLE IN IRELAND CELEBRATE HALLOWEEN

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ACTUALLY IT IS MOST LIKELY THAT THE FESTIVAL ORIGINATED IN IRELAND

This series of images was captured in 2017/2026/2015 and the photographs have been very much processed and modified because the original RAW files were close to unusable.

I receive many requests for information and, excluding questions relating to Leprechauns , the most common question that I receive is “do people in Ireland have Halloween?”. I received such a question yesterday so I decided to ask Google’s BARD AI. Here is the answer that I received:

Yes, people in Ireland celebrate Halloween. In fact, Halloween is thought to have originated in Ireland as the Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celts believed that on the eve of Samhain, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead was weakened, allowing spirits to pass between them. To ward off these spirits, the Celts would light bonfires, wear costumes, and tell stories of the dead.

Today, Halloween is celebrated in Ireland in much the same way as it is in other parts of the world. People dress up in costumes, go trick-or-treating, and light bonfires. However, there are still some traditional Irish Halloween customs that are still observed, such as:

Eating barmbrack, a traditional Irish fruitcake that is often baked with a small trinket inside. The person who finds the trinket in their slice of barmbrack is said to have good luck for the year ahead.
Telling ghost stories. Ireland has a rich tradition of ghost stories, and Halloween is a time when people gather to tell them.
Going to haunted places. There are many haunted places in Ireland, and Halloween is a popular time to visit them.
Halloween is a fun and festive occasion in Ireland, and it is a great time to experience Irish culture. If you are ever in Ireland on Halloween, be sure to participate in the festivities!

I actually lived in a haunted house.

Macnas is an award-winning, internationally acclaimed performance group based in Galway, Ireland. The company was founded in 1986 by Páraic Breathnach, Tom Conroy, Ollie Jennings, and Pete Sammon. Macnas’s productions are immersive and spectacular, and the group’s repertoire includes parades, theatre shows, installations, film, and performance art. Any site can become a stage for Macnas: city streets, GAA clubs, disused warehouses, bogs, mountains, car parks, and sheds.

TREE CARVING BY TOMMY CRAGGS

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A WORK IN PROGRESS IN APRIL 2016

I photographed the finished work recently [18 July 2023] but was not happy with the images so I plan to visit again before the end of the month.

The tree carving in my photographs is located at the north east corner of St Anne’s Park, Raheny, where Clontarf Road and Watermill Road meet. It is a 10-metre tall Monterey cypress tree that was once dying. In 2018, Dublin City Council decided that the tree had to be taken down for safety reasons. However, before it was felled, artist Tommy Craggs was commissioned to carve a series of wildlife sculptures into the tree. The sculptures depict a variety of animals, including foxes, badgers, squirrels, and birds.

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