Main Street

THE OLD HOUSE AT 34 MAIN STREET

April 10, 2024 by infomatique

IS A LARGE UNOCCUPIED OR DERELICT BUILDING IN CAPELIZOD VILLAGE

The old house at 34 Main Street in Chapelizod is a significant historical building.

It’s a detached, three-bay, three-storey early Georgian house over a raised basement, built circa 1740.

The house is well-proportioned and contributes to the eclectic character of Chapelizod.

It was the early childhood home of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, a renowned Gothic horror writer.

The house also features prominently in Le Fanu’s 1863 novel “The House by the Churchyard”.

Unfortunately, due to neglect, the building’s internal floors have collapsed.

THERE ARE 20 MAIN STREETS BUT ONLY TWO HIGH STREETS IN THE DUBLIN AREA

September 10, 2023 by infomatique

MAIN STREET IN SWORDS

Today I walked along Main Street in Swords and photographed at random. At the end near the castle there appeared to be three gangs of youths preparing for a gang fight so I decided to return home but a number of them decided to board the bus and had a conflict with the driver but eventually he managed to stop them boarding only to have a similar problem at the next stop.

Main Street is a metonym used to denote a primary retail street of a village, town or small city in many parts of the world. It is usually a focal point for shops and retailers in the central business district, and is most often used in reference to retailing and socialising.

The term is commonly used in Ireland, Scotland, the United States, and Canada, and less often in Australia and New Zealand. In the non-Scottish regions of the United Kingdom, the common description is High Street, though “Fore Street” or “Front Street” is commonplace in some parts. In Jamaica the term is Front Street. In the 1950s awareness about the ‘main street’ as a concept of its own importance emerged in the urban studies field, attaining the attention in the theoretical discussions of postmodern urban design, neo-traditional planning and meta-urbanism.

In many places, the street name for such a street is actually “Main Street”, though even where it isn’t the actual name, “Main street” is still used to describe the main thoroughfare of the central business district. The “Main Street of America” branding was used to promote U.S. Route 66 in its heyday.

Main Street is the place/road name used in many suburbs, towns, and villages in Ireland. For example, the OSI North Leinster Town Maps book lists sixteen Main Streets and only two High Streets in its thirty-town index of street names. Similarly, the OSI Dublin Street Guide, which covers all of Dublin City and County Dublin, lists twenty Main Streets and only two High Streets. Killarney and Galway are two of the few Irish towns in which the term High Street is used instead of Main Street. Recent and upcoming tranches of funding for Local Authority-led projects seek to help regenerate Main Streets, and town and city centres around Ireland under the URDF (Urban Regeneration Development Fund) and RRDF (Rural Regeneration Development Fund).

List of businesses on Main Street in Swords:
AB Formal Footwear
Abbey Travel
ACME Blinds
Aesthetic Training Acad
AIB
AJ Electronics
Alpha Print
Andrea Eve Beauty
Apache Pizza
Baby Scan
Bank of Ireland
Biofresh
Boyle Sports
Brian D O’Brien
Cab 2000
Café Tara
Camera Cabin
Caprice Beauty Care Plus Pharmacy
Centra
China Link
CM Beauty
Colourtrend
Cross Care
Dillon’s Hair Salon
Diva Hair
DMF International
EBS
Euro Giant
Everest Kitchen

I WAS SURPRISED TO DISCOVER THAT THIS IS A WETHERSPOON HOTEL

September 10, 2023 by infomatique

THE OLD BOROUGH HOTEL ON MAIN STREET IN SWORDS

The building was described as follows: “Detached nine-bay two-storey former national school house, c.1810, on a T-shaped plan. Attributed to architect Francis Johnston. Pair of single-bay single-storey projecting porches to front and three-bay two-storey return to rear. Now in use as offices. ROOF: Double pitched; slate; concrete ridge tiles; granite coping; roughcast chimney stack; yellow clay pots; timber eaves; cast-iron rainwater goods; hipped roofs to porches; slate; rolled lead ridge tiles. WALLS: Roughcast over rubble stone; unpainted. OPENINGS: Square headed opening; granite sills; 6/6 timber sash windows; cylinder glass; replacement timber panelled door to left porch; sidelight and overlight; round headed door opening to right porch; timber panelled door; overlight.”

J D Wetherspoon’s first hotel in Ireland (ROI) is set on the bustling main street of Swords. This boutique hotel has 14 en suite rooms, including an accessible room, complete with full DDA-compliant bathroom facilities. Each room features tea- and coffee-making facilities, hair-dryer, flat-screen television, unlimited free Wi-Fi and digital air-conditioning. The Old Borough is one of the town’s best-known buildings, designed by noted Irish architect Francis Johnston. It was a school for 191 years.

J D Wetherspoon plc (branded variously as Wetherspoon or Wetherspoons, and colloquially known as Spoons) is a pub company operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company was founded in 1979 by Tim Martin and is based in Watford. It operates the sub-brand of Lloyds No.1 bars, and around 50 Wetherspoon hotels. Wetherspoon is known for converting unconventional premises, such as former cinemas and banks, into pubs. The company is publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

Tim Martin opened his first pub in 1979 in Colney Hatch Lane in Muswell Hill, London. Many of the other early Wetherspoon pubs were also in the western part of Haringey. The name of the business originates from JD, a character in The Dukes of Hazzard, and Wetherspoon, the surname of one of Martin’s teachers in New Zealand, who had told him that he thought he would never amount to much.

During the 1990s, Wetherspoons began a policy of routinely closing its smaller or less profitable outlets, often replacing them with larger premises close by. In 1998, Wetherspoons introduced the oversized pint glass to promote the “full pint”. This initiative was withdrawn, supposedly because customers were still asking for top-ups, but arguably because other pub chains did not follow its lead.

Wetherspoons pioneered non-smoking areas in pubs before the Smoking, Health and Social Care (Scotland) Act 2005, The Smoking (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 and the Health Act 2006 in England and Wales became law in 2006.[

The company produces a quarterly in-house magazine, Wetherspoon News, which contains information on the company’s activities, its employees, pubs, political views and comments on recent media mentions. The chain also offers a mobile app from which customers can order food and drink to their table to avoid using the bar, even from outside the pub.

On 16 April 2018, Wetherspoons deleted all of its social media profiles. Chairman Tim Martin cited the “current bad publicity surrounding social media, including the trolling of MPs and others” as a reason for the decision.

The first Wetherspoons pub in the Republic of Ireland, The Three Tun Tavern, opened in Blackrock, County Dublin, in 2014. Another opened in Cork in 2015. The Three Tun Tavern closed in January 2022 after it was bought by a consortium of former and current Irish rugby players including Rob Kearney and Jamie Heaslip.