Swords

THE WARD RIVER AND NEARBY

September 11, 2023 by infomatique

SWORDS SEPTEMBER 2023

The actual river does not appear in any of my photographs as there is not much to see.

You may notice the Old Schoolhouse in some of my photographs. It was once an 18th century schoolhouse. It is a restaurant that now serves an extensive range of traditional fresh, home-produced food daily, with an wide choice of locally-sourced fish, game and meat dishes, and with vegetarian choices.

Until recently I did not know that there was a river named the Ward River and when I spoke to my mother [103 last May] I was further surprised.

My Grandmother’s maiden name was Ward and the family was originally based in Galway, my mother alctually lived with an aunt in Galway in order to attend a secondary school. My mother was a Regan . In Ireland, the name Ward is popular in counties Galway and Donegal. It comes from the old Gaelic name Mac. an Bhaird. The prefix ‘Mac’ means ‘son of’, while ‘Bhaird’ was a Gaelic word meaning ‘bard’. A bard was a poet or who would typically tell epic and heroic tales. There is also a branch in Boston and my sister in Florida has kept in contact with them.

The O’Regans of Meath were a branch of the southern Ui Neill and one of the four Tribes of Tara. Before the Anglo-Norman invasion, they were lords of south Breagh and the north of present-day County Dublin. They took a leading part in the wars against the Danes. In the year 1029, Mathghamhain Ó Riagáin, king of Breagh, captured the king of Dublin, Amhlaoibh son of Sitric, releasing him only upon payment of an enormous ransom, which included the celebrated Sword of Carlus. The O’Regans were dispossessed soon after the invasion and dispersed through Ireland.

My Grandfather was a founding member of the Ward Union Hunt. The Ward Union Hunt takes its name from the hamlet and river called the Ward in the parish of Finglas in North Dublin and a roadside Hotel at the time called The Union. There is sometimes a misconception with regard to the Ward Union Hunt that the hunt kills the stag. This is not the case and had never been so but I know that my Mother and Grandmother did not approve of hunting and to the best of my knowledge the Ward Union has been disbanded.

My Grandfather had convinced my Grandmother that the hunt was named in her honour.

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.

THE LORD MAYOR’S PUB IS TO BE DEMOLISHED

September 9, 2023 by infomatique

I VISITED SWORDS IN ORDER TO PHOTOGRAPH THIS THATCHED PUB

The Lord Mayor pub is on Forest Road in Swords but a large apartment scheme to be built on the site of the current pub has been given planning permission.

In 2012, Swords was named the third-best town in Ireland to live in. The survey conducted by Retail Excellence Ireland took into account safety, retail, dining, entertainment, events, car parking and the overall attractiveness of the town. Swords has seen steady regeneration of shop fronts, public buildings, and footpaths and the restoration of Swords Castle since the mid-1990s. Households in Swords have the seventh-highest median incomes in the state, among distinct towns (a comparison excluding most other suburbs of the city).

A 2011 Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) survey declared Swords to be the second cleanest town in Ireland. This came just eight years after an IBAL survey had scored the town as the worst “litter blackspot” in the country. In the 2019 survey, An Taisce, who carry out the surveys on behalf of IBAL, stated: “A stellar showing for this large urban area. Swords is a model for others to follow.”