Dublin's North Bay Area Explored in New Book

A History and Guide to the Dublin North Bay Area with Dennis McIntyre

– From the Stately Customs House to the Wild and Charming Howth Head –

Customs House to Howth Head: A History and Guide to the Dublin North Bay Area is author, Dennis McIntyre's latest contribution to Irish, local, social and cultural history.

The trek, from the stately Customs House in the city centre to the wild and charming Howth Head, is documented in all its facets, angles and aspects. Exhaustively researched, the book is both informative and entertaining, in addition to being copiously illustrated with a well-chosen selection of images.

This is not just a local history but rather, a series of local histories, covering Dublin's Customs House and Docklands areas, North Strand, Summerhill, Ballybough, Fairview, Marino, Donnycarney, Clontarf, Killester, Raheny, Kilbarrack, Bayside, Donaghmede, Baldoyle, Sutton and Howth. It has everything that local history should have – and that bit extra.

Dennis McIntyre is the previously published author of Meadow of the Bull: A History of Clontarf (1987) and has also written about other aspects of Irish history, such as in Bram Stoker and the Irishness of Dracula (2013) and Irish Nationalism, Irish Republicanism and the 1916 Easter Rising (2016).

Customs House to Howth Head: A History and Guide to the Dublin North Bay Area is published by Shara Press and is available to buy online (RRP €19.99).

The book will formally launched at Clontarf Castle Hotel on Wednesday, 1 February starting 8pm, where copies will also be on sale and the author will be on hand to sign them. Joe Harrington of Sunshine Radio will provide the keynote address, while Ciaran Murphy, of Near FM radio, will perform the introductions.

Dennis McIntyre is an author, historian, tour guide, broadcaster and former teacher. Originally from Sligo, he has lived on the northside of Dublin for a number of years and he has established a reputation as a local historian. In addition to his writing, Dennis McIntyre also serves as founder and director of Dublin North Bay Tourism and the Stoker Dracula Gothic Organisation. Previously published works are also available to buy online.

Listen to the podcast of Dennis McIntyre talking about his new book with John Connor on NearFM’s Lifeline Programme.

A Drive around Dublin through the Decades

1930s and 40s

No information about this footage except that it dates, apparently, from the 1930s and 40s.

Late 1950s

The footage is grainy but about as much as could be expected for the technology that existed at the time - no cellphones, digital cameras, CCTV, and so on.

1965

This footage was obtained, apparently, from a CIE training video. You will notice that Grafton Street is not yet pedestrianised (that didn't happen until the 1980s) while Nelson's Pillar still has a commanding presence over O'Connell Street (it would be gone by the following year).

1976

We've had this one before but it's worth including here for comparison purposes.

1930s Dublin: You'll hardly believe your eyes

These incredible colourised images of Dublin in the early 1930s came to us via Retronaut. It's the same old city, just a lot less traffic. 

Colourised Slides of Dublin - Retronaut:

'via Blog this'

Two Poems - MacDonagh and MacNeice

We were contacted recently by Niall MacDonagh, son of Donagh MacDonagh, who had this to say about Dublin Made Me, the title of the poem which also serves as the name of this website:

I just need to record that it upsets me that, of all the poetry, plays, stories my father left behind, THAT piece of verse is what is remembered. The thing is that it is not about Dublin at all but a put down of the rest of the country. Read it and you will see what I am saying.

Now, if you want a very fine poem about Dublin (by a non Dubliner) see this:

Dublin

Grey brick upon brick,
Declamatory bronze
On sombre pedestals -
O'Connell, Grattan, Moore -
And the brewery tugs and the swans
On the balustraded stream
And the bare bones of a fanlight
Over a hungry door
And the air soft on the cheek
And porter running from the taps
With a head of yellow cream
And Nelson on his pillar
Watching his world collapse.

This never was my town,
I was not born or bred
Nor schooled here and she will not
Have me alive or dead
But yet she holds my mind
With her seedy elegance,
With her gentle veils of rain
And all her ghosts that walk
And all that hide behind
Her Georgian facades -
The catcalls and the pain,
The glamour of her squalor,
The bravado of her talk.

The lights jig in the river
With a concertina movement
And the sun comes up in the morning
Like barley-sugar on the water
And the mist on the Wicklow hills
Is close, as close
As the peasantry were to the landlord,
As the Irish to the Anglo-Irish,
As the killer is close one moment
To the man he kills,
Or as the moment itself
Is close to the next moment.

She is not an Irish town
And she is not English,
Historic with guns and vermin
And the cold renown
Of a fragment of Church latin,
Of an oratorical phrase.
But oh the days are soft,
Soft enough to forget
The lesson better learnt,
The bullet on the wet
Streets, the crooked deal,
The steel behind the laugh,
The Four Courts burnt.

Fort of the Dane,
Garrison of the Saxon,
Augustan capital
Of a Gaelic nation,
Appropriating all
The alien brought,
You give me time for thought
And by a juggler's trick
You poise the toppling hour -
O greyness run to flower,
Grey stone, grey water,
And brick upon grey brick.
– Louis MacNeice

A good point and well-taken. Grateful we are too, to be reminded of Louis MacNeice's sombre yet elegant paean to the city. Irish people of a certain generation will possibly recall being taught both MacNeice's and MacDonagh's poems as part of English curriculum.

Donagh MacDonagh (1912-1968) was an Irish writer, judge, presenter, broadcaster, and playwright. According to Wikipedia:

He wrote poetic dramas and ballad operas. He published three volumes of poetry: Veterans and Other Poems (1943), The Hungry Grass (1947) and A Warning to Conquerors (1969). He also edited the Oxford Book of Irish Verse (1958) with Lennox Robinson. A play, Happy As Larry, was translated into a number of languages. He had three other plays produced: God's Gentry (a ballad opera about the tinkers), Lady Spinder (about Deirdre of the Sorrows and the Three sons of Ussna and by far his best writing) and Step in the Hollow a piece of situation comedy nonsense. He also wrote short stories. He published Twenty Poems with Niall Sheridan; staged first Irish production of Murder in the Cathedral with Liam Redmond, later his brother-in-law. Furthermost he was a popular broadcaster on Radio Éireann.

His books are no longer in print but we understand that a project is underway to publish all of his writings, in e-book form, or at least those that can be found: it appears that he was a very prolific writer. Websites that contains links to his poems and plays can be found here and here. The National Library of Ireland also holds some of his personal letters and papers, in addition to those of his father, Thomas MacDonagh, also a poet and playwright, who was among the leaders of the 1916 Rising subsequently executed for his role, his name appearing as one of the signatories to the Proclamation of the Irish Republic.

Louis MacNeice was born in Belfast in 1907, to parents originally from the west of Ireland. It is recorded that when he was six, his mother was admitted to a Dublin nursing home suffering from severe depression and he did not see her again. Inauspicious beginnings you might say, to his relationship with a city that would inspire him to write those lines.

His first trip to Dublin appears to have been in 1934, when he met with William Butler Yeats. The poem, Dublin was written in 1939 and first appeared in a collection entitled The Last Ditch, which was published in 1940. The strength and endurance of the lines which he penned, are nowhere better exemplified than in this recital, given by a true Dubliner, albeit recorded on the streets of Galway, a city to be found amongst -

The raw and hungry hills of the West
The lean road flung over profitless bog
Where only a snipe could nest
Where the sea takes its tithe of every boat.
Bawneen and currach have no allegiance of mine

One can only wonder how words like "This never was my town ...and she will not have me alive or dead" must resonate in the heart of a homeless exile.


Reference Material:

• The MacDonagh Website
• Niall MacDonagh's Website
• Wikipedia - Donagh MacDonagh
• Biography of Louis MacNeice from Poetry Foundation
• Wikipedia - Louis MacNeice

A Drive around in Dublin in 1976

A historical curio here for all you nostalgia buffs out there. Back in 1976 when motion picture technology was considerably less advanced than what it is today, someone had the idea of driving around Dublin city centre, capturing what they saw on film. And here is the result. Not a lot you might say but interesting to see how much Dublin has changed, and yet how familiar it remains. Not a mobile phone in sight either.

By Way of Introduction: Dublin Made Me

Welcome to Dublin Made Me - the blog that explores the culture of Dublin, Ireland's capital city, as it has been immortalised down through the years, in music, literature, art.

What better way to start the ball rolling than Dublin's own Colin Farrell and his reading from the poem by Donagh MacDonagh which also happens to be the name as our blog. It's called Dublin Made Me.

Donagh MacDonagh was a writer, judge, broadcaster and playwright. He was born in Dublin in 1912, the son of Thomas MacDonagh, an Irish nationalist and poet, who was executed for his role in the Easter Rising of 1916. He died on 1 January 1968 and is buried at Deans Grange Cemetery in Dublin.

This is Dublin Made Me by Donagh MacDonagh read by Dublin-born actor Colin Farrell. Colin is still very much alive, earning fame and renown as Hollywood actor. He hasn't let it get to his head though as, on the evidence of this, he remembers where it started. 

Way to go Colin. Good on ya Donough. On ya boyos. No culchies here I tells ya. If there was I'd bate them wit me schtick.

Watch this space for more ...