1728 – Linen Hall, Yarnhall St., Dublin

In 1722 a centralised Linen Hall was proposed by the Linen Board and several sites around the city were considered and dismissed. The Linen Board eventually decided in favour of a three-acre site at the top of Capel Street. Over the next six years, the Linen Hall gradually took shape and it opened for trade on November 14th, 1728. The Linen Hall contained a large trading floor and 550 compartments or bays for the storage of linen. There was also a large boardroom for the use of the trustees and what was described as “a large and elegant coffee-room for the accommodation of factors and traders who daily crowd its courts”.

Originally designed by Thomas Burgh in 1722, it was enlarged by Thomas Cooley in 1784. However with the opening of the Belfast Linen Hall in 1783, the Dublin industry went into terminal decline and the Linen Board was abolished in 1828.

“The old Linen Hall. within a few yards of this, presents a deserted appearance. though it-chambers once resounded with the cheerful hum of busy traders. It contains up wards of five hundred rooms, which, when built in 1728, were fully occupied by linen merchants, this being the principal market for that then staple manufacture in Dublin. Its corridors now echo the measured footfall of the sentry as he paces his weary round; the extensive pile of buildings being almost altogether converted into a barrack, and the surrounding houses, in which the wealthy busy traders resided, are in a state of decay, tenanted by the poorer classes. So, Time changes all things, and Fortune’s mutations are here exemplified as in the deserted Liberty, another locality once famous for its manufacturing industry and commerce.”
Whammond’s Illustrated Guide to Dublin, 1878.

During the 1870s the Linen Hall was used as a temporary barracks by the British Army and it was taken over by the board of works in 1878. It was destroyed by fire during the 1916 Rebellion.