Underneath Dublin?
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How interesting. Anyone know of any modern examples – older forms can be rather basic, such as these:
http://www.plumsite.com/fredgurner/pissoir.jpg
There was yet another little brick building further up on Eden Quay outside Liberty Hall. Perhaps an early public convenience:
And here is the shelter-style building in colour, clearly red brick with a pitched roof and what look like urns on the corners, and a slightly sharper view of the neighbouring little kiosk thingy and bank of telf
Last week, Rob Vance wandered along the long-undergrounded River Poddle on his programme Urban Tales, the famous river that filled the black pool to the back of Dublin Castle, as well as supplied the Norman moat of the fortification. You can see his fascinating journey here :):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5ygnHSLKLY
Unfortunately no mention is made of how old the impressively well-built brick tunnels are that carry it – presumably early 18th century? Interestingly it branches off into two sections at the Castle’s Palace Street gate, presumably because the old moat diverted it a little further westwards around the Castle. In any event, they both merge round about Essex Street, before entering the river to the east of the Clarence Hotel.
Also another wander about in the below video with Yvonne Wheelan along O’Connell Street and the wider city centre, discussing symbolism and identity, and the Abercrombie Plan and the Greater Dublin Reconstruction Movement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNThzuhg8LM
Programme homepage.
Wow! Pretty hairy stuff there down in the Poddle. Vance annoyed me in his last series about historic Ireland driving around in an SUV and making sure it crept into every second frame, but fair play to him for going down there in the tunnels with that guy.
This piece of wasteland shows what is now known as the Italian Quarter. When the site was being readied, I noticed the remains of a brick-arch tunnel running along at the base of the rear site boundary wall between Nos. 23 & 24 Lwr. Ormond Quay. This is roughly opposite the mouth of the Poddle, so maybe once was another underground river …
@GrahamH wrote:
Also another wander about in the below video with Yvonne Wheelan along O’Connell Street and the wider city centre, discussing symbolism and identity, and the Abercrombie Plan and the Greater Dublin Reconstruction Movement.
I am lucky enough to have a publisher’s file copy of that – fascinating reading.
Apparently a tunnel runs from the Granby sausage factory, (to the rear of Lower Dominick St) Yet to find out where this leads to…
Hugh Lane Gallery on Parnell Sq, formerly Lord Charlemonts’s house has a tunnel running from it to the old Monto area to facilitate british aristocrat mates of Charlemonts getting down to see the ladies without getting caught out above ground…..Reputedly only high and wide enough to take one man on horseback….
Here are some pics of the railway tunnel under the Phoenix park. There is even a platform there visible at the Heuston end of the pic, Iarnrod Eireann should reopen that line and make good use of a piece of infrastructure thats already in place.Sorry if u can barely see the tunnel entrance, my camera is crap.On the 2nd pic just follow the railwayn line around and you’ll see the entrance between the apartment buildings.
@bluefoam wrote:
You have just reminded me. My younger brother went to school in Ranelagh & mentioned a tunnel that went from the school to somewhere in the city centre.
Possibly a staff link between the school (which would have been a house in its day) and a city centre residence. I’d love to go through it.
Hi Bluefoam,
I am researching for a TV documentary and read your post with interest. I also went to school in Ranelagh at one point. Perhaps you would let me know what school your brother attended so I can look into the tunnel story in more detail?
Thanks & Regards,
ShadowNinjaIt is Sandford College.
Keep us posted on the site if you find out anything interesting.
I would confidently predict that you will find no such tunnel. Tunnel myths are very common. I remember four distinct but widely believed such myths when I was young. While the sample size is small, two of them were associated with school buildings (not in Ranelagh) which would suggest that many schools have such stories. I guess that there’s a fundamental appeal in the idea of “secret” passages and tunnels. Myself and a group of school mates made a serious attempt to explore our “school tunnel”. Despite risking serious punishment by skipping a class and effectively breaking in to part of the school that was locked and out of bounds, the only thing we uncovered in the area the tunnel was reputed to start was a slightly inaccessible air vent which when entered from a precarious stack of old desks and chairs turned out to be less than 5 feet deep – considerably less than the two miles we were expecting.
You need to ask yourself not only whether there was a credible use for the tunnel (the earlier example of getting to Monto discretely seems initially plausible) but more importantly whether the effort of building the thing would have been justified (not a chance). Even with the latest technology, building 100m of tunnel would be a big undertaking involving serious engineering. A two mile tunnel into town from Ranelagh?? Come on! 🙂
Yeah, thats true. My mother told a story of the time when she boarded in a college in Youghal. There was an old blocked up door in a basement, and behind that there was reputed to be a tunnel going down into the ground, and then across the Blackwater estuary. It was reputed to have been used in the penal times to sneak a priest into Youghal. Doubtful stuff.
I also stayed in St. Kierans college in Kilkenny few years back for irish college. There was a Kilkenny person in the course (not a student of the school) who insisted that there was a tunnel there. We looked for it one day in vain in a bunker beneath the school. No tunnel, but we found a box full of recordings of the school choir from the 30s, a ride-on lawnmower and a postcard confirming Fr. Savage’s membership to the Irish watercolour painter’s scociety for 1876.
^^^
When someone from Middle Earth speaks on the topic of underground tunnels, you can be sure it’s the truth! 😉@PTB wrote:
we found a box full of recordings of the school choir from the 30s
Far more interesting than any stubby tunnel, I’d wager.
Far more interesting than any stubby tunnel, I’d wager.
Bizarrely that was the case. What I mentioned was a small fraction of what we rooted up – there was school records going back to the 1900s, loads of old classics books, an ancient, broken typewriter, a funny hat, pigeon shit, the philosopher’s stone, CIA records proving that the CIA killed J.F.Kennedy, Queen Victoria’s head in a jar, a partially buried chest brimming with jewels and gold, guarded by a cobweb-matted pirate skeleton.
That school had a fascinating history.:)
In the mid 1970s a friend and I started a yarn about a tunnel that went from the cellar of Jack O’Rourke’s pub in Blackrock to the old Garda station. It became quite a joke at that time, and when a barman lifted the trapdoor to the cellar we commented “the lads most be looking for more drink.” A couple of years ago a young Trinity student was quoting its existence to me, believing it 100%!
Another fabled one is the tunnel from Loreto Dalkey to the Island (actually the start of an old copper mine); another, true, AFAIK, is the one from old Frascati House to Blackrock Park.
KB2@PTB wrote:
there was school records going back to the 1900s, loads of old classics books, an ancient, broken typewriter, a funny hat, pigeon shit, the philosopher’s stone, CIA records proving that the CIA killed J.F.Kennedy, Queen Victoria’s head in a jar, a partially buried chest brimming with jewels and gold, guarded by a cobweb-matted pirate skeleton.
But no Holy Grail? The hunt goes on…
As a new person here I just want to point out a few details and references relating to several topics herein:
Clontarf lead mines – contrary to an earlier post citing me, there was a lead and silver mine at Clontarf – although the Dublin Port Tunnel story was a hoax, there was a mine on the shore in the 1756-1770 period. It was situated approximately at the bottom of Castle Avenue I think, right on the edge of the sea. See Cowman, Des 2001. The metal mines of Dublin City and County, c. 1740-1825. Journal of the Mining Heritage Trust of Ireland, 1, 61-66. This also cover mines at Loughshinny, Killiney, Dalkey, Dolphins Barn and many other minor sites. The Killiney mine is surveyed and discussed in Barnett, John 2006. Quarries, Mines and Railways of Dalkey. Journal of the Mining Heritage Trust of Ireland, 6, 17-21. There’s also an article on the superb Ballycorus tunnel in that issue.
For details of any mine site in the country the best starting place is Cole’s 1922 Memoir, reprinted by the Mining Heritage Trust of Ireland in 1998. See http://www.mhti.com for details of all mining heritage journals and publications. They are all available from me via the website and if you mention this forum I shall give a decent discount. Better still I invite you all to join the MHTI and indulge your underground interests a little more!
Collins Barracks area
There is a bar whose name I do not remember to the left of the Aishling hotel near Heuston Station which yielded a natural cave of quite unusual nature when the site was redeveloped. See Meehan, R. and Parkes, M. 1997. A small cave within Quaternary deposits at Parkgate Street, Dublin 8. Irish Speleology 16, 9-10.Around the same time we examined another hole found in the same general area but on the city side of Collins Barracks, again in a redevelopment site. I think it is now apartments or offices and probably a car park where the hole was. It was alsocontained in sand and till of Ice Age origin, but had been dug out by hand (pick marks on the walls and so on) with several levels and alcoves. It yielded some horse remains of late medieval age or such as far as I recall, and was thought to have been excavated as a stable. I have pictures somewhere and probably a copy of the report we provided to the archaeologists at the time, if anyone is really desperate to see them.
As I also look after the Speleogical Union of Ireland (SUI) Library and journal sales you can contact me through http://www.cavingireland.org for further information etc on cave stuff.
Lastly, if anyone wants to write up any interesting underground sites, both journals and newsletters of MHTI and SUI are always interested in relevant material – don’t be afraid to offer something, however big or small.
Matthew ParkesI think the bar’s name was Saddlers. Currently being redeveloped into offices for a financial institution.
You are right I think on the name – Sadlers or Saddlers. I forgot to mention that despite our best efforts to get to talk to someone behind the project we didn’t and suggestions for what to do with it got distorted into a rather crap feature – it was spraycreted and left as a tunnel you could go into from the bar but with no sense to any of it. I suggested that if they could keep it at all it could be gated so you could see into it from the beer garden at the back of the bar, and an explanatory panel or sign to make sense of it.
Tis hard to explain/convince people sometimes….
Matthew
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