We often hear people describe Dún Laoghaire in terms of its fine Victorian and Edwardian architecture and streetscapes – its enclosed squares and magnificent harbour. Some today are all too foolishly overawed by all this regal splendour and imagine a town once graced by all the finery of the age – nice people, elegant horse-drawn carriages and parasols colourfully fluttering in the gentle breeze on “Royal” Marine Road. All the while, the band of the “Royal This” or the “King’s Very Own That” looking resplendent in their bright red tunics, buttons glistening in the summer sun, play cheerfully delightful tunes from the Empire. This picture postcard view of our town was carefully cultivated by the various transport companies and the local businesses to attract visitors from all over Ireland and Great Britain in the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nothing wrong with that you’d say as the hotels and guest houses did a roaring trade benefiting the local economy in many ways – a rising tide, sure dosn't it raise all boats?
Buying into this rather idealised notion of our Town’s past has generally been the preserve of those for whom Dún Laoghaire is an adopted hometown or whose families may have been here for just two or so generations. It’s hardly surprising that this fanciful view of the Town’s past gives rise to yet another equally spurious notion largely held by the same group that the population of the Town was somewhat less Irish than the surrounding districts. So there you have it, Kingstown was elegant, rich and most definitely pro-British, wasn't it?
OK, one could be duped into thinking that Kingstown was the home of the great and the good in Victorian and Edwardian society with streets named for monarchs, dukes, earls and their hangers-on – the party hacks of their day, I suppose. Very few of us today know anything of these individuals whose names grace our Town’s thoroughfares, not because of our pro-Irish education system since independence, but that few, if any, of these illustrious personages did anything at all for Ireland, let alone for our Town. Most never even came to visit or possibly hadn’t cared an iota of where the place was in the vast Empire of their day. It’s our heritage, the fancifully deluded shout aloud at the mere hint of any change. Oblivious as they are, of course, to the world of a difference between our history and our heritage.
So our heritage is wrapped up in our Town’s street-names is it? Well let’s take, for example, Sussex Street in the heart of our Town. This little narrow street running down to Eblana Avenue from Lower George’s Street is named for none other than His Royal Highness Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, Earl of Inverness and Baron Arklow – the sixth son of King George III was the little brother of King George IV, after whom the Town, harbour and the main street all were named in honour of his departure from here in 1821. So George IV was here, though by all accounts he wouldn’t have remembered a thing about his short visit as he marked this auspicious occasion with severe intoxication. But what about his brothers the Dukes of Sussex, Cumberland, York and Clarence - what’s their claim to local fame? Well none really, except in a grace and favour political environment, the local grandees thought it was a good idea to name everything after the royals of the day – you never know there could have been a knighthood in it for the dutifully loyal and self serving local official or developer. Certainly sycophantism of the royal highest order naming most of the centre of our Town after an exceptionally dysfunctional family, the sons of which, excelled in producing heirs abundant, alas not a legitimate one amongst them.
But this far removed from the days of Empire and its all trappings, why should we care about our street-names, many of us, probably take a quite moment of satisfaction in knowing that most of our streets were named for right royal rogues who loved to party and party they did. But partying princes and dukes aside, this Town has a much darker and indeed, shameful history in its dealing with the overwhelming majority of its local population, the native Irish poor. Yes, the forgotten underclass of Victorian and Edwardian society living in extremely dire conditions barely a few feet away from the elegant splendour much hailed by some today.
The dark and dank laneways leading to the filthy courts where the cottages, some barely hovels, of the poor lived never made it on to the picture postcard record of our Town and therefore, it’s conveniently forgotten by most nowadays. Overcrowding, the lack of sanitation and clean water led to outbreaks of cholera in 1831/2, 1849, 1867 and 1872 which devastated the local inhabitants of these urban shanties. The fact that the majority of the population of the Town centre, the poor, had to endure such conditions in “elegant Kingstown” and that these conditions existed up to the first quarter of the twentieth century never makes its way into the sanitised histories of this area. These people were the resilient forebears of much of the local population who built the town, its harbour, the railways, its fine buildings and of course, provided much of the labour that made Kingstown prosper.
One man, in particular, did much to provide for Kingstown’s majority population was the very able Parish Priest of St. Michael’s, Bartholomew Canon Sheridan, who was responsible for the founding of schools, colleges, hospitals and care centres throughout the area from Dalkey to Blackrock. His energy and commitment arguably did more to raise the population out of dire poverty than anyone else during his forty years as Parish Priest. But is he remembered by anyone nowadays? A proposal a few years ago to replace the idle and utterly useless Duke’s name with that of the Canon on Sussex Street was greeted with horror causing apoplexy amongst the fancifully deluded who claimed this was an attack on “our heritage”.
OK many of us may find it amusing that our Town’s thoroughfares are named for hard drinking partying philanderers, especially, when faced with the notion of the Town’s former glory as a sedate seaside resort. But shouldn’t our Town consider it only right and proper to commemorate in our street-names the very people who contributed something worthwhile to the Town and its people? People like Canon Sheridan, Robbie Brennan, Matt Byrne, John De Courcey-Ireland and many others are far more deserving of our commemoration in our street-names than the offspring of the madness of King George.
As many changes have occurred to our Town’s architectural landscape over recent years – some good, some bad and others just downright ugly. These mostly developer driven planning disasters have left Dún Laoghaire with no central civic space to provide a focal point for the people and communities of the Town. All throughout the mainland of Europe "Civic Spaces" provide towns and cities with a heart - a place for citizens to congregate, to enjoy, to rest and play or to simply, sit and watch the world go by. The development of a Civic Space at the corner of George's Street and Marine Road on the site in front of St. Michael's RC Church would offer great possibilities for enhancing the ambiance of the Town Centre. This site, possibly “Sheridan Plaza”, could be landscaped to include a statue of Ard Rí Laoghaire (founder of Dún Laoghaire) to highlight the very early origins of the Town in 5th century Ireland.
So if renaming our streets is too much for some, maybe the erection of a marble "Civic Roll of Honour" in a “Civic Plaza” would enable us to commemorate the many sons and daughters, of all creeds, from the Town who made their mark at home and overseas. Surely it’s about time that we should be honouring our own – at last?
Nota Bene: This is the full text of the article submitted to "Dún Laoghaire Express" for publication in their "Soap Box" section, unfortunately, the article was cut and a paragraph was added to the beginning of the article that did not in any way reflect my views. A clarification and correction is to be published on November 6th 2007.
