I N C H I C O R ES T O R I E S

My name is Deirdre Farrell, and I was born here in Inchicore in the ranch, but my peo-ple all came from Kilmainham, Islandbridge and the railway houses. They were known as the cottages years ago in the olden days. My grandmother Ellen Conroy was born in 1876 in 5 Abercorn Terrace and she married Patrick Gunning from 11 Abercorn Terrace. He was a holder in the railway, and his father was a boiler maker, and his father him was in the works, and he started in 1847, when the works opened up. My Grandmothers, father was a train driver, and his name was Tommy Conroy. Unfortunately, my great grandfather died, and the Conroys had to get out of the house, and thats how we ended up down the ranch. I had lots of cousins living up here and Im back up here now since the 1960’s. Back to where all my ancestors came from.

You mentioned earlier that this houses used to be specifically for the workers and their families. What was the policy around that?

From my grand parents, and some of the old-er residents telling me, you couldn’t get one of these houses unless your father worked in the railway. I worked in the CIE sewing class, I was a tailoress. You couldn’t work in that class unless your father worked in the railway either. Unfortunately, when my great grandfather died, my great grandmother was

put out. It sort of left a bit of fear in people. I worked in the sewing class, and my mother worked there and my grand mother worked there. My grandfather had two sisters who worked there. In those days I just couldn’t say what I wanted to do, it was sort of that thing that your mother worked there so I was going to work there but I never minded. I had very happy days there and they were lovely girls. My soul is in Inchicore, and I love the railway houses and I also love the ranch. There were lovely people here. Some of us hadn’t an awful lot but we all sort of looked after one another. We used to have lovely dances in the dance hall. I remember being there when Dicky Rock came, and the queues outside were un-believable. We had famous people here in the past few years, we had Colin Farrell, making a film, we had the great gentlemen Jim Corbit who was brought down to the works, into the dining hall and had a drink there. So there is great memories and history around the area which Im very proud of.

In the sewing class, what would you have produced there?

We made suits for the men and the money was taken out of their wages every week. I was a vest maker, thats a waist coat maker, I was a trouser maker, I was a overcut maker and I was a Trimmer. In my mothers time they

Deidre FarrellRailway Terrace Resident and for-mer CIE Sewing Class Worker.

made antimacassars they were for the backs of the seats of trains. It was the best of mate-rial. The material lasted for years. I had very happy days there. We used to also post the suits down in the post office to the 26 coun-ties. When the men had the suits paid for they used to come back and get a gabardine coat or maybe an overcoat. We used to be sent down to works for messages also, we were very busy, it was exciting times.

Was the sewing class part of the railworks?

Yes, the sewing class was part of it , we were paid by CIE. The sewing class was over in the Dining hall and there was also the beauti-ful library room were people could take the newspaper and read, it was really lovely. The men came down from the works and got their dinner in the dining hall, they used to pay every week for that. There was lovely food and lovely cooks there. Their was a Ms. Summers when I started in the sewing class and then it was Ms. O’Toole, then you had the foreman, when I worked their it was Jim Bourke, in my mothers time it was a man called Conlitey, and also their was a man their called mister Lockman and he used to mend our shoes for maybe a shilling. He would fix up our high heels and we would go dancing that night in town. It was a lovely community and there was plenty of activity in the old dining hall

The Social Club has always been quite ac-tive in the community?

Yes, it was built for the workers and they al-ways had dances. They started in 1965, and I was there for the beginning of the dances. The dances were 1 pound, and the queues used to be from the dining Hall up and around West Terrace or maybe down the square. The crowds used to come from all over, Chapeli-zord, Drimnagh, the Ranch, Ballyfermot, all over Inchicore. It was wonderful. They also used to have the goose club this was around Christmas time. You would buy tickets and there would be turkey and ham and a hamper. At Christmas time all the people would come up and there would be turkeys all around the place.

When the railway was first built alot of specialised workers were brought in from overseas to work on the trains. Have these families stayed in the area?

There is alot of people who have family con-nections with the railway, I have a son and he’s still in the railway, he would be about 7th or 8th generation there now. He started up in the works in Inchicore and they moved him down to Portlaoise at another depot but sometimes if they need him they have to send

Deidre FarrellRailway Terrace Resident and for-mer CIE Sewing Class Worker.

him back up to the works but he is still em-ployed by CIE. Alot of them would have come over from England, Scotland and Wales, and there were different religions here aswell. Some of them were Catholic but there was also alot of Protestants and some church of Ireland. There would be still alot of people around.

There used to be a gate at the entrance of the estate?

Thats only gone a while ago, that was a lovely big cast iron gate, at the end of South Terrace. Its gone only about ten years. We were sort of private, they could lock us in.

That was made by CIE?

Oh yes, It would have been the Great South-ern and Western Railway at the time. There was great craftsmanship up there. The work they did was just something else. The great Meave was made up there, the beautiful en-gine, the Macha and the Trifor. There was loads of carriages aswell. There were boiler makers, moulders, carriage builders, brass finishers, and all kinds.

The houses here were built by contractors, but the first church was built by the workers of the railway?

When these houses were built, they were built in different stages, the one that i’m in was built in 1847, thats West Terrace. The square was the same and south terrace, Granite Ter-race and Abercorn came abit later on. Pat-ricks Terrace is also another old terrace. The houses were built, during the famine and ten years later the model school came. The model school is a beautiful old building, and lots of famous people went there, like Thomas Kin-sella. Its a beautiful old building. Then the church came in 1856 when the Oblates came. The first wooden church was built by the men in the works. My great great grandfather helped with that, John Gunning. All the work men came down in their spare time and built the church. There is a model of it still up in the oblates, it was a beautiful church. Then the present church was built. The men also built the grotto which is at the side of the church. They were really very proud of the area.

Walking around the back lane ways, you can see some of the old sleepers, being used for garden walls, was there many materials that were made up in the works that were re-used by the workers around the estate?

Yes, the men years ago used to sell off barrells and they would sell off sleepers and wood, cheap to the workers. My mother kept hens and ducks and we

used to build hen houses for the fowl. One or two of the residents still have old coaches that they bought from the railway and they made them into kitchens. One of my friends has one, a beautiful one up on Patricks ter-race. Her kitchen is lovely its an old coach. They were able to get them a bit cheap. Like the material in the sewing class, when there would be material left over, our tailor Dan Bennett he would sell them off to us cheap. There would be alot of paint and wood and things like that. CIE at that time used to look after the houses and any maintenance once you were employed by CIE.

The railway had a huge influence on the town of Inchicore, it has become an anchor in the community that people have a con-nection to, do you think the town or the community would be same if the railway didnt exist?

They say Inchicore people are very clannish but I suppose you get that in alot of commu-nities. I myself, am a railway child, I couldn’t imagine life without the railway growing up. Where I lived on the railway ranch across the road there were no Ballyfermot houses, and we used to see the trains. We would time get-ting up in the morning, my father would time it. When you didn’t have a clock, the Cork train would be going down or the Kerry train

and we would see the lovely steam engines. There was a hooter that went off in the morn-ing at 07:30, 07:55 and 08:00 to remind you of work. It went off again at about 13:00 and 14:00 and in the evening time at around 17:00 or 17:15. All the men would rush down, at that time there was no cars, there was thou-sands of men working. It was exciting, we worked very hard. I often saw my own father coming down, you could only see the whites of his eyes, he worked in the foundry. He would come down and you could smell the foundry off him. The black sand was unbe-lievable. I can’t help it but im just passionate about, the estate, the ranch, and around In-chicore. I see big changes, sometimes not for the best, around here. But I have to say, the new people around here that come in, take a great interest in the place and are very much involved in it. I have lovely and happy memo-ries of the works and it really put food on the table for our mothers. The men worked hard for it now. It was a lovely community.

You were born here in Inchicore?

I was, and I grew up in a place called the Puck. Inchicore is full of pockets, you have places like the Ranch, the Bungalow, peo-ple normally don’t refer to places by the place names or street names, but they refer to them as areas. The area that I grew up in was called the Puck. Its no longer there but the nearest place, would be around Tyrone place. There was 22 houses on the road, it was called Tram Terrace, otherwise known as Thomas Davis Street. Growing up we were part of every house, every front door was open, as young fellas we were in and out of every house, and every one was in and out of your houses. Going back 60 years now, I can still name every household that was in that terrace.

There was quite a strong sense of commu-nity in the area?

There was a very strong sense of commu-nity, locally amoung the people that lived here. There was a very strong sense of com-munity amoung the local streets here, the likes of Tyrconnell park had its sense of community. In Tram Terrace and probably every second house, the father of the house worked in CIE, in Buses or in the Railway. There was a great local sense and there was a great sense of being part of Inchicore.

The Inchicore that I know is a village, I feel very strongly that Dublin City Coun-cil has lost the plot in relation to Inchicore. They have missed many opportunities in terms of the development of Inchicore. Its a disgrace what they have allowed happen through planning permission, and through money grabbing, in allowing the develop-ment of Inchicore in the way that they have.

Is there anything in particular?

If you look at the development of the hous-es along the Camac, and you look at the old Tram Yards, its a disgrace, an absolute dis-grace, and Im saying that as a person who loves Inchicore. The infrastructure is not there to support all the additional houses that have been built here. There has been no interest in the development or building up of the social infrastructure. They put in the physical infrastructure and left it at that. They physical infrastructure is a dis-grace, if you look at the tram yards, those appartments there that they built on them. Disgraceful, I can’t visualise how they have passed regulations admitting fire services for these developments. If there was a fire their in the morning, it would be chaotic.

Have you heard about the recent develop-ment of the Dublin Underground Dart in Inchicore?

Father FitzpatrickOblate Parish Priest

I have.

How has that been received by the people of Inchicore?

Inchicore people here are delighted with the Luas, and public transport, the Luas is a tremendous addition to Inchicore.

The first church built here, was a wooden church constructed by the workers of the Great Southern and Western Railway, how has the church developed from the first construction?

It was a green field site here over a 150 years ago, the oblates came here to try and reach out to workers. Theres a nice story, when we celebrated 150 years of the works, we invited the manager of CIE at the time to a celebration meal, and after the meal he said a few words. We wanted to address the issue of the railway workers at the time building the wooden church, after hours. He said there was a rumour at the time that half of the materials that were used in the building of the church came from the railway works, and he said I want to put an end to those rumours, and say that there is no truth in those stories. It wasn’t half of the material that was stolen from the rail-way works, it was all the material. I think most people who lived in Inchicore at that

time, or again fifty years ago, would have known that alot of material came out of the railway works. I suppose that created from the outset a great bond between the railway workers, and the priests here in Inchicore. That has been handed down over the past 150 years and there would still be a tremen-dous loyalty from the people of Inchicore, to the Oblates. There must be at least twen-ty Oblate priests, that have come out of that group of houses, and there is probably only 150 houses in that estate. We are ma-nily a missionary order, working in South Africa, South America, Canada, the North Pole, Australia, New Zealand, and many of these Oblate Priests that have come from Tyrconnell Park have worked in all sorts of different parts of the world.

Inchicore was also very famous for its crib. We had wax figures that came from Frnace at around the time of the French Revolu-tion when religion was being kicked out of France, and those figures arrived here with some of the French Oblates. That crib hap-pened to be burned down around 1950, and it was a huge loss to the people, but In-chicore was very famous for its crib. It was also very famous for the Grotto, its a replica of the Lourdes Grotto. They were some of the features of Inchicore that attracted peo-ple from all over the country to visit this church or this shrine.

When was the Grotto constructed?

About 1930, and we just refurbished it there in the last year.

Would that have been built by the railway aswell?

No, local people would have worked on the Grotto.

Behind the church there is one of the largest green spaces in Inchicore, is it used by the community?

It is yes, we are trying to safe guard that and I would feel very strongly that it would be preserved and safeguarded as a sacrid space. At the moment the children use it at the school as a playground. At different times people in the community have used it, footbal teams in the past have used it. We have a number of facilities here on the site, we have a school, which goes back to around the 1930s and we have a very sig-nificant basketball hall which predates, the national basketball areana in Tallaght. We have a big outreach not only to people of the area but to forgein nationals who are interested in playing basketball. But there is also a big service there for people who suffer from drug addiction. We have a cre-che, and the scouts, so we have a fair out-

reach to the community from the site here. One of the issues for the church now is the care of the environemnt and the care of the earth, and I think this particular area is an ideal place for people to experience that. We would consider at some stage trying to offer some it as allotments, but at this stage we are trying to keep it traffic free and thats a huge challenge actually.

There used to be quite a lot of allotments in the railway estate, would allotments have been a feature in Inchicore?

Well, if you look at the canal, right down to Leason Street Bridge, I see people have now developed them along there, and when you come into Inchicore from Kilmainham, just on the right hand side under the Gaol theres an open piece of ground there, but in my time that was alotments. Where those new computer centres are near the memo-rial park, one of those sites used to be allot-ments, so people around here would have that in their genes.

I feel that the railway is a tremdous asset in this area, that is totally un-usesd, I was un-aware that there was a heritage person up there. Now they are talking about people around the country doing sheds, they go in and they combine there skills and their tal-ents. Particularly people in early retirement or who are are un-employed, and they will gather in a garge

Father FitzpatrickOblate Parish Priest

to do some common project. It might be making a boat. There were so many skills. One of the huge assets of Inchicore over the years was the quality of the tradesmen that were here. They were the people that were making the buses, every skill, every trade, craft that you can think of was here in In-chicore and it was mainly because of the tradesmen, and that went from upholestry, carpentry, electricity, painting, sheet metal workers. and if they wern’t in the rail-way they were in Guinness’. Every house, or every second house had trades people. That was a huge asset in the place, because people had steady employment, and steady wages and reasonably good wages, and it was a job for life. Like CIE and Guinness, they were lifetime employers, so that gave a great stabillity to the community. It an-chored the community. Unfortunitly that has been allowed to leak away. The shop keepers in the village centre have alot to answer for, but again I would ask DCC what are they doing? To try and improve the image and the shop fronts of the village centre. Surely they have it in their expertise to develop that centre as a resource for the community, but they have done everything but that. If you take a few photographs of the shop fronts down there, you will see that they are actually being abused. While DCC take in money for allowing all these appartments to be built upon the banks of the Camac. and they are lying unused.

You said that the industry and jobs in the town was anchor for the community, for example the railworks, do you think Inchicore could have developed into the town it is now with out that industry?

No, new people are coming in now, but the foundations of this community, and the roots go way back. It will be there when many of these new appartments crumble up, these roots will still be here. There are generations of people that are here. My own family, 4 generations of people are here in the community. That anchors a community big time. I have worked with DCC in different areas of the city, I know their policy statements, I know they have an interest in communites but their prac-tice runs contary to this belief. Thats what they have done here.

It is more than just planning permission grants, they have a responsibility to not just look at the physical infrastructre but also the social infrastructure.

I was a fitter in the railway. I started off in the steam engines and then the diesels came in. I was working in the fitting shops up there. But then I left it and I went to sea. I came back after a couple of years, I was doing engineer-ing jobs at sea in shipping, and I came back then to the works and I saw dif-ferent things had changed. There were new managers up there.

I became in charge later on but I was involved in the trade union movement. They were always offering me jobs be-cause I was a devil at it you know.

I was a member of the fire brigade in the works up in Inchicore aswell. We used to do practising every couple of weeks. We worked in the railway, but if there was ever a fire or anything the watchman would be told and he would ring up the power house, thats where the hooter was, and the hooter used to blow then three times. We would be

in different places but we always went down. There was a place up in the works there were they kept this fire en-gine. This Terrace that im living in, was originally for fire brigade people, and there was a bell up here and if there was a fire during the night, the watch-man would be able to ring that bell.

They used to dump all the waste from the locomotives and the steam en-gines here. When they came into Dub-lin they would stop for the night but they would have to clean out all of the fire waste. Some of the stuff used to be half burned and during the war we couldn’t get coal here. They used to come up here and dump it there, and we used to go up and pick up the bits.

Abercorn Terrace there was mainly for drivers, drivers of the steam engines. and when we were kids there was a couple of families up there, and when there father was leaving in the steam engine they would get up on the terracesand they

Peter WalkerRailway Terrace Resident and former Railway Worker

would be waving these lamps that they had and they would have candles wav-ing back to them.

You used to have to go down to golden bridge to a fellow and get turf, but what he used to do was, he used to wet it, to make it heavier. You would have to have a fire to dry it off first before you could get any heat out of it. The gas would only be on for certain times of the day, and if you were caught dur-ing the war using the gas outside of those hours they would stop the gas from coming in to you. Some of the houses here were all gas, they weren’t electricity. You couldn’t get any cable at all during the war to put in electricity. But after the war all the people started to get electricity because they were fed up with the coal.

STORY TELLING T h o m a s K i n s e l l a

Thomas Kinsella (born 4 May 1928) is an Irish poet, translator, editor, and publisher.

Kinsella was born in Inchicore, Dublin. He spent most of his childhood in the Kilmainham/Inchicore area of Dublin.

Thinking of Mr. D.

A man still light of foot, but ageing, took

An hour to drink his glass, his quiet tongue

Danced to such cheerful slander.

He sipped and swallowed with a scathing smile,

Tapping a polished toe.

His sober nod withheld assent.

When he died I saw him twice.

Once as he used retire

On one last murmured stabbing little tale

From the right company, tucking in his scarf.

And once down by the river, under wharf-

Lamps that plunged him in and out of light,

A priest-like figure turning, wolfish-slim,

Quickly aside from pain, in a bodily plight.

To note the oiled reflections chime and swim.

We are part of an architectural thesis group in UCD, entitled ‘Expanded Practice’. We are currently un-dertaking a reading of the landscape of Inchicore, it’s social history, architectural legacy and close rela-tionship to important landscape features such as the Cammock River and the Grand Canal.

Expanded Practice is a methodology of analysis, re-search and design that supplements the traditional design process, exploring modes of reading a place and designing architecture for it, which is associated with a more fluid set of processes and social condi-tions.

The daily methodology of our work involves consulta-tion with resources in both Inchicore and UCD. It is a collaboration, a sharing of information in order to plug this into the design process. It is of the utmost importance to the process that while practicing in an expanded field, the approach to analysis and repre-sentation is equally expanded, or expanding.

We endeavour to use as many varied methods of representation and analysis as possible in order to achieve a more expanded analysis of Inchicore. This methodology is developing as it is being applied, it is a learning and absorbing process that requires test-ing, experimentation and tweaking.

It is our hope that this analysis will contribute to the on-going discussion of how space and resource is used, in Inchicore and in a wider field.

This is a collection of thoughts, drawings, ideas , sug-gestions, interventions and history.

Visit us for a chat and some tea! Give us your thoughts or stories, learn a bit more about Inchicore’s history and development, see some old and current photos of the railway works or propose your own changes in the town.

We will be in:Common Ground, 15 Tyrconnell Road.Monday - Wednesday 10am-5:30pm (24th March - 2nd April)

Inchicore Sport and Social Club, Inchicore Square2-5pm, 5th April

See exhibition boards in Inchicore Public LibraryLibrary opening times, 7th - 17th April

We are a group of five UCD architecture students called Expanded Practice. We are doing a collaborative project with the people of Inchicore. Our goal is to generate a public discussion about how space is used in the area and what could potentially happen there to tap into its potential.

expandedpractice@gmail.com

W H OA R E W E ?

JOIN IN THEDISCUSSION!

C O N T A C T

Tear out this page, draw or write down your ideas or comments and drop them off at :Expanded PracticeCommon Ground, 15 Tyrconnell Road

Pop into our Ideas Exhibition for a chat and some tea and biscuits!

Saturday April 5th 2-5pmInchicore Sports and Social Club(Former CIE Hall)Inchicore Square

SUBMITY O U RIDEAS !