Dublin Port Flour Mill Artists’ Campus
Reshaping Dublin: Why we need to repurpose spaces instead of annihilating them
I am currently reading Homesick at the New Yorker, a biography of the Irish writer Maeve Brennan by Angela Bourke, and every few paragraphs I find myself Google mapping different addresses that make up her childhood in Ranelagh and surrounding areas to see if they’re familiar.
Both her parents were involved in Irish political happenings that led to the Easter Rising, the War of Independence, the Civil War, and the signing of the Treaty, as well as the establishment of the Irish Press. They spent the 1920s raising children and working towards a republic. Her father Bob worked as a journalist by day and revolted by night (he stayed in different safe houses around Ranelagh, Rathmines, and Terenure to avoid raids from the Black and Tans), and this regularly landed him in prison in Dublin and in the UK. Her mother Úna, who was the first women to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood, did her part as a member of Inghinidhe na hÉireann an Cumann na mBan, as well as storing documents and providing beds for volunteers.
A couple of addresses that really stuck out to me. The first is the Georgian townhouse Denmark House on 21 Great Denmark Street. A nursing home run by Estrea Cutler, a Protestant nurse, it was rumoured to be part of the Irish feminist network. Úna gave birth to one of her children here when Bob was serving time in Lewes Prison. The nurses working there bent the rules so that any women staying there could use the hospital’s address for their husband, rather than a HMS Prison address. This feminist safe house for rebel women is now converted flats.
Another spot is 37 Charlemont Street, which was St. Ultan’s Children’s Hospital, the first children’s hospital in Ireland. Opened in 1919 by revolutionaries Dr Kathleen Lynn and Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, who would later found Ireland’s BCG programme, it is now a Clayton Hotel. Charlemont Street is where the Green Luas line now runs, but this same line used to carry a train that ran from St. Stephen’s Green and out through Ranelagh and Milltown, all the way to Bray, Co. Wicklow. Imagine that.
While some of these stories are enshrined to plagues, others have been forgotten or demolished from sight, erasing the culture and the history of the areas. The loss of that great train line is particularly huge, as are many of the train lines that used to course across the country, because it felt like there was a plan then to connect Ireland and to promote creativity in each corner of the country. This was part of the republicans’ greater mission to support, encourage, and spread local produce and culture.
During the week, I was very lucky to be part of a group of disabled artists to visit the site of the proposed Flour Mill Artists’ Campus in the old Odlum’s Factory in Dublin Port led by the Arts Council and Grafton Architects with the support of Dublin Port. Throughout the tour, I kept thinking how this ambitious project will bring life back to Dublin, reclaiming spaces for the benefit of the people who live here while integrating the local history, and it could easily bring life back to other parts of the country too.
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