Dublin Districts.

The Districts of Dublin.

The result of a 30-year odyssey by Antoine D’Alton to give the capital’s neighbourhoods a distinct identity.

Antoine writes:

The map which is set out above brings together the different traditions, and folk memories which have forged the city’s identity. This map is based on my own orientation of the city, with one or two ideas thrown in for good measure.

I have tried to be faithful to the names which have been with us since time immemorial, also I wanted to note some of the areas that have been subsumed into other places but in truth form a place of their own such as Simmonscourt and Portobello.

I resurrected The Monto and created one or two most notably, I have renamed the IFSC and replaced in with Joyce-Beckett, after two of the city’s literary giants…

…Where possible, I have amalgamated some names to take on board the original name of a street and the one by which it is known today. O’Connell-Sackville of course is an amalgam, bearing in mind that O’Connell Street was originally known Sackville Street until 1924….

I have used the amalgam Westland-Pearse for the area around Pearse street. As most native Dubliners know, the original name of the station was Westland Row and that is still the name of the street where the front entrance to the railway station is…..

I have divided the area around Camden Street in two, on the one side is Camden-Iveagh and the other is Camden-Salem. The first doesn’t require any explanation, the other most certainly does.

Most Dubliners will be aware that at the end of the 19th century there was a wave of Jewish migration from Russia’s Pale of Settlement which corresponds with much of today’s Eastern Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Belarus. Like earlier refugees they were escaping the pogroms and so some of them ended up in Dublin or to the west of Camden Street. This area became known as ‘Little Jerusalem’. I took the name Salem as a diminutive of Jerusalem and suffixed it to Camden to forge an identity for this part of the city.

One or two district names on the map will require an explanation but no more than the place I refer to as Freetown.

I recognised quite early on, this neighbourhood is very special, and to this day retains some of the original Dutch Billys or gabled house in the Flemish style that were once predominant on the city skyline.

I thought this would be an interesting location for Dublin’s equivalent of Christiania a sort of Freetown where real Dubliners could call their own. It was supposed to be Templebar, but you know what happened? Either way, the area around Aungier Street was Dublin’s French quarter, particularly in the late 17th century when a large number of French Huguenots, Walloons and Flemish refugees settled in the area, and the adjoining Liberties.

Recognising that this area is related to the Old Town and The Liberties, I felt it was distinct and required a name of its own. With a bit of word play, involving the words Town, Liberties and Refuge, the name Freetown emerged which has a nice ring to it….[more at link below)

FIGHT!

Dublin Districts (Funkshot)