Case Studies   Urban Regeneration in the City of Dublin: Partnership structures and integrated area planning

Kilmainham-Inchicore: a brief history

Kilmainham and the village of Inchicore which lies at its centre, is approximately 5 km due west of Dublin city centre. The area is enclosed within the boundaries of the river Liffey and the Phoenix park to the North and the Grand Canal to the South. When it was first brought within the boundaries of Dublin Corporation in 1900, it was at the edge of the city. Since then the city suburbs have gradually expanded beyond it. It could now be considered to be at the outer edge of the inner-city, more or less half way between the central city core and the outer suburbs.

The area has played an important role in each era of Dublin’s development and this is symbolised in its landscape. One hundred years before the Vikings established their stronghold at Wood Quay they settled here in a “proto-town” (Inchicore and Kilmainham Development Project). The meeting of two rivers, the Camac and the Liffey provided an ideal setting as the fresh, flowing water was critical for transport, defence and as a source of energy. There was also a strong Norman presence in the area. The political history of the nation is symbolised by Kilmainham Gaol. Opened by the British in 1792, it was used to imprison many of the key figures in the Irish nationalist movement in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and was the location for the execution of the leaders of the 1916 rebellion. Kilmainham Gaol is now a heritage centre and a popular venue for tourists.

There are a wealth of buildings in the area, which are considered to be of both architectural and historical significance. For example, the Royal Hospital, now the Irish Museum of Modern Art, is considered the finest seventeenth century building in Ireland. In 1989 the Inchicore and Kilmainham Heritage group was set up locally in order to highlight he needs of the area and heighten awareness of its heritage sites to both conservations and planners. The physical symbols from the past in the built environment contribute to the strong identity and sense of place locally, and provide a good foundation from which to build a sustainable community in the neighbourhood, (Benson and Corcoran , 2000).

The opening of the Grand Canal in 1779 provide an impetus to the development of a major paper mill in the area which survived in various forms up toe the middle of the twentieth century, (O’Broin, 1999). The Goldenbridge industrial estate now stands on the site of the old paper mill, and its evolution from a traditional manufacturing centre to its present mixture of warehousing, wholesaling and publishing is emblematic of what has happened to much of the Irish urban economy since the 1960s. The arrival of the Great Southern and Western railway in the 1840s was a major event in the social and economic development of the area, as the railway company choose Inchicore as the site for its engineering works. At its peak the enterprise employed 2000 workers (O Broin, 1999), and was the closest thing to a large scale heavy engineering industry in the Dublin area. Much of the housing in parts of Kilmainham was built by the railway company in the nineteenth century for its employees. Since the 1960s, the railway works has dwindled to the point where they now only provide maintenance services for Irish rail, employing a greatly reduced workforce and having only modest economic significance.

Introduction to the study    Housing Tenure