Historic town in Unknown Townland

The historic town of Dublin was described in the Urban Survey by Bradley and King (1988) as follows; 'Dublin is the largest city in Ireland. It commenced on the south bank of the Liffey as a Viking port town although there may have been native Irish settlements preceding it. The Viking town clustered around the Christ Church ridge and had its long axis arranged east-west along High Street. By 1100 it was already enclosed by walls and was the most important town in Ireland. In 1170 it was seized on by the Anglo-Normans who made it the administrative centre of the Lordship of Ireland. It was retained by the crown throughout the Middle Ages as a royal city. The Anglo-Normans were great economic entrepreneurs and Dublin was expanded by them during the thirteenth century. Land in the area of the south quays was reclaimed from Liffey, and suburbs were established on the north bank of the river, in Thomas Street, Patrick Street, Bride Street, Kevin Street, and Dame Street. These suburbs, established during the expansionist years of the thirteenth century, were to decline and fade by the end of the fifteenth. The period after 1550, however, saw an economic revival with expanding overseas trade and the input of English monies as part of the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland. The old suburbs re-emerged and land was reclaimed from the marshes on the east of the city. The seventeenth century, despite its wars was a period of prosperity. Economic improvement continued in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when the city centre took on the shape which it largely retains to this day. The present century has seen the continued expansion of the city on all sides, such that it now occupies an area of many square miles, a far cry from the tiny Viking nucleus established around Christ Church Cathedral. The city's significance to Irish history may be gauged from the fact that it is was the most important Viking town in Ireland, the seat of the Anglo-Norman administration of Ireland, and the undoubted capital of Ireland since 1650. Dublin was established as a longphort in 841. The location of the initial settlement appears to have been near Kilmainham-Islandbridge where a cemetery of ninth century date was discovered over one hundred years ago (Wilde 1866-9; Coffey and Armstrong 1910; Boe 1940, 11-65; Wallace 1985a, 107-8). In 902 the settlement was captured by an Irish alliance and its destruction was so thorough that Dublin was abandoned. When the dispossessed Vikings returned in 917 they established themselves in a different location, on a spur overlooking the confluence of the rivers Liffey and Poddle in the vicinity of the present-day Christ Church cathedral (Graham-Campbell 1976, 40). The morphology of this new settlement has been the subject of important papers by Clarke (1977) and Simms (1979), but nothing is known about the layout of the earlier longphort. Clarke (1977, 41) has suggested that this new foundation was at the site of two earlier Irish settlements, Ath Cliath, a farming community controlling the ford, and Dubhlinn, an ecclesiastical community overlooking the "black pool" from which the town derives its name. If these Irish settlements existed they were almost certainly of rural character, however, and the beginnings of Dublin as a town rest clearly with the Vikings. Early Dublin's most dominant topographical feature was a long narrow ridge, some 15m high, running parallel to the river. It was a location that was easy to defend but the new site had a number of other important advantages. It had a sheltered haven at a point where the Liffey was not only broad but fordable; it was at the intersection of three major long-distance land routes, and it was also close to Dublin Bay. This combination of favourable geographical factors has prompted Clarke to suggest the existence of a pre-viking settlement overlooking the ford, the ath cliath first mentioned in mid seventh century sources. In his analysis of Dublin's early topography he has also identified an ecclesiastical enclosure, co-extensive with the medieval parish of St. Peter, overlooking the dubh linn (black pool) from which the city derives its name. The outline of this enclosure is preserved in the modern street pattern, immediately southeast of the Viking town. Clarke has identified it with the otherwise mysterious ecclesiastical site of Dubh Linn, whose abbots obits are noted in the seventh and eight centuries. Both of these settlements, however, were rural in character and the beginnings of Dublin as a town rest clearly with the Vikings. The Layout of Viking Dublin Simms analysis of the first large-scale map of Dublin, prepared by Jean Rocque in 1756, has identified three plan-units within the walled medieval town. The first unit is centred around the intersection of two routes the east-west axis of Castle Street/Christ Church Place, and the north-south axis of Fishamble Street/ Werburgh Street. The primacy of the east-west route is suggested by the fact that it hugs the northern edge of the ridge and avoids any alteration in street level. By contrast both Fishamble Street and Werburgh Street lead down steep slopes, and the marked bend in Fishamble Street probably arose in order to avoid a sharp break in slope. The boundary of this first plan-unit on the north, east and south is indicated by the line of the town wall, while its western extent can be gauged from two features, the curving alignment of the former Ross Lane, on the southwest, and the excavated portion of the town's tenth century rampart on the northwest. Archaeological support for this analysis comes from the excavations at Fishamble Street where the houses and plots were laid out in the early tenth century (Wallace 1984, 114-6), in contrast with the evidence from High Street and Winetavern Street where the earliest levels were dated to c. 1010-1030 (Murray 1983, 43, 203). Interestingly two routes merge immediately outside the western entrance to Simms first plan-unit, the route leading to the ford, represented by High Street, and the route south, represented by Nicholas Street. High Street was evidently the more important of these two routeways because it forms the axis of the second plan-unit, an extension of the original settlement to the west. The length of the High Street plots is irregular and Simms Suggestion that this may indicate piecemeal growth is supported by the archaeological evidence which has shown that the property boundaries did not stabilise until the mid eleventh century (Murray 1983, 43-9). The boundaries of this plan-unit on the south, west and north coincide with the medieval town wall. Thus the walled area of the Viking town would have comprised about twelve hectares. In the light of this analysis it is interesting to note that the archaeological evidence suggests that the oldest parts of the Viking town, the first plan-unit, were also the wealthiest (Murray 1983, 54-60). High Street, in contrast, was an area of large yards with small dwellings and workshops which probably supported an artisan population. Simms third Plan-unit lies to the north of the other two, and is a more regularly laid-out area, north of Cook Street, which archaeological evidence indicates was reclaimed from the river Liffey during the early years of the thirteenth century. Dublin is particularly fortunate in that the combination of archaeological research and .town plan analysis has successfully identified its earliest growth stages, but the most important result of the archaeological excavations is undoubtedly the evidence which they have provided for town layout. Excavation on the west side of Fishamble Street revealed ten plots, all of which were aligned to the modern street. The individual plots were trapezoidal with the broad end fronting onto the street and they stretched back to the earthen embankment which defended the town. The property divisions were separated from their neighbours by a wooden fence, and