Kimmage Road Lower
The Kimmage Road Lower runs from the Kimmage Cross Roads (KCR) until its junction with Harold’s Cross Road.
There were cottages on the Kimmage Road Lower in the mid-19th century and these are evident on the first edition Ordinance Map of 1837. The residential development of the Kimmage area had increased by the early 20th century and rows of terraced houses were constructed on the Kimmage Road Lower in the late 19th and early 20th centuries particularly at the north end. – Kimmage Busconnects Scheme documentation.
Association with Poddle
The original course of the Poddle after it had given up one third of its water at the Tongue continued its course to Dublin City, flowing through the grounds of the present Mount Argus Church and the former Loaders Park Mills there, then along the present Lower Kimmage Road (flowing under the front gardens of some houses there) and Harold’s Cross Road where it flowed under the Grand Canal and along Clanbrassil Street, Blackpitts, New Row and Patrick Street…
Source: Finola Watchorn – “Crumlin and the Way it Was”

What the Newspapers Say
- Irish Press 13 Mar 1937: Dublin Fire Brigade was called out yesterday to pump water from houses in low-lying parts where flooding had occurred, in Rutland Avenue, Larklield Road, Kimmage, Harold’s Cross Green, Mount Argus, and Ashtown. Water entered cottages in Rutland Avenue to a depth of three feet, when the small River Poddle, where it passes underground at Dolphin’s Barn, became choked up about midnight on Thursday. Residents remained up all night endeavouring to make passages for the water to escape. A workman had to climb through a window to get to his work yesterday morning.
- Irish Press 30 Nov 1985: Poddle surfaces in garden. Dublin’s Poddle River — which runs much of its course underground and once supplied the old city’s water needs — claimed a suburban garden yesterday. An astonished Mrs. Maureen Cooke opened the front door of her red-bricked home at No. 9 Kimmage Road, yesterday morning to find a ten-foot square hole where part of her front garden once stood. … The culvert which carries the river, running less than six feet beneath the front gardens of the neat two-storey houses on Kimmage Road, collapsed yesterday morning because of subsidence.