A liberty street
29 Oct 1973This is Mill Street which is a street truly in the Liberties as it runs from the top of New Row across to Clarence Mangan Road which was once top of the Crooked Stall, now Ardee Street.
This is all within the Liberty of Donore all part of the Earl of Meath’s Liberties that once belonged to the Abbey of St Thomas. Doubtless it was from the successors to the Abbey mills on the Poddle that Mill Street took its name. We first hear of Mill Street in 1711 in the will of Isaac Vaneau whose name should thoroughly Hugenot, and whose descendants are still with us (as tanners) about 1780. In Mill Street, industry has prevailed for near a century and a half. About 1830 we find four tanners including one specialist in Morocco leather, plus a solitary “fancy weaver” here, while a generation later there area five tanners and a parchment maker. O’ Keefe’s arrived by 1880’s when there area still two tan-yards going strong – (Molloy & Co. and Hayes Brothers) Today a walk down Mill Street can sometimes be an education for any nose. for when your are about halfway along near Mill Lane you are assailed by the rich smell of a sweet factory and at the same time there comes the equally rich but less pleasant odour of O’Keefe’s.