Firhouse Weir
2 Aug 1972This is the Firhouse Weir on the River Dodder which was of vital importance to every citizen of Dublin for the best part of eight hundred years. This remarkable piece of early engineering must have been standing before 1244 as in that year an inquiry was held to find the best way to bringing a water supply from the Dodder into the city; a channel was cut above this weir from which the water came down to the “Stone Boat” at Tonguefield in Kimmage, and was there divided to serve both St. Thomas’s Abbey and the rest oi the city around the Castle and St. Patrick’s (“Know Your Dublin,” 30-10-70 and 14-11-70). It has been suggested that this weir was originally built by the Augustinian Canons of St. Thomas’s Abbey (which had been founded in 1177). It anyhow was so far back that the name of its original designer is lost. Significant, too, is the fact that the whole area around the Firhouse Weir is in Templeogue townland, which here comes right across the Dodder, like an ancient property boundary. The Poddle itself, after rising in the Green Hills, joins into this City Water Course and I suggest that Tymon Castle, which survived till less than twenty years ago, was intended to defend the Poddle sources. The Firhouse Weir gave Dublin its only water supply until 1775, when the Grand Canal water was brought into operatlon.
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