In Marrowbone Lane
11 Feb 1970Liam’s drawing here recalls one of the strangest corruptions that have befallen any Dublin street name. It is marked, but not named, on Brooking’s map of 1728, and seems to be distorted from “St. Mary le Bourne,” perhaps because the great Cistercian Abbey of St. Mary’s, on the North side, had some South side possessions here. The “Bourne” or stream, is of course, the Poddle, or a branch of same, which has been carefully mapped by the late Rev. Father M. V. Ronan, the historian, in an article he wrote for the Journal of the Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (Volume 57). Long since put underground, the Poddle still flows beneath the north side of Marrowbone Lane, between Robert Street and Price’s Row, and early in the last century, there is a record of a poor woman being drowned In Marrowbone Lane, by falling through the rotting floor of a cellar and being swept away by the Poddle In flood. Marrowbone Lane Distillery (Jameson and Robertson’s) is shown on the corner of Forkes Lane, on the 1847 Ordnance map, there was a tremendous fire here in 1875.
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