Near Poddle Mouth
30 Oct 1973Looking down Little Ship Street, towards the Castle gate, you are looking at one of the most historic spots in old Dublin.
The division of ancient Ship Street into “Little” and “Great,” seems to have taken place about 1700, as it is undivided on Sir Bernard Gomme’s map of 1673, but property in “Little Ship Street” figures in the will of Isaac Vauteau, of Dublin, dated April 1711. The street name here is Vicus Ovinus in mediaeval documents, na Caorach, on modern name-plates, linking back with the days when shepherds brought their herds here to the Poddle’s banks, to bargain and trade with the foreigners, in their new fortress on the ridge, protected by the Liffey on one hand, the Poddle on the other. I believe myself that the hollow you still see today, where Little and Great Ship Streets join, is the original pool, or puddle, or Poddle, from which Dublin’s most historic river took its name.
Gomme’s map of 1673 shows a pool here, but even more to the point is the Statement of Case made in 1678 by the authorities of St. Andrew’s Parish, in their dispute with St. Werburgh’s. in which it was said “the Sea did anciently flow up as far as Ship Street, where it met the stream that came down under Pole Gate Bridge”. Here, the Poddle was checked by the tide, long before the ancient harbour of Dublin (on the site of Parliament Street) was filled in.
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