Oliver St. John Gogarty

Oliver St. John Gogarty

23 Dec 1944

In St. Patrick’s time the site of what is now the City of Dublin, the Seventh City of Christendom, was called the Ridge of the Hazels. Hazels were largely distributed over the land, and they formed the principal woods: thus Silva virgulti on the shore of Strangford Lough , the Wood of tho Wattles, which were so useful for house-building as it was practised in the Ireland of old. The wattles or laths were woven between upright poles and plastered with clay. This made the ” “lime-white mansions” and the roofs were thatched.

Later, maybe, perhaps contemporaneously, what is now Dublin was called Ath Cliath , Hurdle Ford. Archbishop Healy writes:
The Ford of the Hurdles, which gave its Irish name to Dublin, was a rude bridge over the Liffey, somewhere near the head of the tide near Kingsbridge.

This, as I have reason to know , is somewhat inaccurate. The Liffey is tidal right up to Island Bridge, where the weir at the boat-house of the Dublin University Rowing Club holds back and deepens its stream. The Ford of the Hurdles was at the end of the great road which ran south from Tara through Batterstown (a corruption of Boher, the road) and crossed the Liffey where the Ridge of the Hazels was highest, and where afterwards the ships could find fair harbourage on the north side of the river at tho Dark Linn. This, Black Pool or Dark Linn was at the junction of the little river Poddle with the Liffey, and from it Dublin derives its name.
The road from Tara crossed the river there, and, as anyone who lives in Dublin can see, the river must have been fordable at low tide through any point of its course through the city. This is so even now, when its current is fathered so well by the great granite walls built by Grattan’s Parliament.
The road from Tara crossed the Liffey at the Hurdle Ford, and the road from Tara, passing through “Batterstown”, reached Stoneybatter, and crossed the water at the Hurdle Ford to go on to Bohernabreena , where the public hostel ar caravanserai of tho Derga was at Bohernabreena , the “Road-House” or hostel of De Derga on on the river Dodder. This is portion of the Archbishop’s- account of St. Patrick’s visit to our city:e
Here we must pause to consider the question whether or not. Patrick really visited the place called in his time Ath Cliath, but known as Dublin to tho Danes or Ostmen. We have already referred to the brief and suspicious reference in tho Homily on St . Patrick in the Lebar Brece to this alleged visit of the Saint to Ath Cliath. But Jocelyn gives

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