School in Blackpitts
14 Aug 1969St. Kevin’s National School for boys was built 1894-’95, and officially opened on April 20 in the latter year. The directories give St. Kevin’s as fronting on to Blackpitts, a street name found on Brooking’s map of 1728, but as Liam’s drawing shows, the school wall butts on to Donovan Lane, a name shown on maps of 1821. The boundary between the possessions of St. Thomas’s Abbey (afterwards the “Earl of Meath’s Liberty”) and the possessions of St. Patrick’s Cathedral (afterwards the Liberty of St. Sepulchre) ran down the middle of Blackpitts because this was the course of the original Poddle, altered sometime between 1245 and 1324 in order to drive new mills for St. Thomas’s Abbey. Father Myles Ronan’s researches have established that this Abbey mill stream went from Harold’s Cross to Donore Avenue, around by Pimlico and Ardee Street to Warrenmount and rejoins the old course where Blackpitts meets New Row.
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