The watercourse
1 May 1972THERE has been much useful representation about preservation of national monuments, street facades, canals, open spaces, etc., in relation to urban life. What prompts this letter is the first blow dealth this month to another type of monument—The Ancient (City) Watercourse. For seven hundred and twenty-seven years, from 1245 to the present day, this miniature canal connecting the Dodder and the Poddle has remained unchanged and uninterfered with, semi-miraculous in view of the fact that this is now within the city boundaries. This was due to enactments which obliged the Corporation to keep it in good repair right up to 1867 the city of Dublin depended on it for its water supply when the Vartry supply replaced it
But on April 7 it was reported that the biggest single planning permission granted to a developer in recent times was that for 323 houses at Wellington Lane. The Watercourse is in the way (and in any case has outlived its original purpose) and the Corporation has worked out the necessary diversion. Perhaps the only way to preserve it for posterity in view of its connection with early Norman Dublin would be in film, photograph, sketches and texts. It would be good to think that some such interested body as The Old Dublin Society (which has already published valuable information about the Watercourse from time to time) is recording this “brilliant engineering conception”, as a Corporation report has it.
It will not be long now until the growth tentacles of Tallaght touch those of Wellington Lane, strangling not only the Watercourse, but the countryside between Whitehall road and Balrothery (the “head” of the Watercourse and for which there is another residential planning application awaiting approval)
The Watercourse is not marked on the Draft Development Plan as an item for preservation and one can’t help thinking that apart from its historical associations could have preserved as amenity. After all, the Cam at Cambridge is not much wider than the Poddle at Kimmage And anyone who can afford it is willing to pay for an artificial fountain, pond or lake.
But there is a flow of water already available from the Dodder and is it to be turned off? As it is, the Watercourse has been put to beautiful use in at least one place. But already it may be too late. Events move swiftly. For instance, I took a photograph of the Mount Down Mill at the end of the Watercourse, but for some reason it did not print well, and when I went to retake, it has been razed and has entirely disappeared.
(Sr.) ANN DOMINICA FITZGERALD, O.P Donnybrook, Dublin 4.
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