Underground

22 Apr 2000

At the time – the end of the last ice age – sea levels were 45m lower and Dublin’s rivers, including the Liffey, Poddle. Stein and Camac, cut deep gorges down into the rock. Dr. Philips says. “As the ice melted and sea levels rose, the rivers slowed down and gutted those channels with sand and gravel.” In fact, what he describes as a “mini Grand Canyon”, with bedrock cut by the River Stein (now a sewer), once dipped 100ft below the front of Trinity College. Gathering together with the Poddle, the Liffey and the Gallows stream at the current site of thc Screen Cinema on Hawkins Street, the rivers formed a pool in which marauding Vikings used to moor.

Thankfully, this is not the case with the scene of another planned heist. Encountering the Poddle once again, this time through a manhole near Marsh’s Library, reminds one of Orson Welles’ adventures in The Third Man. It was here, in a large foul sewer that charts a course to the Liffey beneath Patrick Street, Werburgh Street and Temple Bar, that a team of bank robbers almost pulled off the big one. Crossing the watercourse beneath what is now the Millennium Park, they burst into Allied Irish Bank on Dame Street, almost 6m below ground. Luckily for AIB. a raucous set of alarms scared them off; but ever since, for security reasons, Gardai carefully monitor the culvert.

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