HERBERT PARK AND NEARBY IN BALLSBRIDGE THE ROAD RATHER THAN THE PUBLIC PARK
Herbert Park is the name of a road and a public park in Ballsbridge, Dublin.
Ballsbridge (from historic Ball’s Bridge) is an affluent neighbourhood of Dublin. The area is largely north and west of a three-arch stone bridge across the River Dodder, on the south side of the city. The sign on the bridge still proclaims it as “Ball’s Bridge”, in recognition of the fact that the original bridge on that location was built and owned by the Ball family, a well-known Dublin merchant family in the 1500s and the 1600s.[1] The current bridge was built in 1791.
The bridge itself forms the heart of the Ballsbridge suburb which extends northwards towards the Grand Canal along Northumberland Road up to Haddington Road and Shelbourne Road, southwards along the Merrion Road towards Merrion and along Anglesea Road towards Donnybrook, and westwards to encompass the area around Pembroke Road, Clyde Road, Elgin Road and Herbert Park.
Herbert Park, a public park, is thirty-two acres in size and is divided by a road, also called Herbert Park, and forms part of Ballsbridge’s nebulous border with Donnybrook.
The Royal Dublin Society (RDS) has its grounds here, and the Lansdowne Road headquarters of the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) is on the boundary between Ballsbridge and Irishtown. The corporate headquarters of Allied Irish Banks (AIB) are also located in Ballsbridge.
Ailesbury Road, along with adjacent Shrewsbury Road, contains the most expensive properties in Dublin, and the roads are featured in the Irish edition of the board-game Monopoly. Shrewsbury Road was the sixth most expensive street in the world in 2007.
Many of Dublin’s embassies and diplomatic residences are located in the southern part of Ballsbridge on and around Ailesbury Road. The British, American, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Israeli embassies are all located in the Ballsbridge area of Dublin.
The U.S. embassy, an iconic cylindrical building, is a major landmark in present-day Ballsbridge. It was designed in 1955 by John M. Johansen, Professor of Architecture at Yale University. The project was 9 years in incubation and the building was inaugurated in 1964.
The marshy patch of ground that Herbert Park currently stands on was previously known as the Forty Acres. The area has a long history, dating back to the early thirteenth century when it was owned by the Priory of All Hallows, an Augustinian foundation.
For centuries the park was part of the vast Fitzwilliam Estate until it was inherited by the 11th Earl of Pembroke in 1816. In 1903, the earl gave the site to Pembroke Urban District Council for development as a public park. The park is named after his father, Sidney Herbert (1810-1861).
The famous Dublin International Trades’ Exhibition was held on the site in 1907, housing exhibits from across the British Empire (including a complete Somalian village). The existing duck pond was constructed for the exhibition to house the ‘Canadian Waterchute’, but little else remains of the original buildings. The park was taken over by Dublin Corporation in 1932.
The park is thirty-two acres in size and is in two halves, divided by a road, also called Herbert Park. A full circuit of the park’s perimeter is almost exactly one mile (1.57 km),[3] a fact used by runners and walkers to measure their progress. The larger half, on the south side of the road, is bounded by the River Dodder, houses, and includes a number of soccer pitches, formal gardens, and a large duck pond and an older public children’s playground. A gazebo is also present in the North-Eastern corner of the park at the entrance to the Herbert Park Hotel.
The northern half is home to the newly refurbished public children’s playground, a number of tennis courts, and the bowling green of Herbert Park Bowling Club.
The park’s pond has proven to be an excellent location for breeding of carp. In February 2006 the pond was nearly completely emptied in order for cleaning to take place. The carp were removed to alternative locations. These carp were up to 2 feet (0.61 m) in length. In spring 2009, the pond was re-stocked.
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