VERY LOW RAILWAY BRIDGE AT BOSTON SIDINGS[ GRAND CANAL QUAY – CLANWILLIAM TERRACE]
I had not noticed until day that traffic under this bridge is limited to cyclists/motorbikes and pedestrians.
Many years ago a friend was on his way home from school and saw a double deck bus crash into this bridge. We never found out why the driver decide that he could fit under the bridge. Some of the boys at school had mentioned that the driver who was well known in the area usually drove a single deck bus and that he often took a unapproved shortcut back, at the end of the day, to the nearby garage [maybe it was nothing more than an urban myth]. Also, looking at the bridge today I am fairly confident that no type of bus could every have passed under this bridge.
One side of the bridge is Grand Canal Quay while the other side is Clanwilliam Terrace. The Malting Tower is located at the bridge and it usually incorporated a restaurant [I say usually because there have been a number of different restaurants over the years].
I know very little about the Malting Tower other than it was built in 1860 and restored in 2002. Also,It was occupied by volunteers during the Easter Rising.
To the best of my knowledge the construction site to be seen in some of my photographs is known as Boston Sidings having frontage on to Macken Street and Grand Canal Quay/Clanwilliam Terrace and is likely to accommodate an office block of ten storeys.
Google has an office complex on Grand Canal Quay which is in the Grand Canal Harbour area of Dublin Docklands.
The Grand Canal Docks first opened in 1796. At the time they were the world’s largest docks. They fell into decline within just a few decades, due mostly to reduced canal usage with the arrival of the railways. The landscape was overwhelmed by Dublin Gas Company’s mountains of black coal, along with chemical factories, tar pits, bottle factories and iron foundries. However, bakers and millers maintained business along the southern edge of the inner basin. By the 1960s, the Grand Canal Docks were almost completely derelict.
Around 1987 it was decided that Hanover Quay was too toxic to sell. Regeneration began in 1998, when Bord Gáis sold the Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA) the former gasworks site located in the area between Sir John Rogerson’s Quay and Hanover Quay, for €19 million. The DDDA spent €52 million decontaminating the land, even though the likely return was estimated at just €40 million.
The decontamination took place under the supervision of the Environmental Protection Agency, between 2002 and 2006. The process involved constructing an underground wall eight metres deep around the affected area, and the contaminated soil being dug out and removed. By the time the decontamination was finished, an inflated property bubble and increased demand in the area (brought on, in part, by the decision by Google to set up its European headquarters nearby), allowed the authority to sell the land for €300 million. The DDDA injected some of its new funds into the area’s infrastructure including seats, street lighting, and civic spaces.
A number of significant developments have happened since involving the construction of millions of euros worth of real estate, the arrival of several thousand new residents, and the establishment of what is now sometimes known as Silicon Docks.
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