Murray’s licensed premises enjoyed a pivotal trading position at the centre of Kilmainham directly overlooking the Cammock River and the intersection of Bow Bridge with Kilmainham Lane and Irwin Street. To the best of my knowledge it operated as a coffee shop for a while but it is no longer a pub. It was on the market in 2018 with an asking price of Euro 700,000 but I do not know its current status today [5 February 2024].
The immediate area is an established tourism hub of Dublin City which enjoys regular year round tourist inflow courtesy of the many coach and bus tours that route through the district.
Bow Lane West runs from Bow Bridge to James’s Street along the southern side of St Patrick’s University Hospital. Bow Bridge crosses the River Camac.
Bow Lane West first appears on maps of Dublin with John Rocque’s map of 1756.[2][3] The name may derive from its crooked shape. Neither Bow Lane West nor Bow Bridge appear on early maps of Dublin as they lay outside the city gates. In 1862, the area was predominately tenements.
There is a small pedestrian lane that connect James’s Street on the south to Bow Lane West on the north. It was previously known as Murdering Lane or The Murd’ring Lane, and first appeared on maps in 1603, until it was renamed ‘Cromwell’s Quarters’ around 1892 when Alderman McSwiney called for the lane to be renamed in order to “preserve historical continuity”. The Cromwell in question was not Oliver Cromwell but his son Henry, who became Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1657. It is currently an unmarked pedestrian stepped alley. The lane is also locally referred to as “The Forty Steps”, even though it is claimed there are only 39.[I was to lazy to count them]
The River Camac (sometimes spelled Cammock, or, historically, Cammoge or Cammoke; is one of the larger rivers in Dublin and was one of four tributaries of the Liffey critical to the early development of the city.
The Camac flows from a source on Mount Seskin/Knockannavea mountain north-east of the village of Brittas (southwest of Dublin city), joining other mountain streams, before being diverted by an 18th-century diversion from the Brittas River tributary of the River Liffey.
It flows through a mountain valley named the Slade of Saggart which lies just west of the N81 road (and below the site of the Crooksling tuberculosis sanatorium) southwest of the broad Tallaght plain and east of Newcastle. The Slade of Saggart is a large rock-cut valley which was possibly created by fluvioglacial streams deriving from the wasting Slievethoul icecap, as noted by Hoare (1976). The river then flows past Saggart, through Kingswood and under the N7. The Camac proceeds through Kilmatead, where there is a small lake with islands, and from there flows into Corkagh Park (formerly Corkagh demesne) where the river was diverted into numerous ponds over the centuries that provided water for local mills. There are two ponds at the back of Kilmateed, a new fishery pond in Corkagh Park, the dry bed of a pond at the back of the Fairview Oil Mill ruins (near Cherrywood), and further downstream next to Moyle Park College, where the water was used by Clondalkin Paper Mills in the past. Many of the concrete ponds are now in poor condition as water levels have dropped and the ponds have silted up. The mill pond serving Leinster Paper Mills was situated on the old Nangor Road, Clondalkin but was covered to make way for a car park and entrance for the Mill Shopping Centre from the Nangor Road side in the late 1980s.
The Camac then flows through Clondalkin village opposite the Garda Station and down Watery Lane, flowing on towards Nangor Road, and meeting tributaries in the industrial Bluebell and Robinhood Estate areas. It then travels through the Lansdowne Valley to residential Drimnagh and Crumlin.
The river goes on to Inchicore, where it is tunnelled under the Grand Canal before a bridge crossing at Golden Bridge. It runs between Grattan Crescent Park and nearby Richmond Park (home to St Patrick’s Athletic) where it gives its name to the ground’s ‘Camac Terrace’, and arrives in Kilmainham, where it runs behind the jail museum and is crossed by Bow Bridge at Bow Lane West. It enters the Liffey alongside Heuston Station, a little upstream of Sean Heuston Bridge. The river was culverted underneath the railway station when it was built in 1846.
IMMA invited the artist Navine G. Dossos to realise an ambitious new commission for IMMA’s iconic courtyard, titled Kind Words Can Never Die, the work explores new psychological states that have emerged in response to a greater awareness of global and local climate change.
Inspired by the books Earth Emotions (2019) by Glenn Albrecht, and Thought Forms (1901) by Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater, these wall paintings designed through a series of workshops at IMMA, explore how we can use colour to express emotional states, and make images of these complex feelings that can be both negative and positive responses to ecological change.
Navine G. Dossos is a visual artist working between London and Athens. Her interests include Orientalism in the digital realm, geometry as information and decoration, image calibration, and Aniconism in contemporary culture. She has developed a form of geometric abstraction that merges the traditional Aniconism of Islamic art with the algorithmic nature of the interconnected world we live in. This is not the formal abstraction we understand from the western history of art, but something essentially informational, and committed to investigation and communication.
Dossos is a painter, and uses this medium and its history to ask fundamental questions about the ways in which we see, understand and represent the world around us. Her work suggests that contrary to the mediatic impulses of the present, we must not rely upon, nor constantly reproduce, the figurative language of television, online media, videos, and the endlessly circulating images which shape our shared imagination of reality. Her work frequently emphasises the contrast between the timeless and the ephemeral, whether in the painting over of temporary murals, her own effacement of underlying works in ongoing series where each iteration is applied over the last, or her choices of material, from traditional icon boards to cardboard and found wood, and the balancing of classical training and technique with a constant reappraisal and critique of the contemporary.
Despite the sign the band has been active, in some form, since 1737, and are Ireland’s oldest band. However it was formally founded in 1800 as an amalgamation of a number of smaller bands.
Bow Lane West runs from Bow Bridge to James’s Street along the southern side of St Patrick’s University Hospital. Bow Bridge crosses the River Camac.
The Mill on Bow is marketed as being Dublin’s only Indoor Combat Centre offering a range of shooter based activities for all ages. The ideal venue for Birthdays, stag and hen dos, corporate team building and just a days fun with mates.
Decoy is a professional muralist and street artist living and working in Dún Laoghaire. He has worked extensively with Dublin collective Subset, and has worked on the Grey Area Project which saw many grey walls transformed across the city.
According to the 2010 United States Census, Rowser is the 33164th most common surname in the United States, belonging to 690 individuals. I mention this because I cannot determine why this lane is so named … does anyone have any ideas or relevant information. A few years I asked a local about the name and he said “you don’t want to be caught with your Rowserstown” [trousers down].
I cannot determine if the laneway with the steps is Camac Way or if it is part of Rowserstown Lane, i suspect that Camac Way may be an apartment block. Anyway, while I was there a lady came out of a building to inform me that I was breaking the law and that she had informed the police [An Garda Síochána] and they were on the way. When I said “OK, thanks, I will wait for them to come” she got really annoyed but left the scene after a few minutes.
This lane complex is home to an impressive and imposing mill situated beside the Camac River, whose masonry construction is testament to the skill and craftsmanship of stone masons at the time. Although it has been disused for some years its robust design and durable materials have ensured its survival. The remains which including a mill race and some machinery are technically significant, while more recent additions and the openings’ alterations indicate the ongoing development and evolution of the building over time.
Marked on the first edition Ordnance Survey map as a flour mill and later as a cloth mill, this building has played a significant role in the local economy and community. Three deeds indicate that it was transferred into the ownership of Mr Patrick Dowling, chandler, in 1822, and presumably was built close to that time as it does not appear on maps dating to 1816.
The success of Mr Dowling enterprise at the site is perhaps indicated by the Dublin Street Directory of 1836, which lists him as a flour merchant. William Brophy, who became the owner in 1867, installed a 30 horsepower steam engine the following year, and presumably the chimney was added to serve this new power source. Mr Brophy undertook further works on late 1880s which included the rerouting of the headrace to serve a new waterwheel at the south end of the building, the introduction of a cast-iron sectional aqueduct stamped ‘M BYRNE DUBLIN 1886, and a complete reworking of the interior with cast-iron columns, also stamped ‘M.BYRNE DUBLIN 1886’. It was purchased by C.H. Bates and Company of Yorkshire in 1903, a company engaged in textile manufacture.
About a year ago the Irish Time reported the following: “Building work will soon begin on a significant project in Dublin 8: the restoration of the historic Kilmainham Mills in Rowserstown Lane.”
Project manager Darragh Cunningham of DCC reckons that, when completed, the restoration will be “a game changer in terms of visitor attractions. From a tourist and economic point of view this will really complement Kilmainham Gaol, IMMA and the Memorial Gardens opening up another tourist attraction in the area.”
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