In 1717 Dublin Corporation set out to channel the Liffey. The wall they built to do it gave East Wall both its land and its name.
The reclaimed ground was shared out among Corporation members by lottery, and some of them had grand plans for an upmarket suburb to rival any in the city. Those plans died with them. What grew instead was shaped by glassmakers, horse traders, evangelists, wallpaper manufacturers, coachmakers and a cast of others. The architect Henry Lyons gave much of the area the look we still recognise today, and Edward Henry Carson appears briefly in the story too.
There is an irony in what came next. One of the first significant developers of the nineteenth century sold the area as pleasant houses by the sea, for professionals and civil servants who wanted clean air and a short commute into town. A century on, the pitch sounds very familiar.
With Hugo McGuinness . Free, all welcome!
