Changing course - the Liffey within the City

As Dubliners of every class donated their pennies to the cause of the King’s Bridge, there emerged in 1825 another grand plan for the river. The Liffey, having curved snakelike across this terrain since time immemorial, was to be teased onto a new course, here, west of the old city, between the new King’s Bridge and the old Barrack Bridge (now Rory O’More Bridge).

The plan, by Thomas Sherrard and Company, surveyors to the Wide Street Commission, was to cut a new bed for the river so it followed a straight line, allowing the quays to be extended on either side and thus establishing new westerly routes from the city. Smoothing the river’s ancient ways would also allow the Royal Barracks, which dominated the north bank, to have its new parade ground out front.

Not all citizens agreed, especially those whose properties would be affected, but despite their protests and other delays the project began around 1843. A little sensitivity by the colonial city powers towards the feelings of native Dubliners, not usually in great supply, was exercised by avoiding the piece of waste ground known as the Croppies Acre, a mass grave where the bodies of many rebels of 1798 had been unceremoniously dumped and covered in quick lime. Memories of cart loads of broken bodies, dressed in tell-tale peasants’ brown coats and entering the city from the surrounding countryside under cover of darkness, were still spoken of. Men and women still lived who could recall those bloody days when bodies hanging from the bridges of Dublin were cut down and flung, dead or half alive, into that riverside hole. So too was Matthew, brother of Wolfe Tone, court martialled and hung in the provost’s prison, beside the Royal Barracks.

The river would not wash away that stain nor carry the stones, roughly carved with the names of the dead, to the sea to be forgotten. Thus, the new flow of the Liffey would be southeasterly from upstream of the King’s Bridge and thence due east to the Barrack Bridge. Dubliners watched as dams were built at either bridge, the new bed was dug out and the river walls and new quays constructed. A rush of river water and high tide almost spelled disaster for the project in late April 1844. Preparing for the release of the dammed water, workmen cut too close to the wall and the force of water tore four metres of the new quay wall from their foundations. Repairs, at a cost of £500, were made with all speed and on May 6th, 1844, at 11 o’clock, the upper and lower dams were cut through. Within fifteen minutes the Liffey flowed freely again. So, if you should cross Seán Heuston Bridge onto Wolfe Tone Quay today and declare yourself a northsider, perhaps that should that be a southsider. For what is now the north bank was once the south before the River Liffey got a new bed.

by Annette Black, Wicklow
Published on 31st August 2013