2005:458 - DUBLIN: Summerhill Bus Garage, Mountjoy Place, Dublin

The site is located on a ridge overlooking the river estuary and sloblands which were reclaimed from the 1720s onwards. The old road from the city to Howth ran along Summerhill, which may have seen some development during the medieval period. The site was situated on what later became the north-eastern flank of the Gardiner estate, which was developed in the 1780s and 1790s.

There is a secondary consideration when assessing development impact along the ridge. The area is possibly the location of a Viking cemetery, the evidence for which has been collected by Ó Floinn (1998). The evidence, from two or possibly three locations in the general area, came to light during construction works for the buildings on Parnell Square. A second burial was published by Bøe in 1940. This consisted of a male skeleton with a possible shield boss located on the northern side of Parnell Square, which was then called Palace Row, c. 1788. The evidence for a cemetery at this location is further supported by an entry in the Account of antiquities presented to the Royal Irish Academy 1785–1856, when ‘part of an antient sword discovered in digging a foundation in Rutland [Parnell] Square’ was presented to the Academy on 21 November 1795.

Taken together, there is therefore sufficient evidence to place a cemetery in this location, although any evidence for such a cemetery would long since have disappeared on the ground. The location is a good one, overlooking the river estuary to the south and adjacent to one of the roads leading out of the town to the north.

The first burial was located on the western side of Parnell Square c. 1763 and was initially reported by the Dublin Magazine, the story being picked up by Traynor in 1897. It appears to have consisted of a skeleton with a sword, spearheads and the rivets of a shield. The author alludes to other similar finds further east towards Mountjoy Square in his argument for an alternative site for the battle of 1014.

The development of the Gardiner land bank resulted in the removal of the semi-rural linear development which had established itself by 1756 and its replacement on the southern side of the street with terraces of houses with distinctive bowed returns in the 1780s. Development on the northern side of the street appears to have been more sporadic and less planned, possibly a function of there already being substantial buildings and gardens here by 1756.

The development of Mountjoy Square in the 1790s led to the construction of several new streets, including Mountjoy Place, running south from the south-eastern corner of the Square and its continuation to Summerhill, Hutton’s Lane. The range of buildings fronting the western side of Hutton’s Lane is fossilised in the side elevation of the bus garage; the spaces to the rear have, however, all been removed and the garage now occupies the western half of the site, with the exception of a small yard to the south, along the boundary wall to Summerhill.

The buildings to the west of the site, the location of the proposed development, are difficult to interpret from the first edition of the OS map. The impression is of large industrial structures behind the smaller houses on the street front, extending back uphill towards Gardiner’s Lane, the mews lane behind Mountjoy Square South.

There is one grand entrance off Summerhill, just to the east of the development site, consisting of a curved sweep, with a centrally positioned gate. The entrance leads into a yard with single-storey lean-tos around the edges, presumably leading into a second, larger yard further to the north. A second large yard is located slightly further west, within the development site, fronted on Summerhill by a relatively small L-shaped structure.

By the end of the 19th century, the whole area west of Hutton’s Lane was depicted as a factory, with tenement buildings on the Summerhill frontage. This appears to have remained so until the factory was converted into a tram shed in the 1930s. What was known as the Mail Yard, the yard occupying the eastern half of the site, was acquired by CIE from the P&T in the late 1960s and subsequently cleared in 1973, resulting in the closure of Hutton’s Lane (Peter Lumsden of Dublin Bus and Peter Kerins, ex-CIE, MGL, pers. comm.).

The trams entered the site through the curved entrance on Summerhill, immediately to the west of the Hutton’s Lane junction and up a steep cobbled slope to the sheds. The slope was unsuitable for buses, which were parked overnight along Mountjoy Square until the acquisition of the Mail Yard. The present arrangement of levels would therefore appear to date to the 1970s, when the tenements fronting Summerhill were demolished and the site was consolidated. A substantial wall now delineates the property along the Summerhill frontage; over 4m in height, this presumably retains the demolition material behind.

Two trenches were opened along the line of the proposed canteen facility. Both trenches revealed that compacted demolition debris backfilled the Georgian cellars along Summerhill. As this material is unsuitable to lay foundations on, the new structure will be built on micro-piles, which will extend down through the backfill into the natural deposits below.

References
Bøe, J. 1940 Norse antiquities in Ireland. In H. Shetelig (ed.), Viking antiquities in Great Britain and Ireland, 3. Oslo, 67.
Ó Floinn, R. 1998 The archaeology of the early Viking Age in Ireland. In H.B. Clarke, M. Ní Mhaonaigh and R. Ó Floinn (eds), Ireland and Scandinavia in the Early Viking Age. Dublin, 131–165.
Traynor, P. 1897 Where was the ‘battle of Clontarf’ fought? Irish Builder 39, 106.

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