Old plan for central Dundalk would have seen big changes

Recently I have come across an old plan for the development of the Demesne area of Dundalk which was drawn up by the Dundalk Urban District Council after they purchased that part of the town from Roden Estate nearly 100 years ago in the late 1920s.

This fairly crude map appeared in the Dundalk Democrat in 1930 but it is clear from it that, had the Council followed that plan, the centre of Dundalk would have looked a lot different than it does today.

The map published in the Democrat is centred on a 'Proposed Link Road' between St. Patrick's Hall (The Magnet buildings) and Legion Avenue houses which had been built after the First World War for the families of military veterans. This 'Link Road' was later to become known as the 'Demesne Road' and had the houses of McSwiney Street and Fr. Murray Park built along it very shortly afterwards. Another group of houses along it were known as 'Fr. Stokes' Houses', built on 3 acres of land leased to the Parochial clergy on which it had originally been intended to build a Catholic church.

In the event many more houses, both private and local government, were built in this area around Ice House Hill but that does not appear to have been the plan of the Urban Council in 1930.

It is interesting to note that the area along the railway line where the Ice House Hill Park is located and where the O'Hanlon Park houses were built is marked as ''Suitable Sites for Factories'.

It is not know now why the Council changed its mind on this development but after World War 11 the Urban Council purchased nearly 200 acres of what was known as 'Cox Demesne', originally part of the same Lord Roden's Demesne before the coming of the railways in the 1840s.

I recall that the Urban Council in the late 1950s had planned to leave sites for small factory units on the other side of the railway line to Ice House House Hill but, in the event, only one large factory, the Ecco Factory, was built here. The about ten years later the Council purchased more off the Long Avenue and some factories and other businesses were established at the Coe's Road industrial Estate.

Another interesting feature of the 1930s map is that it seems that the Council had planned to leave the old Canal through the Demesne, leading to the China Bridge, perhaps as a public park?

There is no indication either that they intended to open a road between the Market Square and the Long Walk.

This changed very shortly afterwards when the G.N.R. motor bus section were given permission to build a Bus Depot in this area, with small shop units facing it.

This development probably led to the opening of the road past the Market House into the Demesne and, later, linking it to Park Street. There was, apparently, also no road planned from Dominick's Place on the Carrick Road, now McEntee Avenue, which has become a very important traffic route into that part of town.

Readers will also note that the street that is now known as Culhane Street was still called 'Pigeon House Road'.

I was surprised myself to see that, on a modern map, the extension of this road across past Legion Venue is now named 'Hill View'.

The old name comes from a large Dove Cot which stood at the end of it which supplied fat birds for the table in Demesne House off Bridge Street.

In those days the Long Walk ended at the back entrance into P.J. Carroll's tobacco manufacturing plant. Carrolls also had a sports grounds beside the Walk and it was in a game played in January 1933. Most of their home games that season had been played at the Athletic Grounds but that venue was not available on that day.

All in all, the old map shows that Dundalk was a very different place all those years ago and one has to wonder what it might be like today if the Council had stuck rigidly to their Development Plan.

It has to be conceded, however, that the Urban District Council of the time did a fairly good job of providing decent houses for the many people of the Town who had previously been living in slum conditions.

Which was the prime objective in their purchasing the Demesne from the Roden Estate shortly after the establishment of the State.

They did it also without all that much financial backing. The country did not have the support of the E.U. at that time and money had to be raised by bank loans, the payment of the interest on these loans was supported from the town rates.

Canice O'Mahony in his book 'An Engineer Remembers' quotes a former Town Clerk, Joseph Smyth, reporting in 1959 to the Council that --- 'The purchase of the Demesne from Lord Roden for future re-housing was an outstanding feature of the period.

With the advent of legislation in 1931, establishing the procedure affecting slum clearance and, in addition, setting out the State financial assistance by subsidy, the erection of houses by the Council proceeded rapidly.'

It has been remarked to me recently to that it does not appear that very many affordable houses have been erected by any local authority in Dundalk since the abolition of the Dundalk Town Council, the successors to the Urban Council.

This may or may not be correct but it is true that the local authorities ceased to build large estates in Dundalk after the problems that arose, for a variety of reasons, over a generation ago.

It might be helpful, however, if our legislators of the present time were to show the same energy as those of their predecessors did just after the foundation of the State!