Home News Features Drumcondra's history uncovered in book

Drumcondra's history uncovered in book

Thursday, 17 December 2009

A NEW book detailing the history of Drumcondra and surrounding areas has been published just in time for Christmas. Former teacher and lecturer, Louis O’Flaherty, pieced together the book over a seven year period by trawling through records in libraries, browsing history archives and talking to locals. This year all his research – which he describes as a ‘labour of love’ - finally paid off when he was able to deliver his work to the printers. In ‘Drumcondra and its Environs’ Louis tells the story of the area’s transformation from an unremarkable cluster of houses and a mill in the mid-nineteenth century to the bustling modern suburb it is today. It was not until 1878 that Drumcondra became an official independent township and even after it fell under the control of Dublin Corporation in 1900 there was little urban development north of the Tolka for a further 20 years. Researching the area’s history was a mammoth task but Louis managed to travel back in time through documents uncovered in libraries and archives and trace Drumcondra’s development over the years. “The task of tracing the evolution of the built environment, the history, the commercial and cultural development of a large swathe of a rapidly changing city, and at the same time providing a comprehensive account of its institutions, both civil and religious, was a daunting one,” he says. “Nor was it made any easier in this case by the fact that the borders of modern Drumcondra do not yield to easy definition.” But despite the difficulties Louis has managed to produce a beautifully illustrated landscape book that will no doubt find its way into many local Christmas stockings this year. His work was formally launched by Dublin Lord Mayor, Emer Costello, who said that despite the many books written about Dublin over the years the district of Drumcondra appeared to have been largely forgotten. “In 1909, exactly 100 years ago, Dillon Cosgrave’s book ‘North Dublin City and County’, was published and while it dealt with some aspects of the history of Drumcondra it was only in the context of a larger area,” she said. “Forty years later, Michael Tutty delivered a paper on Drumcondra to the Old Dublin Society which was subsequently published in the Dublin Historical Record. “Since then writers such as Ruth McManus, Séamas Ó Maitiú and James Kelly have included significant sections on Drumcondra in their published works, but none has devoted a complete book to the task. “Louis O’Flaherty has now sought to remedy that deficit and has written what is probably the definitive work on Drumcondra.” The book has the backing of the Heritage Council of Ireland who have described it as “a carefully researched and scholarly exploration of one of the city’s best known districts”. ‘Drumcondra and its Environs’ is available locally in the Drumcondra area and in most bookstores priced at e20.