The Granite Coast

Acknowledgments v

Maps viii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Dublin Bay’s Granite Coast 7

From Dún to Dunleary 14

Martello Towers and the Napoleonic Threat 18

Chapter 2: The Victorian Harbour – A Masterpiece in Stone 24

From Dunleary to Kingstown 24

The Kingstown Harbour Master 41

The Lifeboat Service 43

Harbour Architecture 46

Lost Activities of Dún Laoghaire Harbour 51

The Irish Lights 52

The Harbour Company 55

Chapter 3: Kingstown: Infant City of the Steam Age 56

Royal Visit 57

Mail and Passenger Services 59

The Dublin-to-Kingstown Railway 66

Chapter 4: Birth of a Seaport Town 70

Housebuilding and the Victorian Style 70

Development of the New Town 80

Churches 85

Chapter 5: An Elegant Victorian Watering Place 94

Yachting and Sailing 94

Chapter 6: Seafront Houses and Terraces: 1840–1860 109

Residential Kingstown – The Victorian Taste 114

Chapter 7: Sandycove and Bullock 123

Sandycove’s Rocky Shoreline 123

Residential Sandycove 125

The Forty Foot 129

Bullock Harbour 130

Bullock Castle 132

Castle Park and Other Houses 136

Chapter 8: Dalkey – A Sense of the Picturesque 139

Dalkey Island 143

The King of Dalkey 146

Medieval Dalkey 146

Dalkey Quarry 151

Eighteenth-century Dalkey 153

Chapter 9: Nineteenth-century Dalkey – the Coastline 156

Sorrento Terrace 164

The Vico Road 167

Dalkey Hill 169

The Railway 172

Chapter 10: Society and Social Change 174

Terraces and Squares: Dún Laoghaire in the 1860s 174

The Royal Marine Hotel 177

Red-brick Decades 180

Charity and Social Change 186

Chapter 11: Civic Dún Laoghaire 192

Township Administration 192

Public Buildings: 1870–1900 196

Chapter 12: Culture and Amenity in Dún Laoghaire 209

Sport in Dún Laoghaire 217

Transport 218

The Coal Trade 222

Gas, Light and Telephone 225

Chapter 13: Modern Times 227

Mid-Twentieth Century 227

The Shopping Environment 229

Recent Times 232

Select Bibliography and Further Reading 240

Index 242