For hundreds of years Dublin citizens have played the game of bowls on public and private greens. The oldest Dublin bowling green was to be found on Hoggen Green, of which College Green formed a part, and many references to it exist in the municipal records. Over three centuries ago the city authorities made an order that "Robert Taylor should be allowed to make what profit and benefit he can of the free use and exercise of bowling, and that he shall have charge and care of looking after and overseeing the said unrailed bowling place in Hoggen Green during our pleasure". Buildings, however, spread over the southern part of Hoggen Green, and when St. Andrew's Church was demolished in Dame street it was re-erected on the bowling green of Hoggen Green in 1670.
A few years earlier Alderman Tighe was granted a lease of portion of Oxmantown Green on which he was to lay out a bowling green and build "a house of entertainment for gentlemen". This had a great vogue for many years. Dunton in his Dublin Scuffle (1699) refers to it thus: "Sometimes I went to the Dublin Bowling Green - perhaps the finest in Europe - either to divert myself by playing or to look on those that did; where I have seen the gentlemen screwing their bodies into more antic postures than Proteus ever knew." This green, too, disappeared before the advance of the builder.
The Irish Times, January 8th, 1931