Curb your enthusiasm – An Irishman’s Diary about the paving of Dublin

The blurb of a history book that landed on my desk this week refers, amusingly, to an organisation founded in 1774 and granted “sweeping powers” by the Irish parliament.

The pun was unintended, I think. But sure enough, sweeping was to be one of the matters dealt with by the organisation in question – the Dublin Paving Board. And the many powers it exercised did include forcing shopkeepers and householders to get their brushes out.

As its name suggests, the Paving Board was primarily involved in surfacing streets and footpaths, for the first time.

The equally challenging task of cleaning the city up, however, was also part of its remit; as, later, was street lighting.

This was an era when central Dublin acquired its now classic look – the Georgian houses and squares. The Paving Board, with its sweeping (and other) powers, was an attempt to extend that elegant conformity to the anarchic public spaces.  It was, as you can imagine, a traumatic experience for all concerned.

Finnian Ó Cionnaith tells the story in Exercise of Authority: Surveyor Thomas Owen and the Paving, Cleansing and Lighting of Georgian Dublin.

And to confirm that there’s nothing new under the sun, he describes the period as one of “unending road works, hostility towards taxation in an era of austerity, concerns over street crime, protests over privatisation of public services, problems with waste collection and even repeated attempts to manage traffic passing through College Green”.

But lest Dubliners think no progress at all has been made since 1774, the book has reassuring evidence to the contrary. A problem now entirely absent from the city, for example, is that of carelessly parked sedan chairs, which were apparently such a nuisance in Capel Street that inspectors started noting their registration numbers and threatening fines.

Potholes

Also, Dublin’s potholes have grown smaller. In the 18th century, you could sometimes lose a horse in them. It happened in 1777, at the Coombe, when a cab driver ploughed into a hole “five yards long, one yard wide, and six feet deep”.  He later sued the authorities for the death of one of his horses, and serious injuries to another.

Then there was the filth. Dirty Dublin, 18th-century style, rejoiced in such place names as Dunghill Lane (now Island Street, near Guinness’s), where indeed there were several dunghills, for both human and animal waste, big enough to feature on John Rocque’s 1756 map of the city.

“Scavengers”, the waste-collection and recycling professionals of their time, played a big role in keeping the city as clean as it was. But fly-tipping was widespread (and sometimes politically motivated, as at one popular dump site – the statue of King William III in College Green).

Free-range food, especially in the form of roaming pigs, was a major nuisance too – so much so that the board authorised the public “to seize, kill, or carry away” four-legged offenders for their personal use.

The sweeping powers included hiring additional scavenger carts – known, indeed, as “sweepers” – to clean up after officially contracted scavengers who cut corners, and who then had to pay the extra cost. This led to dirty wars between waste collectors. In one incident, a scavenger tried to force a sweeper horse and cart into the Liffey.

Another obstacle to progress was Arthur Guinness. According to a contemporary account, when the board attempted to fill in a water course he was using, on city land, he "violently rushed upon them wrenching a pickaxe […] and declaring with very much improper language that they should not proceed".

As important as paving and cleansing, almost, was lighting, the provision of which was also a dangerous job. Spending much of their time up ladders, the privatised light-men were vulnerable to vandalism, attack by rivals, and careless carriages. But they too helped drag Dublin into the 19th century.  Among the official lighting inspectors of the time, by the way, was one Peter Tone, father of the revolutionary.

‘Paving Riot’

The political unrest of the period impinged on the board’s work, contributing to the “Paving Riot” of 1784. So did the personal shortcomings of the man on whom Ó Cionnaith hangs his book.

Thomas Owen is an unusual hero, if hero at all. While his surveying was crucial to the work, he developed a reputation for foot-dragging, financial irregularity, and an inability to get on with people, which eventually combined to cost him his position. In many ways, he epitomised the problems of the board in general. In his defence, however, he did get the job done, eventually.