Digging Fairview – Éanna Brophy on a slow drive through a rich slice of history

The digging up of Fairview continues apace. Its purpose is admirable: to save the planet by squeezing out the motor car and giving preference to bike and bus to get you into the centre of Dublin.

The suburb (whose name is currently contradicted by its roughed-up appearance) starts where the Howth and Malahide Roads join the inward coastal road. The Clontarf To City Centre Project continues townwards over Annesley Bridge and beyond. Before you get that far however, if you’re in a car you must branch off on a separate route.

No matter which way you go you’ll find some surprising history compressed into one short stretch. You can even expect the Spanish Inquisition – but we’ll come to that later.

The stories begin to unfold as you reach the confluence of the two roads mentioned above. Between them is Marino Crescent, whose gracious curve of houses was built out of sheer spite. There was a grand sea view to be had from that spot when the houses were built by Charles ffolliot towards the end of the 18th century, and local lore had it that he built the crescent to spite Lord Charlemont, owner of long-vanished Marino House further up the road.

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The most famous resident of the Crescent was of course Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, who was born at Number 15. (The Oxford comma was very important in that last sentence.)

The Stoker family eventually moved house, but later the address would play a role in Ireland’s War of Independence when guns from the Howth gun-running were hidden there. But in a bizarre sub-plot, the house would also become a hiding place for Russian crown jewels. Four of these were hidden behind the fireplace by Catherine Boland, mother of Harry Boland, who asked her to hide them. He died during the Civil War while fighting on the Republican side, and the jewels remained there until 1938.

They had arrived in Ireland as a result of a 1920 meeting in New York between Irish and Russian emissaries. Both were trying to raise funds for their countries – and Ireland’s fund-raising led by Eamon de Valera, was doing much better it seems, because we were flush enough to lend Russia $20,000 in exchange for the four putative crown jewels offered as security. The loan was paid back in 1949, and the jewels were handed over.

Fairview has further connections with our political history. Halfway along Marino Mart, you come to the school called St Joseph’s, Fairview. It used to be St Joseph’s Secondary CBS School. It gave the nation not one, but two taoisigh: John A Costello and Charles J Haughey, both of whom received some or all of their secondary education there – and both of whose careers were to be marked by controversies. (Shirts were involved in two of them.) Other “Joey’s” luminaries included Kevin Heffernan, famed first as a Gaelic football star and later as manager of the county’s famous 1970s teams loyally followed by “Heffo’s Army”.

Adjacent to the school gate is Merville Avenue where Maureen Potter grew up. A few yards further on from there a supermarket occupies the distinguished red-brick front of what was once the Fairview Grand Cinema. A row of other shops alongside conceals what used to be an area of waste ground. This was once the scene of a real-life drama exceeding anything shown on the cinema’s screen nearby. It made international headlines.

“Jungle Stampede” was the film being shown in the Fairview Grand that day in 1951 when a real escaped lioness was running amok outside. There was wild excitement, fear and pandemonium before the bewildered animal was finally shot dead by a Garda marksman. The story of that event, and of local lion-tamer Bill Stephens has often been told – most recently in “Fortune’s Wheel”, a 2015 documentary by film director Joe Lee. He interviewed local people who as children saw the whole drama happening in front of their startled eyes. The film also tells of the young would-be circus star’s tragic end – killed by a lion when he took one risk too many.

Having passed by the former cinema, the parting of the ways for commuters now looms up. Motorists must now divert along Fairview Strand (where there is no strand). Soon after passing the Church of the Visitation on their right they might notice (if the traffic is slow enough) an old building with a plaque above the door that reads “Built in the year 5618″.

And this is where we come to the Spanish Inquisition.

Ireland experienced an influx of Jewish people from Spain and Portugal in the early 1700s. They were fleeing from the ongoing torment of the Inquisition which had been established as far back as 1478 (and was only finally abolished in 1834). Many of them settled in Philipsburgh Avenue and other nearby roads. The cemetery dates from 1718. The last burial there took place as recently as 1978, but by then Dublin’s Jewish community had largely moved south of the Liffey.

For many years, schoolchildren and adults passing the gate for the first time have been fascinated by the plaque above the door of the mortuary house that reads 5618. That was the year the mortuary house was built. Translated from the Hebrew calendar to the Gregorian calendar that becomes 1857.

Dublin City Council’s information leaflets told us that work on the inward section of the traffic project would be largely completed by “early summer 2023″.

There is still a lot of work to do on the inward leg, but much excavation and preparatory work has started on the outer route.

But as the drillers drill and the dry dust rises gently on the summer air, there are some who are beginning to think it might well be 5883 before it’s all finished.

Relax! That’s only 2123 on the Gregorian calendar.