FROM THE ARCHIVES:One of the most notorious areas in central Dublin in the latter half of the last century was around Seán MacDermott Street, known to motorists as Handbag Corner (the junction of Gardiner Street and Summerhill), at which young locals made a practice of smashing car windows, usually of women drivers, while they were stopped at the traffic lights and snatching their handbags. Frank Kilfeather recorded the passing of the area as demolition teams prepared to move in.
THE OLD Dublin of Seán O’Casey – Seán MacDermott Street and its environs – is in its last death throes and will soon be no more. The area where O’Casey was born and reared and which gave him inspiration for so many plays and short stories will be blitzed by Dublin Corporation within the next few months. In its place will stand a £10 million housing development. In a year’s time only the ghosts of Sailor Mahon and Fluther Good will be left roaming among the rubble.
There are only about 100 families left in the Seán MacDermott/Gloucester Place/Waterford Street area and the building of the first phase of the new houses for over 200 families is expected to start in November 1981.
The streets now lie dark and ominous, tenement windows boarded and roofs gutted, cut open to the elements. They are now long corridors of silence, awaiting the arrival of the executioner. The bulldozers will move in and level the blocks and mortar which for so many years formed the labyrinth of rooms that sheltered many generations of Dubliners. In less than 12 months, this area – for long an independent Republic within a Republic – will be just a memory, a chunk of nostalgia. It is, in fact, the end of an era . . .
For the past two years the corporation has been de-tenanting the flats in the “designated” area (as it is described in official jargon) and giving them priority for re-housing. A special small committee of the city council made up of councillors from this electoral area have been working out the details of what is the biggest mass movement of population ever seen in this country. Only a couple of years ago, there were 530 families (6,000 people) in the area: now there are only 100 families.
The movement of such a huge population to various other parts of the city and out into the country area and the green pastures of Tallaght and the other satellite towns being built by the County Council, has naturally not been without its problems. There has been a certain amount of bitterness and anger. Some residents say they were not given any warning of the proposed redevelopment of the area. They say the whole thing came as a shock to them and they did not want to leave a long-established community where their parents and grandparents had grown up before them.
The corporation say that the majority were “delighted” and “overjoyed” to be getting out; they could not believe they were being plucked out of slum conditions and given priority for high-standard accommodation. The corporation state that the area was falling into disrepair and it was too expensive to maintain; the density was also too high. The gardaí were worried about the high crime rate there, while it is generally agreed that no motorist would risk leaving their car there for five minutes.
Once the decision was made to replace the tenements, the evacuation of the families began right away. Certainly, judging from the speed that most of the families left, it would appear that the corporation was right, that the people wanted to get out.
However, some of the tenants claim the people were leaving in droves because the corporation had let the place become so dilapidated and dangerous that they had no choice in the matter.
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