Kimmage ( or ''Camaigh uisce'', meaning "crooked water-meadow", possibly referring to the meandering course of the River Poddle), is a suburb on the south side of the city of

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

, Ireland.

Location

Kimmage is to the south of Dublin city centre, outside the ring of canals, but before the M50 ring motorway or the Dublin mountains. It is surrounded by Crumlin, Greenhills,

Harold's Cross Harold's Cross () is an affluent urban village and inner suburb on the south side of Dublin, Republic of Ireland, Ireland in the postal district List of Dublin postal districts, D6W. The River Poddle runs through it, though largely in an underg ...

Rathfarnham Rathfarnham () is a Southside (Dublin), southside suburb of Dublin, Republic of Ireland, Ireland in County Dublin. It is south of Terenure, east of Templeogue, and is in the postal districts of Dublin 14 and Dublin 16, 16. It is between the Lo ...

Templeogue Templeogue is a southwestern suburb of Dublin in Ireland. It lies between the River Poddle and River Dodder, and is about halfway from Dublin's centre to the mountains to the south. Geography Location Templeogue is from Dublin city centre t ...

and

Terenure Terenure (), originally called ''Roundtown'', is a middle class suburb of Dublin in Ireland. It is located in the city's D6 and D6W postal districts. The population of all electoral divisions labelled as Terenure was 17,972 as of the 2022 ce ...

. Kimmage is divided between postal districts Dublin 12 and Dublin 6W.

History

Larkfield, an old mill and farm in Kimmage owned by the family of Joseph Plunkett, was used as a clearing station for arms imported in the 1914

Howth gun-running The Howth gun-running ( ) was the smuggling of 1,500 Mauser rifles to Howth harbour for the Irish Volunteers, an Irish nationalist paramilitary force, on 26 July 1914. The unloading of guns from a private yacht during daylight hours attracted a ...

for use in the 1916

Easter Rising The Easter Rising (), also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans against British rule in Ireland with the aim of establishing an ind ...

. An

Irish Volunteers The Irish Volunteers (), also known as the Irish Volunteer Force or the Irish Volunteer Army, was a paramilitary organisation established in 1913 by nationalists and republicans in Ireland. It was ostensibly formed in response to the format ...

secret camp, the Kimmage Garrison, was established by Plunkett and his brother George Oliver Plunkett. IRB members with engineering skills came from England and Scotland and lived rough for three months while they manufactured bombs, bayonets and pikes for the coming

on the site that is now the SuperValu shopping centre. On

Easter Monday Easter Monday is the second day of Eastertide and a public holiday in more than 50 predominantly Christian countries. In Western Christianity it marks the second day of the Octave of Easter; in Eastern Christianity it marks the second day of Br ...

, 1916, Captain George Plunkett waved down a

tram A tram (also known as a streetcar or trolley in Canada and the United States) is an urban rail transit in which Rolling stock, vehicles, whether individual railcars or multiple-unit trains, run on tramway tracks on urban public streets; some ...

with his revolver at

, ordered on his volunteers armed with

shotguns A shotgun (also known as a scattergun, peppergun, or historically as a fowling piece) is a long gun, long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge (firearms), cartridge known as a shotshell, which discharges numerous small ...

, pikes and homemade bombs, took out his wallet and said "Fifty-two tuppenny tickets to the city centre please". The group went to Liberty Hall before being organised into four companies, and with the other volunteers, marched to seize the

General Post Office The General Post Office (GPO) was the state postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Established in England in the 17th century, the GPO was a state monopoly covering the dispatch of items from a specific ...

. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the park facing the end of Stannaway Road was known locally as the 'Tip'. The Tip had a water-filled quarry which froze over in the winter. In one tragic incident during the summer of 1941, an 11 year old boy drowned while traversing the water on a makeshift raft. The Poddle fed the millrace at the end of the pond in the grounds of the nearby monastery of Mount Argus. In the 1950s and 1960s, this two-storey building housed St Gabriel's Boys Club, which was well supported by the local community when they staged

Gilbert and Sullivan Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) and to the works they jointly created. The two men collaborated on fourteen com ...

operettas. The residential area between Ferns Road and Kildare Road was architecturally designed in the shape of a

Celtic Cross upright 0.75 , A Celtic cross symbol The Celtic cross is a form of ringed cross, a Christian cross featuring a nimbus or ring, that emerged in the British Isles and Western Europe in the Early Middle Ages. It became widespread through its u ...

, with a mirror image each side of Armagh Road. Locally this road was considered as dividing Crumlin and Kimmage. The majority of these roads were named after mediaeval monasteries such as

Clonmacnoise Clonmacnoise or Clonmacnois (Irish language, Irish: ''Cluain Mhic Nóis'') is a ruined monastery in County Offaly in Republic of Ireland, Ireland on the River Shannon south of Athlone, founded in 544 by Saint Ciarán of Clonmacnoise, Ciarán, ...

, Clonard, Kells and Monasterboice. Stannaway Road originally ran from Sundrive Road, up to and just beyond Cashel Road, where the scheme ended with a wall across the roadway that was demolished in the 1940s/1950s when an extension to the original scheme commenced. Blarney Park also had a similar wall separating the Dublin Corporation houses from a private scheme. In the 1950s, residents in the Corporation houses objected to being cut off and broke a hole through. The hole was gradually made larger and the Corporation deemed the wall unsafe and eventually demolished it. Access through the private section then became the norm. The Corporation devised a privatisation policy in the 1970s and sold council homes to the existing tenants. Captain's Road (previously Captain's Lane) runs from the top of Windmill Road in Crumlin to Kimmage Road. There were only a few houses between the schools (St Columcille CBS and the girls' convent opposite) on Armagh Road and St Agnes Church.

Features and facilities

The KCR, or Kimmage Cross Roads, is a landmark in Kimmage. The crossroads are considered by locals in the area to denote the southern boundary with Terenure, intersecting Terenure Road West, Kimmage Road West, Fortfield Road, and the Lower Kimmage Road. The KCR is also the location of a petrol station, a pharmacy, and a convenience shop built in the 1930s. TheFourProvincesWithDog

Crough's KCR House (formerly The Cumann Inn and The Argus Arms) is located close to the KCR. The Stone Boat, named for the feature which separated the Poddle from the City Watercourse, is also a local bar and lounge. The Four Provinces (formerly the Black Horse Inn) on Ravensdale Park was opened in 2019 by the local microbrewery Four Provinces Brew Company. The main shopping area is Kimmage village on the Lower Kimmage Road. The SuperValu shopping centre is located on Sundrive Road, it also houses a pharmacy and a small café. County Dublin - Kimmage Manor Parish Church - 20190926094952

County Dublin - Kimmage Manor Parish Church - 20190926094952

At one side of the area is Kimmage Manor, the former location of The Holy Ghost Fathers College which prepared priests for the religious life, later hosting the Kimmage Mission Institute and the Kimmage Development Studies Centre. Kimmage Manor Church parish church is on its grounds, and the main building holds the provincial office of the Spiritan order.

Sport

Larkview FC are a senior

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...

(soccer) team from the area who play in the Leinster Senior League. Former Republic of Ireland football manager Brian Kerr played at junior level for the club. Reds United were another soccer club for which many Kimmage residents played in the 1940s and 1950s. Lorcan O'Toole Park is the main sports ground in the area located at Stannaway Road in nearby Crumlin. Old County Pitch & Putt Club (founded 1966) is based within Lorcan O'Toole Park with the championship course surrounding the GAA pitch.

Popular culture

Kimmage was one of the two cheaper properties on the Irish version of

Monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek and ) is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic Competition (economics), competition to produce ...

(along with Crumlin), but has now been removed in favour of

in the newer edition. ''Three Lovely Lassies from Kimmage'' is a humorous Irish folk song by the

Dubliners ''Dubliners'' is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. It presents a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The stories were writ ...

. ''Whoredom in Kimmage'' is a non-fiction 1994 book by Rosemary Mahoney about women in the Ireland of the 1990s.

Notable people

Brendan Behan Brendan Francis Aidan Behan (christened Francis Behan) ( ; ; 9 February 1923 – 20 March 1964) was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, and Irish Republican, an activist who wrote in both English and Irish. His widely ackno ...

grew up in Kildare Road; his family were relocated from a city centre tenement to what was then countryside – as he later joked, "To Hell or to Kimmage" (Oliver Cromwell is said to have sent Irish aristocrats from their lush Munster, Leinster and Ulster land "To Hell or to Connacht", offering them the choice of death or exile) * Christy Brown (1932-1981) Irish writer, painter, and poet was born on Stannaway Road, Crumlin. * Denis Fahey (1883–1954) founder of the right-wing Catholic organisation Maria Duce, served as a Senior Scholasticate of the Irish Province of the Holy Ghost Fathers at Kimmage in 1912 * Aengus Finucane (1932–2009), missionary and a pioneer for

Concern Worldwide Concern Worldwide (often referred to as Concern) is Ireland's largest aid and humanitarian agency. Since its foundation in 1968 it has worked in 50 countries. According to its latest annual report, Concern helped 28.6 million of the world's poor ...

* John Charles McQuaid (1895–1973) studied as a novice at the headquarters of the Holy Ghost Fathers in Kimmage; he was later Archbishop of Dublin and

Primate of Ireland The Primacy of Ireland belongs to the diocesan bishop of the Irish diocese with highest Order of precedence, precedence. The Archbishop of Armagh is titled Primate of All Ireland and the Archbishop of Dublin Primate of Ireland, signifying that t ...

Gay Mitchell Gabriel Mitchell (born 30 December 1951) is an Irish former Fine Gael politician who served as Minister of State for European Affairs from 1994 to 1997 and Lord Mayor of Dublin from 1992 to 1993. He served as a Member of the European Parliament ...

Fine Gael Fine Gael ( ; ; ) is a centre-right, liberal-conservative, Christian democratic political party in Ireland. Fine Gael is currently the third-largest party in the Republic of Ireland in terms of members of Dáil Éireann. The party had a member ...

MEP and 2011 presidential candidate * Joseph Plunkett (1887–1916); one of the seven leaders of the

and signatories of the

Proclamation of the Irish Republic The Proclamation of the Republic (), also known as the 1916 Proclamation or the Easter Proclamation, was a document issued by the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army during the Easter Rising in Ireland, which began on 24 April 1916. ...

, had a family property at Larkfield on Sundrive crossroad that was a training ground for the rebels before the Rising * Frederick Shaw, Irish Conservative Baronet and large and hated landlord, lived in Kimmage Manor

References

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