DUBLIN

Irish Dubh Linn (Black Pool), also called Baile tha Cliath (Town of the Ford of the Hurdle) city, formally a county borough, and capital of County Dublin and of Ireland. Located in east-central Ireland at the head of Dublin Bay on the Irish Sea, Dublin is the country's chief port, centre of financial and commercial power, and seat of culture. Dublin stands on a hill-ringed plain and straddles the River Liffey, which flows eastward into Dublin Bay. The city extends little more than 4 miles (6.5 km) in any direction from central Dublin Castle. The suburbs, however, stretch toward the nearby hills and the sea as far as 16 miles (26 km) from the city centre. The surrounding region is devoted mainly to agriculture. Dublin was at one time famous for its textiles, particularly woolens, cotton, silk, and poplin. The Guinness Brewery, producer of beer and stout, is the nation's largest private employer and its largest industrial exporter. Other industries include food processing, the manufacture of glass and cigarettes, and shipbuilding. Government and trade are major activities; the principal exports include agricultural products and alcoholic beverages. The city is low-built, with a municipal ordinance limiting most buildings to 10 stories. Few buildings date from before the 17th century; the city's architectural heritage, however, derives primarily from Norse, Norman, and Georgian influences, and the three elements meet in the historic Dublin Castle. Christ Church and St. Patrick's, both Protestant cathedrals, were rebuilt by the Normans in the 12th century and restored in the 19th. The area between St. Patrick's and the Guinness Brewery, known as the Liberties for having formerly been outside the city's jurisdiction, has been largely cleared for low-cost housing. Several of Dublin's most impressive government buildings were originally erected by leading citizens as residences. Among these are the lord mayor's residence, built by Joshua Dawson in 1705, which was the site in 1919 of the ratification of the Irish declaration of independence from Great Britain, and Leinster House (174548), now the seat of the Irish parliament. Other monumental buildings include the Neoclassical Custom House (178191) and the Four Courts (17861802), both heavily damaged in the midst of rebellion and civil war (192122) and since rebuilt. Educational and cultural institutions include the University of Dublin, or Trinity College (1592), the Royal Dublin Society (1731), and Dublin City University (1975; founded as the National Institute for Higher Education). The National Library and National Museum are housed in Victorian buildings on the grounds of Leinster House. Dublin is the centre of the Irish railway network, and its port is the largest in the republic. Ferries from Great Britain land at Dublin and the suburb of Dn Laoghaire. The international airport at Collinstown is located 6 miles (10 km) to the north of Dublin. Area city, 44 square miles (114 square km). Pop. (1986) city, 502,749; (1991) city, 478,389; (1986) Greater Dublin metropolitan area, 920,956. Irish Dubh Linn, or Norse Dyfflin (Black Pool), also called Baile tha Cliath (Town of the Ford of the Hurdle), city, formally a county borough, and capital of County Dublin and of Ireland. Located in the east-central part of the country at the head of Dublin Bay on the Irish Sea, the city is the country's chief port, centre of financial and commercial power, and seat of culture. It is also a city of contrasts, maintaining an uneasy relationship between reminders of its colonial past and symbols of present-day life. Irish Baile tha Cliath county in the province of Leinster, Ireland, bounded by County Meath (north), by the Irish Sea (east), by County Wicklow (south), and by Counties Kildare and Meath (west). County Dublin is one of the smallest counties in Ireland and, including Dublin city, is one of the most populous. Its central and northern parts are low-lying, while low mountains occupy the southern border of the county; the mountains are chiefly covered with heath and bog. The northern coast from Balbriggan to Howth has sandy shores but assumes a bolder aspect in the promontory of Howth. The chief river is the Liffey, which rises in the Wicklow Mountains a few miles southwest of Dublin city and flows through the city and into Dublin Bay. Among early remains are raths (prehistoric hill forts), dolmens, and round towers. Malahide Castle was founded in the 12th century. The county was probably formed in the late 12th century; and it comprised the chief portion of country within the English Pale (the English enclave in Ireland), though the limits of the county itself underwent many changes before reaching their present configuration. Because of its proximity to the capital city, the county was the scene of sporadic fighting in the troubled years between 1914 and 1922, and gunrunning by Nationalists took place at Howth in June 1914. Wheat, barley, and potatoes are the county's principal crops; cattle breeding is receiving greater attention. Cotton hosiery is manufactured at Balbriggan, and chocolate and cement goods are made in the west of the county. Administration is by a county council and a county manager. Dn Laoghaire has its own corporation. Several important railways converge on Dublin city. Area 356 square miles (922 square km). Pop. (1991 prelim.) 1,024,429. Additional reading Physical and human geography John Harvey, Dublin, a Study in Environment (1949, reprinted 1971), offers a general description. V.S. Pritchett, Dublin: A Portrait (1967), is an introduction, capturing the character of the city. On city planning, see Michael J. Bannon (ed.), The Emergence of Irish Planning, 18801920 (1985). Peter Wyse Jackson and Micheline Sheehy Skeffington, Flora of Inner Dublin (1984), is an illustrated study. Historic sites and buildings are presented in Adrian MacLoughlin, Guide to Historic Dublin (1979). The literary landmarks of the city are discussed in Patricia Hutchins, James Joyce's Dublin (1950); and Jack McCarthy, Joyce's Dublin: A Walking Guide to Ulysses (1986). Other guide books include Carol Bardon and Jonathan Bardon, If Ever You Go to Dublin Town: A Historic Guide to the City's Street Names (1988). Alexander J. Humphreys, New Dubliners: Urbanization and the Irish Family (1966), is a sociological analysis. A case study of Dublin is included in Christopher T. Whelan and Brendan J. Whelan, Social Mobility in the Republic of Ireland: A Comparative Perspective (1984). Current social and economic developments are discussed in the Administration Yearbook and Diary, an annual publication of the Institute of Public Administration. Social life and customs are examined in Kevin Corrigan Kearns, Dublin's Vanishing Craftsmen: In Search of the Old Masters (1987); and John O'Donovan, Life by the Liffey: A Kaleidoscope of Dubliners (1986). Richard Ellmann, Four Dubliners: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett (1987), explores literary traditions. History John Thomas Gilbert, A History of the City of Dublin, 3 vol. (185459, reprinted 1978), is comprehensive. Peter Somerville-Large, Dublin: The First Thousand Years (1988), is a modern historical survey. Other histories include George A. Little, Dublin Before the Vikings: An Adventure in Discovery (1957); Charles Haliday, The Scandinavian Kingdom of Dublin, 2nd ed. (1884, reprinted 1969); John Pentland Mahaffy, An Epoch in Irish History: Trinity College, Dublin, Its Foundation and Early Fortunes, 15911660 (1903, reprinted 1970); R.B. McDowell and D.A. Webb, Trinity College, Dublin, 15921952: An Academic History (1982); Maurice Craig, Dublin, 16601860 (1952, reissued 1980); Constantia Maxwell, Dublin Under the Georges, 17141830, rev. ed. (1956); and Mary E. Daly, Dublin, the Deposed Capital: A Social and Economic History, 18601914 (1984). Jimmy Wren, The Villages of Dublin, enlarged ed. (1987), provides a survey of the history of the newer suburbs. The intellectual, cultural, and political history of the 19th century is surveyed in Richard M. Kain, Dublin in the Age of William Butler Yeats and James Joyce (1962, reissued 1972); and Terence Brown, Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922 to the Present (1985). Blake Ehrlich John O'Beirne Ranelagh History Foundation and early growth From prehistoric times people have dwelt in the area about Dublin Bay, and four of Ireland's five great roads converged near the spot called Baile tha Cliath, the name stamped today on Dublin's postmark. Dublin appeared in Ptolemy's Geographike hyphegesis (Guide to Geography; c. AD 140), and 151 years later the people of Dublin, it was recorded, defeated an army from the province of Leinster. Yet, despite indications of habitation there 2,000 years ago, the first settlement for which one can discover any historical proof was not Celtic, but Norse. The Vikings, or Norsemen, came in the 9th century (c. 831) and built upon the ridge above the river's south bank, on the spot where Dublin Castle rose 400 years later. (Viking Dublin was a prosperous settlement, and excavations begun in the 1960s revealed a wealth of archaeological evidence for that period. In the late 1970s the decision by Dublin Corporation to build civic offices on this site provoked fierce controversy.) The Viking invaders beat off most Irish attacks until 1014, when they were defeated at the Battle of Clontarf on the north shore of the bay. They nevertheless reoccupied the town, and Viking Dublin survived and grew, although eventually the Norse kings were reduced to mere earls under Irish overlords. In 1167 the Norsemen supported Roderic (Rory O'Connor) of Connaught (Connacht), claimant to the high kingship of Ireland, in driving into exile Dermot MacMurrough, the king of Leinster. Dermot returned in 1170 with an army of Anglo-Normans from Wales and retook Dublin. Alarmed lest his Anglo-Norman vassals should claim Ireland for their own, King Henry II of England hurried over with an army to affirm his sovereignty. This action proved to be the key to Dublin's development, for it was to establish the site as the centre of government, although in English hands. Until the middle of the 17th century, Dublin remained a small, walled medieval town, dominating only the Palethe thin strip of English settlement along Ireland's eastern seaboard. In the 500 years to 1660, three uprisings in the city were suppressed, and a Scottish invasion and the ravages of the Black Death were endured. At the time of the Reformation, Dublin had become Protestant. During the English Civil War the city's royalist defenders, after contemplating joining forces with an armed Irish Catholic confederacy, surrendered the city in 1649 to Oliver Cromwell's English parliamentary army. By the end of the Cromwell era, Dublin was a town of only 9,000 inhabitants. The turreted city wall with its eight gates was a shambles; the two cathedrals tottered; and the dilapidated castle was, as Cromwell himself put it, the worst in Christendom. Yet, in the 18th century, Dublin was to become the second city of the British Empire. Ascendancy in the 18th century The city's remarkable resurgence began at the end of the 17th century, when thousands of refugee Huguenot weavers from France settled in Protestant Dublin after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, curtailed their privileges. Flemish weavers came in their wake, and soon the cloth trades were flourishing. It was not long before Dublin's competition with English cloth interests prompted the British Parliament to impose export restrictions. In the course of the 18th century, economic prosperity led to the development of Georgian Dublin. Development spread beyond the old medieval walls; more bridges were erected over the Liffey; and splendid new suburbs arose to the north and east. The city that emerged was, in essence, that of the Dublin of today. Culturally, the century was one of the richest periods in the city's history. Jonathan Swift was dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral between 1713 and 1745, and other noted literary figuresOliver Goldsmith, Sir Richard Steele, and William Congrevewere active in Dublin. In the New Musick Hall, Handel conducted the first public performance of his Messiah in 1742. For members of the Protestant Ascendancy, as the English establishment was called, Dublin was a gay, fashionable city of elegance and wit. It was something less than that, however, for Roman Catholics, who constituted the majority of the population. At the beginning of the century the Irish Parliament, dominated by the Protestant Ascendancy, passed the Penal Laws, a series of harsh discriminatory measures against the Catholics of Ireland. These laws disfranchised Catholics, placed restrictions on their ownership of property, hindered them from entering the professions, and obstructed Catholic education. The majority of the population was kept in extreme poverty and degradation.