Qualla: Ballybough

Ballybough: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wandervogel, Public domain. In 1605, three MacDonnell brothers from Ulster fled south as the English plantation of their home province got under way. They came to a stretch of marshy ground between the River Tolka, the future course of the Royal Canal, and the sloblands of the Liffey estuary on Dublin's northern edge. The land was so wet that locals called it Mud Island, and so neglected that the Crown did not bother claiming it. The MacDonnells built mud huts there, elected one of their own as 'King of Mud Island,' and held the place for the next two and a half centuries. Eventually the brothers' descendants acquired their plots by squatters' title - they had simply outlasted any reasonable challenge. Modern Ballybough sits on the same patch of marsh, drained and built over but still recognisably the cross-roads of every story Dublin tells about itself: Viking battles, sectarian killings, tenement rebellion, and the city's only Jewish burial ground from 1718 to 1900.

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Image: Wandervogel | Public domain

Ballybough: The Kings of Mud Island

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smirkybec, CC BY-SA 4.0. Mud Island's monarchy was a real institution. The islanders elected their king, often but not always from the extended MacDonnell family. Two of the more famous ones were Art Granger and 'Grid Iron' MacDonnell. The Irish Builder described the place sourly in 1870 as a low marsh t...

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Image: Smirkybec | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballybough: The Bridge and the Slaughters

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smirkybec, CC BY 4.0. Ballybough Bridge - now Luke Kelly Bridge, renamed in 1985 for the Dubliners singer who lived nearby - has stood in various forms since 1313, when the mayor John Le Decer built the first wooden crossing of the Tolka here. Floods quickly destroyed it; rebuilding continued through ...

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Image: Smirkybec | CC BY 4.0

Ballybough: The First Jewish Cemetery

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smirkybec, CC BY-SA 4.0. Ballybough Cemetery, on Fairview Strand, was the first Jewish burial ground in Ireland. In 1718, Captain Chichester Phillips of Drumcondra Castle signed a forty-year lease with four men whose names record the history of Dublin's small Sephardic community: Alexander Felix, Jacob d...

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Image: Smirkybec | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ballybough: 1916 and After

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. Like much of north inner-city Dublin, Ballybough fought through the Easter Rising and the War of Independence. The Irish Citizen Army seized a factory at Annesley Bridge in 1916 and held it for a day. The 2nd Battalion of the IRA engaged British forces at Ballybough Bridge during...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ballybough: Behan and Kelly

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smirkybec, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two voices of twentieth-century Dublin grew up in Ballybough's streets. Brendan Behan, the playwright and memoirist of Borstal Boy and The Quare Fellow, was born on Russell Street and learned the city in its pubs and lock-ups. He was a student at O'Connell Schools on North Richmo...

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Image: Smirkybec | CC BY-SA 4.0