Qualla: Harold's Cross

Harold's Cross: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ask three Harold's Cross locals where the name comes from and you will get four answers, each delivered with such certainty that the next person you ask will hesitate. Was it a gallows that stood near the present-day park, used as much for weighing toll-goods as for hanging? Was it a stone cross marking the Archbishop of Dublin's land, warning the wild Harold clan to stay on their side of the Pale? Was it a boundary marker for the Danish Viking Harolds of Rathfarnham, planted at what is now the five-road Kenilworth junction? Nobody knows. Debating it is considered a perfectly good way to start an argument in any pub on the road.

Read more: Harold's Cross on Qualla

Harold's Cross: A River Underfoot

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Beneath the Victorian terraces, the River Poddle still travels south to north through Harold's Cross, mostly out of sight. At the southern end of the district its course splits at a stone structure called the Tongue, or the Stone Boat - centuries old - which diverts part of the f...

Read more: Harold's Cross on Qualla

Harold's Cross: Robert Emmet's Last Address

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Harold's Cross Green was where members of the Society of United Irishmen met to plan, and where rebels Thomas Cloney and Myles Byrne came to discuss tactics with their commander Robert Emmet before the rising of 1803. Emmet himself lived in a house in Harold's Cross during those ...

Read more: Harold's Cross on Qualla

Harold's Cross: Dublin's Most Gothic Cemetery

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Mount Jerome sits at the western edge of Harold's Cross like a quiet city of its own. Opened in 1836 by the Protestant Church of Ireland to counterbalance the year-old Glasnevin Cemetery on the north side, it was initially restricted to Protestant burials, then opened to Catholic...

Read more: Harold's Cross on Qualla

Harold's Cross: Our Lady's Mount

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Dublin's first hospice opened in Harold's Cross in 1879, in a Georgian house called Our Lady's Mount that had previously been the Mother House of the Religious Sisters of Charity. Mary Aikenhead, founder of the Sisters of Charity, lived there from 1845 onwards, having outbid Moun...

Read more: Harold's Cross on Qualla

Harold's Cross: Quakers, Crisps and Champions

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Walk the redbrick terraces and you are walking Quaker history. The Pim brothers, Goodbody brothers and Webb family, all members of the Society of Friends, built houses, ran mills, and shaped the character of nineteenth-century Harold's Cross. James Pim earned the nickname Quaker ...

Read more: Harold's Cross on Qualla