Qualla: Portobello, Dublin

Portobello, Dublin: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland, CC BY-SA 2.0. The name does not belong here. Portobelo is a port on Panama's Caribbean coast, and Admiral Edward Vernon captured it in 1739 during a war the British remembered for an ear severed from a Spanish smuggler. The victory was so popular in London that streets, neighbourhoods and entire suburbs were christened in its honour from Edinburgh to Dublin. Two and a half centuries later, Portobelo's name is barely remembered in Panama - but it survives in this strip of Georgian terraces south of the Grand Canal, a Dublin quarter whose own layered history has nothing to do with the harbour it was named for.

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Image: William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland | CC BY-SA 2.0

Portobello, Dublin: The Bridge That Killed Six

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. On the evening of 6 April 1861, a horse-drawn omnibus driven by Patrick Hardy started up the steep incline of Portobello Bridge. One of the horses reared. Hardy tried to turn the team. Both horses panicked and backed the bus straight through the wooden rails of the bridge into th...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Portobello, Dublin: Little Jerusalem

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taken by myself (Hohenloh), Public domain. In the early 1870s the first Lithuanian Jews arrived in Dublin, fleeing pogroms in the Russian Empire. They settled along Lower Clanbrassil Street, then spread outward as they prospered - to the South Circular Road, to Longwood Avenue, to Bloomfield Avenue where a Jewish school o...

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Image: Taken by myself (Hohenloh) | Public domain

Portobello, Dublin: Easter 1916: Bowen-Colthurst's Killings

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taken by myself (Hohenloh), Public domain. Francis Sheehy-Skeffington was a pacifist. On 25 April 1916, walking home to Rathmines after putting up leaflets that called for citizens to organise against looting, he was arrested at Portobello Bridge because his name was on a list. He was taken to Portobello Barracks and held...

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Image: Taken by myself (Hohenloh) | Public domain

Portobello, Dublin: Shaw, Joyce and the Bleeding Horse

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hohenloh at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Two doors and a tram-ride from where Sheehy-Skeffington was murdered, George Bernard Shaw had been born on Synge Street in 1856. The future Nobel laureate attended the Christian Brothers school later immortalised in the 2016 film Sing Street. Down the road, the Bleeding Horse pub...

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Image: Hohenloh at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Portobello, Dublin: The Canal Still Flows

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hohenloh at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Walk Portobello today and the layers all show through. La Touche Bridge - everyone calls it Portobello Bridge - still arches over the lock where the omnibus fell. The Bleeding Horse is back to being The Bleeding Horse after a midcentury detour as The Falcon. The South Richmond St...

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Image: Hohenloh at English Wikipedia | Public domain