Qualla: Tallaght

Tallaght: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peyton Edward, CC BY-SA 4.0. Tamh-leacht. Plague pit. The name comes, the old stories say, from the burial place of Parthalon's people - the first invaders of Ireland in the Book of Invasions, all nine thousand of whom died in a single week. Modern archaeology has found only normal Bronze Age burials here, but the name stuck. Today Tallaght is the largest settlement in Ireland without city status: 81,022 people across thirteen electoral divisions, the county town of South Dublin, sprawling thirteen kilometres south-west of Dublin city centre at the foot of the Wicklow Mountains. In 1961, before the planners arrived, only 4,565 people lived here. The transformation in sixty years is one of the most dramatic in modern Irish history.

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Image: Peyton Edward | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tallaght: The Two Eyes of Ireland

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LeinsterLion at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Long before suburbia, Tallaght was a monastery. Saint Maelruain founded it in 769 and made it a centre of the Celi De movement - a reform of Irish monasticism toward stricter prayer, study and asceticism. Tallaght became so influential that, paired with the monastery at Finglas, ...

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Image: LeinsterLion at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Tallaght: The Battle of Tallaght

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ian Paterson, CC BY-SA 2.0. On the night of 5 March 1867, during the Fenian Rising, several thousand armed men gathered on Tallaght Hill to march on Dublin. Word reached the small Royal Irish Constabulary barracks in the village. Fourteen constables and a head constable under Sub-Inspector Burke took up fir...

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Image: Ian Paterson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tallaght: The New Town That Wasn't

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Darren J. Prior, CC BY-SA 4.0. The 1967 Myles Wright masterplan proposed four self-contained new towns around Dublin: Tallaght, Clondalkin, Lucan and Blanchardstown. The houses came quickly. The schools, shops, jobs and community facilities did not. Through the 1970s and 1980s, Tallaght became almost synonymou...

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Image: Darren J. Prior | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tallaght: A Suburb Becomes a City

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit P L Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0. The turning point was Alan Dukes's 1987 Tallaght Strategy speech to the local Chamber of Commerce - a moment that gave the place a political identity beyond Dublin's planners. The Square shopping centre opened in 1990. South Dublin County Council moved its headquarters here in 19...

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Image: P L Chadwick | CC BY-SA 2.0