A history of Shankill

Name and setting

Shankill is Seanchill, "old church" (Wikipedia; Ball). The original townland and village of Shankill lay inland, around Shankill Castle on Ferndale Road at the foot of the hills, in what is now called Rathmichael. The present seaside village grew up in the 19th century at Tillystown in Shanganagh townland (Irish Times; Wikipedia).

Ball explains the neighbouring townland names in the Rathmichael chapter (1905) (Ball). Modern readings sometimes differ:

• Shanganagh: "the place of ants".
• Loughlinstown: the town of the O'Loghlins. Wikipedia gives Baile Uí Lachnáin (Loughlinstown).
• Ballycorus: the town of Mac Feorais, i.e. Bermingham.
• Carrickgollogan: "the rock of Ollaghan".
• Rathmichael: Ball says "the rath of Michael", noting a suggested saint Mac Táil. Modern writers often prefer Ráth Mhic Táil (Rathmichael). The National Monuments Service records the church's dedication as St Michael the Archangel (SMR DU026-050001). The derivation is uncertain. Turner set out the 19th-century scholars' case that "Michael" is a mishearing of Mac Táil: Bishop Mac Táil of Kilcullen, Co. Kildare, who died in 550 and took his name from his father's trade (tál, an adze). If he was the founder, the first church would be very early. She noted that a dedication to the Archangel would be unusual for a Celtic church (Turner 1979, pp. 83–84).

The civil parish of Rathmichael held the townlands of Shanganagh, Shankill and Ballycorus in the 17th century (Ball). Ball called its view over Killiney Bay, Dalkey and the Wicklow hills "the finest prospect in the County Dublin". Carrickgollogan (c. 276 m) rises to the west. Several streams join as the Wood Brook / Crinken Stream and reach the sea north of Bray (Carrickgollogan). The Loughlinstown (Shanganagh) River comes down Bride's Glen to the sea at Shanganagh.

Prehistory

The Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) shows a dense prehistoric landscape:

• Portal tombs at Ballybrack, long called the "Shanganagh dolmen" (SMR DU026-030), and at Brenanstown (Glendruid).
• Wedge tombs at Laughanstown and at the foot of Carrickgollogan in Shankill townland (SMR DU026-059).
• Many fulachtaí fia (burnt mounds).
• The large hillfort around the summit of Rathmichael hill. It may date to the Late Bronze Age and has a ringfort inside it (SMR DU026-048001; Dublin Mountains Partnership).

Ball also mentions cromlechs and cairns on Carrickgollogan, and a Shankill cromlech that "has long disappeared". Excavations for the Luas at Laughanstown and Brennanstown found Neolithic and Early Bronze Age settlement (TII brochure). A levelled double-ringed ringfort was found under Shanganagh Park in 2018–19 (SMR DU026-167).

Early Christian church sites

Ball counted three churches "of Celtic foundation" in the parish: Rathmichael, Shankill and Kiltuck (Ball).

• Rathmichael. This is the major site. A ruined church stands inside a great stone-and-earth enclosure: about 350 ft across according to Ball, about 130 m according to the SMR. Beside it is the stump of a round tower, known locally as "the Skull Hole" because bones cleared from the graveyard were put into it (Rathmichael).
  • Finds include grave-slabs with concentric-circle and herring-bone decoration, a holed stone, a bullaun and a cross fragment found in 1954 (SMR DU026-050 group). The grave-slabs are the "Rathdown slabs" peculiar to this barony and are now usually linked to Hiberno-Norse Christians (Carrickgollogan).
  • Turner counted nine decorated slabs surviving at Rathmichael in 1972, with two more lost: by far the most of any site. She noted P. Healy's then-new suggestion that they reflect the nearby Norse settlement. In her account only the south wall of the nave and the east gable of the chancel, with a 13th-century window, survive; 19th-century antiquaries saw the chancel as a Norman addition to an older church (Turner 1979, p. 83).
  • Ball thought the round tower was begun as a refuge from Viking raids and cut down in the 14th-century devastation, but this is his speculation. Turner dated it to the 9th century and called it one of only four round towers in County Dublin (Turner 1979, p. 83). Ball's 1902 paper gives its base as 52 ft round (Ball 1902, p. 115).
  • The Dublin Mountains Partnership attributes the first monastery to St Comgall of Bangor in the 6th century (DMP). Ball links Comgall to the Shankill church instead. The founder is uncertain.
  • The site is a National Monument (Heritage Ireland).
• Shankill. No trace survives. Ball says the church stood "on the left hand of the gateway leading up to" Shankill Castle. It may be the Cill Comgaill of the time of the conquest (Ball). Turner notes that Archbishop Ussher made the same identification, and that the church seems to have lasted into the 17th century. She suggested that the granite cross now in the lane may once have stood beside this church, as its twin stood beside Kiltuck (Turner 1979, p. 84). This is her suggestion, not a record. The Book of Leinster names a St Breachan (Berchán) of Shankill, a relative of St Finbar of Killegar (RHR 1977, p. 13).
• Kiltuck (Castle Farm, Shanganagh). Overgrown foundations survive. O'Curry attributed the church to a St Tucha, and it is named in the papal bull of 1179 (SMR DU026-054001). Its two 12th-century granite crosses were both moved:
  • One, carved with crucifixions, was set c. 1901 on an old boulder base in the lane between Rathmichael and Shankill Castle (SMR DU026-051). Wikipedia gives 1910. The society's journal settles the date: P. J. O'Reilly saw the cross still standing at Kiltuck in 1901, and it was moved to the lane in 1911 (RHR 1982-83, p. 27).
  • The other was taken to St Anne's church in 1937 (SMR DU026-168). It was later broken and lost. By 1956 it was missing; the pieces were reassembled as the Rathmichael Historical Society's tenth-anniversary project and the cross was dedicated at St Anne's on 19 June 1983 (RHR 1982-83, pp. 27–29, 37).
• Nearby church sites:
  • Tully, Tulach na nEpscop, the "hill of the bishops", which had eight bishops associated with it by the 8th century and has two high crosses (SMR DU026-023001).
  • Killiney (Cill Iníon Léinín).
  • Old Connaught.
  • Ballyman, with St Kevin's Well, where rags were still hung c. 1900 (SMR DU028-002003).
  • The traditional abbey site at Cork (Corke Abbey) with its "Abbey Well" (SMR DU026-069).

The Archbishops of Dublin's manor of Shankill (13th–14th centuries)

After the Anglo-Norman conquest, most of the parish passed to the Church (Ball):

• the Archbishop of Dublin, who held Shankill;
• the Priory of the Holy Trinity (Christ Church), which held Rathsalchan and Kiltuck, where the later Shanganagh Castle stands;
• St Patrick's Cathedral. Its vicars-choral held the "seigniory of Shanganagh", and Rathmichael was a St Patrick's prebend before 1227.

The first record. Rathmichael first appears in 1179, in two papal bulls confirming the lands of the sees of Dublin and Glendalough. The diocesan boundary then ran through the parish: Carrickgollogan and the grange (farm) of Shankill lay in the see of Glendalough, while the churches of Rathmichael and Cill Comghaill belonged to Dublin and Kiltuck to the Priory of the Holy Trinity. Archbishop Henry de Loundres made Rathmichael a prebend of his new St Patrick's Cathedral, possibly in 1219 and certainly before 1227, and the link lasted until disestablishment in 1870 (Turner 1979, p. 85). That prebend, not a castle, may be the origin of the popular claim that de Loundres built Shankill Castle (see below).

Shankill became the centre of an archiepiscopal manor, which also took in Dalkey and a village called Kilmacberne towards Powerscourt. Kenneth Nicholls has identified Kilmacberne as Killickabawn, just south of the Glen of the Downs; the manor also took in Powerscourt (then Stagonil) and Killegar, west of the Scalp. The medieval village of Shankill stood on the hill above the castle (Turner 1979, p. 86). It had a manor house with a garden and an oak park, a village of 17 tenements and a church (Ball). The SMR treats this as a medieval borough, probably founded early in the 13th century, with 17 burgages in an extent of 1326. It lies somewhere between the present tower house and the church site (SMR DU026-052).

Ball draws on the archbishops' records:

• 1229: Archbishop Luke was licensed to clear the primeval forest on the manor.
• 1230: Luke signed a lease of lands at Tallaght in the manor house at Shankill. Ball's 1902 paper adds that the town of Shankill was walled, and that the manor's own records held seventeen tenements at Shankill, thirty-nine at Dalkey and seventeen at Kilmacberne (Ball 1902, p. 116).
• Under Luke (1228–56): the archbishop's seneschal held a court at Shankill for serious crimes. Its records include murders "in the gate of the town of Shankill", two trials by combat, and fugitives taking sanctuary in the church of Shankill.
• 1271–77: accounts from the vacancy in the see show the manor was worth more than Tallaght.
• 1289: Archbishop John de Saunford wrote a letter from Shankill.

The bailiffs also acted as coroners. Under Luke they ordered the burial of two merchants found dead on the manor and of two carpenters "killed by a fall of timber at Shankill" (Ball 1902, p. 117).

The prebend of Rathmichael shows the district's rise and fall in money: 20 marks in 1227, 50 marks fifty years later, and only 5 marks in 1294, "owing to the surrounding lands being laid waste". The same return found the church of Shankill unable to support itself (Ball 1902, p. 121).

From the 1290s, raids from the Wicklow hills ruined the district. Sir Hugh de Lawless, given custody of Bray in 1314, resigned in 1320 saying his personal profit over five years had been two salmon (Ball 1902, p. 121). An inquisition of 1327 found every building on the manor except those at Dalkey thrown down and the lands untilled (Ball). Turner, dating the same survey to 1326, lists the details: no buildings left at Shankill, the 30-acre park round the castle worth nothing, the rabbit warren destroyed, a water-mill once worth 26s 8d thrown down, and the cottagers' land at Rathmichael gone to waste with no tenants (Turner 1979, p. 87). By 1302 the prebend was back to 20 marks, and by the mid-14th century it was rich enough for the Sub-Dean of York to seek it (Turner 1979, p. 88). A garrison was later placed at Bray, and the lands were re-let in large blocks to "stout English yeomen" who could defend them by force.

Uncertain: Wikipedia says Shankill Castle was "built by Archbishop Henry de Loundres in 1229" (Wikipedia), and an askaboutireland page attributes a similar claim to Turner (askaboutireland). Ball and the SMR date the surviving tower house no earlier than the 15th or 16th century. The 1229 date is the licence to clear forest.

A frontier of the Pale: the Lawless, Walsh, Talbot and Barnewall families (15th–16th centuries)

The first new tenants were the Lawless family, who appear at Ballycorus as early as the 13th century (Ball):

• 1408: Thomas Lawless held the seigniory of Shanganagh and undertook to build a castle there.
• 1409: Aveline Lawless held other Shanganagh lands and Old Connaught.
• 1482: John Lawless was tenant of Shankill.

Turner adds how Shankill Castle passed out of the archbishops' hands. Archbishop Michael Tregury complained to Parliament that his predecessor, Richard Talbot, had given the lordship of Shankill rent-free for life to Thomas Talbot, probably his nephew, so that the archbishop could no longer live there. His successor recovered it in 1478 and installed John Lawless as tenant. Lawless's heiress Elizabeth married William Barnewall of Drimnagh, and their descendants held Shankill for some 200 years while the archbishops lived mainly at Tallaght (Turner 1979, pp. 88–89).

The 1429 "Subsidised Castles" Act offered £10 towards any embattled tower built in the Pale within ten years. Thirty years later Parliament offered another £10 for a castle at Cork, by Bray, to guard the Bray road, the way the O'Byrnes came raiding (Turner 1979, p. 88).

From 1447 the Walshes (a branch of the Walshes of Carrickmines) gradually displaced the Lawless family at Shanganagh. Their line ran from Edmund (1447) to John Walsh, who died in 1600 and was a commissioner of musters. Walsh tenants on Old Connaught and Cork asked to be buried at Rathmichael (Ball, Old Connaught).

Ball judged that the three castles of the parish were "probably erected in the fifteenth or sixteenth century":

• Shanganagh Castle (the old one, on the Loughlinstown River at Beechlands) was the largest. Part of it may date from Thomas Lawless's undertaking of 1408. Turner gives the terms: Thomas Lawless, nicknamed Carragh, rented the land from the Vicars Choral of St Patrick's for 36 years at 10s a year, on condition that he built a stone house within twelve years. It passed to the Walshes when Edmund Walsh married Joan, the Lawless heiress (Turner 1979, p. 89). The Walshes enlarged it, and it had a thatched hall, orchard, gardens and a mill. Fire destroyed it in 1763 (Ball; SMR DU026-031001). Ball's 1902 paper cites the contemporary report, Pue's Occurrences for 15–19 March 1763 (Ball 1902, p. 127), so Wikipedia's 1783 is very likely wrong. Only a fragment survives, in private grounds.
• Puck's Castle (Caisleán an Phúca) stands on exposed pasture above Rathmichael and commands a pass from Wicklow. Ball thought it was built for defence rather than living in. Possibly it was the work of Peter Talbot, "that valiant defender of the Pale", after a 1537 proposal that the Crown help Talbot and the Walshes build castles against the O'Tooles (Ball; SMR DU026-049001). Rocque's map of 1762 marks it "Puck Castle in Ruines". The name refers to the púca. Turner thought its origin unknowable from the records. She found plausible Kenneth Nicholls's suggestion that it is the castle called "Dawston" in the 16th century, after a family who held land in the parish for over 200 years (Turner 1979, p. 89). Builder unknown.
• Shankill Castle was held under the archbishop in the mid-16th century by a branch of the Barnewall family. Robert Barnewall succeeded his father in 1571 as a minor. The surviving three-storey granite tower has a vaulted ground floor and inserted fireplaces and ovens, and is attached to a later house (SMR DU026-052001). The SMR repeats a tradition that "Shankill Castle was besieged by Cromwell" and that coins of James I and Charles I and skeletons were found nearby. The siege is unverified tradition.

Castles also stood at Ballycorus, Ballyman (a "thatched castle" pulled down c. 1835), Laughanstown and Loughlinstown, the last held by the Goodmans as wardens of the march (Loughlinstown).

A pardon of 1565 shows how loosely the law sat on this border. William Walsh of Cork, "described as a gentleman", had raided an Irish widow at Glencree for a brass pan, butter, three sheep and some gowns, and was arrested at Old Connaught. As the sub-sheriff took him towards Dublin, neighbours set on him at Shanganagh and freed the prisoner. Among the rescuers were John Walsh of Shanganagh and James Goodman of Loughlinstown. All were pardoned, and soon afterwards Walsh and Goodman were made commissioners for the muster of the militia (Ball 1902, p. 125, citing the Fiants of Elizabeth, no. 856).

The Reformation. When the Crown suppressed St Patrick's Cathedral in 1547, a survey of its property gave the first list of the parish's townlands and recorded a glebe house with two gardens and 15 acres, unusual for a parish then. The prebend was leased to William Walsh of Carrickmines for £22 a year on condition that he found a chaplain. Under Mary the cathedral was restored and Thomas Lockwood became prebendary; in 1570 the prebend was held by a Nicholas Barnewall (Turner 1979, pp. 90–91).

Rebellion, Commonwealth and Restoration (1641–1700)

Ball describes the first four decades of the 17th century as peaceful and prosperous (Ball). Shankill Castle could house about twenty people. The Catholic Barnewalls supported a friar and a nun at Shankill and kept a large stud.

Turner's picture of 1630: the Rev. Simon Swayne, vicar of Rathmichael and Bray and curate of Tully, Kill and Kiltiernan, had a congregation of just eight at Rathmichael, mostly new English settlers such as the Campions of Crinken and the Hicksons of Ballycorus. Almost everyone else had returned to the old religion. The Barnewalls kept a friar in Shankill Castle to say Mass, and the Goodmans gave a house in Killiney as a school with a Catholic schoolmaster. Swayne built himself a house on the glebe, then called Carrigeen (Turner 1979, p. 91).

The 1641 rising divided the parish:

• Depositions by Protestant settlers at Ballycorus and Crinken blamed losses partly on the Barnewalls.
• Simon Swayne, vicar of Bray, who lived on the Rathmichael glebe, had his house plundered.
• Swayne then sheltered in a nearby castle. It was attacked and burned, five of his party died, and Swayne lost an eye. He named Robert Barnewall of Shankill and James Goodman the younger among the attackers. Turner insists the castle was Lehaunstown Castle, property of the Dean of Christ Church, and not Loughlinstown Castle "as stated by some" (Turner 1979, pp. 91–92). She also notes that Robert Barnewall joined the Confederate army, stationed at Bray, and complained that he had never been paid.

Under the Commonwealth:

• The Barnewalls and Walshes were ordered to Connacht. When the order came, the widow of Robert Barnewall's grandson was living at Shankill Castle with her six children and a household of thirteen: a bailiff, a gardener, a driver, a footboy, a horseboy, a cowherd, a swineherd and four women servants. The village had two shoemakers, a weaver, two carpenters, a smith, a ploughman, a rabbit-catcher and a fisherman among its residents (Ball 1902, p. 126). Ball's 1902 paper counts 26 residents; his 1905 History gives 22.
• Ball's 1902 paper says the Commonwealth assigned Shankill to Robert Vaughan; Turner names the man in Shankill Castle as Evan Vaughan and wonders whether he was Dublin's first postmaster (Turner 1979, p. 92). The first name is uncertain. Ball also gives Old Connaught to Edward Billingsley and Ballyman to Henry Burnett. John and Henry Baxter occupied the castles of Old Connaught and Shanganagh, and the Rev. Jacob Rouse was appointed minister at £100 a year (Ball 1902, p. 126).
• Rathmichael church fell into ruin and was not used again after the Restoration.

At the Restoration both families got their lands back:

• Shanganagh was restored to John Walsh. Walshes held it until the mid-18th century, after which it passed to the Roberts family (Ball). A 1778 map marks the house there as "Shanaugh [of] Roberts Esquire", and a map of "the Roberts estate" dates from 1826 (NIAH 60260146; NIAH 60260119).
• Shankill went to Christopher Barnewall, and later to the Lawless family once more. A Mrs Lawless, "one of the greatest farmers in the kingdom", died in the castle in 1743, and Barry Lawless of Shankill sat on the grand jury in 1795. By 1782 the castle was "in a very ruinous state" (Austin Cooper, quoted by Ball).

Uncertain: Wikipedia says the last Lawless died in 1795 and that the lands then passed to the Domviles (Wikipedia). This is marked "citation needed". Ball shows only that Barry Lawless was active in 1795. The Roberts family is sometimes linked with Shankill Castle, but in Ball and the NIAH they belong to Shanganagh, not Shankill.

Loughlinstown was granted after the Restoration to Sir William Domvile, Attorney General. He built the core of Loughlinstown House on or beside the Goodman castle site (NIAH 60260103; SMR DU026-029001). Domvile family lore, recorded by Turner, says James II's army camped at Lehaunstown after the Boyne in 1690 (Eurofound). A Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown heritage appendix places a 1690 camp on Gun and Drum Hill north of Tully church (DLR). Two stories are local tradition only: that James II sheltered at Puck's Castle (Puck's Castle), and that he left silver with a Peter Lawless (Carrickgollogan).

In 1690, when the Barnewalls left Shankill Castle, Thomas Domvile rented the castle and the Rathmichael lands from the archbishop for £75 a year (RHR 1976, p. 15). This is the start of the Domvile connection with Shankill that ended in the clearances of the 1860s.

The 18th century: glebe, famine relief, and the Lehaunstown camp

Clergy at Rathmichael. Dr John Lyon, prebendary of Rathmichael (1751–64), Swift's guardian and an antiquary, built a glebe house, now Cherrywood House. His successor Thomas Leland, historian of Ireland, is said to have planted its grounds (Ball; NIAH 60260096). Wikipedia repeats a claim that Swift wrote part of Gulliver's Travels at the "Old Glebe House" (Rathmichael). This is unverified.

Rathmichael Fair. Through the 18th century a fair was held on the green between the old graveyard and the hillfort; a dealer was robbed on his way home from it in 1784 (RHR 1976, p. 8).

Floods and fires. Great floods carried away the first bridge over the Bray river in 1741, and the castle of Old Connaught burned in 1776 (Ball 1902, p. 127, citing Pue's Occurrences and Exshaw's Magazine).

Killiney obelisk, 1742. On Killiney Hill, John Mapas built the obelisk as famine relief: "Last year being hard with the poor the walls about these hills and this erected by John Mapas Esq. June 1742" (excavations.ie; Killiney History).

The Lehaunstown (Loughlinstown) camp, 1795. Fear of a French landing in Killiney Bay led to a great military camp on Church land at Lehaunstown, about a mile inland. A Rathmichael Historical Record article gives the opening date as 1 June 1795, on the advice of Colonel Napier, who wanted 5,000 men there (RHR 1975, "The French"). A 1995 excavation report says 1794 (excavations.ie). The society's journal supports 1795: the camp was laid out by May 1795 on land leased from Barry Lawless and opened on 1 June; it was broken up in April 1799 (RHR 1975, p. 4; RHR 1987, p. 28). The 1794 date looks wrong. - John Ferrar drew the camp in 1796 and estimated about 4,000 men. He described "tents of canvas, wooden taverns, wooden huts and buildings of brick", 125 houses in five lines along two ridges, with a weekly fair and weekend balls (excavations.ie; photopol). - Testing has found middens, a camp kitchen and 18th-century musket balls, but little structure (DLR archaeology assessment; TII). - In 1797 Major La Chaussée surveyed the bay's weak points: the beach below Killiney Hill, the Shanganagh River mouth and the Dargle mouth (RHR 1975; Killiney History).

Martello towers, 1804–5. The south Dublin Martello towers and batteries followed in 1804–5 (SMR DU026-055001). The ones near Shankill were: - Tower No. 3 at Cork Great; - Tower No. 4 at Mahera Point, Shanganagh, near Corbawn Lane. It was later demolished after erosion undermined its batteries (photopol); - Battery No. 5 at the Shanganagh River mouth; - Towers No. 6 and No. 7 at Loughlinstown and Killiney.

The 19th century: villas, lead, railways and clearance

Shanganagh Castle (the new one). In 1805 General Sir George Cockburn commissioned Sir Richard Morrison to remodel a 1760s bow-ended house on the old Kiltuck/Rathsalchan lands as a battlemented "toy fort". It held Cockburn's Grand Tour collection of antiquities, now in UCD's Classical Museum (NIAH 60260146; Irish Aesthete; Open House Dublin). The earlier house was built in the 1760s by Joseph Kathrens and was known as "Fairview" under George Roth from 1769; Cockburn bought it in June 1800, and his family sold it in 1922 (Rob Goodbody's talk, RHR 1993, p. 11). Cockburn died in 1847. He wanted the Kiltuck church restored, and an old castle on the site was found during his rebuilding (Ball; SMR DU026-120).

Villas. The coast road and the slopes filled with villas (NIAH records; see heritage.json): - Shanganagh House (William Hopper, late 1820s); - Chantilly (Robert Tilly, after 1828); - Shankill House (Jasper Fowler); - Crinken House; - Corke Lodge (Magan); - Woodbrook (Ribton); - Old Connaught House (Bishop Gore, then the Plunkets); - Old Conna Hill (Lanyon, for Phineas Riall); - Clontra on Quinn's Road, by Benjamin Woodward for J. A. Lawson QC. It is the only building near Shankill with a national NIAH rating.

Bridges and churches. Shanganagh Bridge (1829) carries an inscription naming Robert Day of Loughlinstown House and Thomas Bourchier (NIAH 60260118; Wikipedia). New Church of Ireland churches were built: - St James's, Crinken, opened 28 June 1840 and founded by two widows, Margaret Clarke and a Mrs Magan (Dublin & Glendalough; NIAH 60260154); - Rathmichael church, by Benjamin Woodward in an early-Irish style, paid for by Sir Charles Domvile and consecrated in 1864 (RHR 1994, p. 5; Turner 1979, p. 82) (NIAH 60260060).

Ballycorus lead mines. Open-cast lead mining began on Carrickgollogan c. 1807. The Mining Company of Ireland took over in 1826 and built a smelter and shot towers in the valley (Ballycorus Leadmines; GSI). - The flue and chimney. A stone flue about 2 km long ran up to a granite chimney with an external spiral stair near the summit. It was built to condense lead from the fumes, which had been poisoning livestock. Workers scraping lead from the flue suffered lead poisoning, and Wikipedia says this gave the valley the nickname "Death Valley". Most sources date the flue to 1836; a 1993 talk by William Dick to the Rathmichael Historical Society put the flue and chimney in the enlargement of the late 1850s and early 1860s (RHR 1993, p. 9). The date needs checking. - Later decades. Local mining ended in the 1860s. Ore from Glendalough came by rail to a siding at Shankill station and was carted up. Later, Isle of Man ore was smelted until closure (1913 per Wikipedia; Coillte says "the 1920s" (Coillte)). The chimney appeared on Admiralty charts as a landmark. The society's journal supports the earlier date: operations moved to Ringsend about 1913, and the works "closed for good in 1914" (RHR 1993, p. 9; RHR 1982-83, p. 20). - Further reading. Rob Goodbody, The Lead Mines: Ballycorus and Glendalough in the Nineteenth Century (Wordwell, 2024) (History Ireland review).

Railways. The Dublin & Wicklow Railway's inland Harcourt Street line opened on 10 July 1854, with a station at Shankill on Station Road (Shankill station (DW&WR)); Harcourt Street line). It met the coastal line at Shanganagh Junction. Coastal erosion destroyed Tower No. 4 and threatened the cliff-top coastal line, so the line was moved inland by the Shanganagh Diversion, opened 1 October 1915 (Wikipedia). A halt at Woodbrook opened in 1910 for Sir Stanley Cochrane's cricket ground.

Workhouse. The Rathdown Union workhouse (union formed 1839) was built just south of Loughlinstown village. It opened on 12 October 1841, built for 600, and held 872 people at its peak in February 1850 (RHR 2001, pp. 10–12) and is now St Columcille's Hospital (Loughlinstown; NIAH 60260099).

Domvile's clearances and the birth of Tillystown. - The clearances. In 1857 Sir Charles Compton Domvile inherited the Shankill and Rathmichael lands, then home to 95 families. "Within ten years, 85 of these had gone – many of them evicted, others forced out by other means". Domvile achieved little and was eventually declared bankrupt (Rob Goodbody, Sir Charles Domvile and his Shankill estate, County Dublin, 1857–1871, Four Courts Press 2003). Goodbody's research shows a steady departure of families over more than a decade, not one mass eviction. His villa-building scheme produced only one new house, and he paid for the new Rathmichael church before his bankruptcy (RHR 2002, pp. 21–22). See Rob Goodbody and the Rathmichael Historical Society, where much of his work appeared. The old hillside village of Shankill was largely deserted. - Tillystown. Evicted families settled on smallholdings near the railway station on land of the Tilly family, and this became Tillystown, today's Shankill village. Sources disagree on Tilly's role: - Wikipedia and Turtle Bunbury say Benjamin Tilly of Chantilly laid out the village c. 1860 as a benefactor (Wikipedia; Turtle Bunbury). - A Hundred Years of Bray and its Neighbourhood (1907) says Domvile also evicted "a Mr Tilly", and that one of Tilly's fields near the station was then let in small lots (extract). - NIAH says Chantilly was built by Robert Tilly (d. 1851) (NIAH 60260062). - The society's journal says only that "Mr. Tilly of Chantilly" took pity on tenants evicted in the 1860s for refusing a rent rise (RHR 1980-81, p. 26). A Robert Tilly appears as lessor of the workhouse site in 1846–47 (RHR 1982-83, p. 35), so the 1860s benefactor was probably not the Robert who died in 1851. - The 1907 author could not fix the date of the evictions and was offered 1856, 1864/66 and 1868. - Wikipedia says there were over 60 houses at Tillystown by 1871 (uncited).

The 20th century: from village to suburb

• c. 1910–12: the Carnegie Free Library was built in New Vale, designed by R. M. Butler (NIAH 60260117). In 1911 labourers' cottages were built at New Vale (Wikipedia). The Irish Times dates the replacement of the Tillystown cabins by council cottages to 1910 (Irish Times). A cast-iron pole in the village still reads "R.No.1 R.D.C. 1911" (Rathdown No. 1 Rural District).
• 1921: Sir Stanley Cochrane founded Woodbrook Golf Club. It hosted the revived Irish Open in 1975 (Woodbrook Golf Club).
• 1931–33: St Anne's Catholic Church was built. Archbishop Edward Byrne laid the foundation stone on 27 July 1931, the church opened in 1933 and it was extended in 1971 (Catholic Archives; NIAH 60260114).
• 1937: the Schools' Folklore Collection recorded stories from Tillystown school (dúchas/UCD).
• 31 December 1958: CIÉ closed the Harcourt Street line despite local opposition. Shankill's old station survives inside the Shankill Business Centre (Shankill station (DW&WR))).
• 1960s–2002: Shanganagh Castle was first a Church of Ireland college (Archiseek), then the State's open centre for young offenders. The Minister for Justice said in 1988 it had been in use "since 1968" and could take 60 offenders aged 16–21 (Dáil, 26 Apr 1988). The Irish Times gives 1969–2002 (Irish Times 2013).
• 1970s: Dublin County Council bought Shanganagh House in 1970 and surrounded it with late-1970s council housing (Wikipedia). Large estates replaced the old demesnes, at higher density from the 1990s onward. Loughlinstown House was sold out of the Domvile line in 1963 to John Galvin and passed to the EEC in 1976; it is now home to the EU agency Eurofound (RHR 1976, p. 13; RHR 1982-83, p. 9) (Eurofound).
• 10 June 1977: a new Shankill station, opened by the Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, was built on the coastal line at Corbawn Lane. It was upgraded in 1983 and has been a DART stop since the service began in 1984 (Shankill station). Shankill had been without a station for more than seventeen years after the Harcourt Street line closed (RHR 1987, pp. 27–28).
• 1877: Wentworth Erck (1827–1890), an amateur astronomer living at Sherrington, Shankill, independently observed Deimos, the newly found moon of Mars (RHR 1994, pp. 5–7).
• Second World War: the IRA's James O'Donovan sent coded radio messages to Germany from "Florenceville" (now "Millfield"), Shankill (RHR 1999, pp. 21–23).
• Growth: Shankill's population was 616 in 1946 and 2,629 in 1971 (RHR 1977, p. 17).
• 1984, a year of change (RHR 1984, PDF pp. 2–3, 10, 24):
  • March: Dorney Court at the top of Corbawn Lane was demolished after years of vandalism. It was first called Claremont, built by Thomas Clarke on land leased in 1829 from the Roberts family. It was leased to William Charles Quin in 1840 and sold in 1896 as "Barry's Estate".
  • Trees on Corbawn Lane and in the Dorney Court grounds were felled for housing, despite Tree Preservation Orders that residents had pressed the council to make.
  • 12 April: Corbawn Shopping Centre opened, on the site of "Clonasleigh" (originally Willmount, built by J. B. Middleton).
  • 8 June: Shanganagh Cemetery was opened and blessed.
  • October: work began on the Rathmichael Reservoir, holding 2 million gallons of Vartry water for the area from Deansgrange to Bray.
• 1972: the Rathmichael Historical Society was founded (27 April 1972). It published the Rathmichael Historical Record from 1974 to 2003, ran field-archaeology courses and summer schools, and still holds monthly lectures (RHS).
• Later decades: the M11/M50 bypass took through traffic out of the village (Wikipedia). Population at the 2016 census was 14,257. Shankill was named "National Best Urban Village" in the 2007 Tidy Towns competition, according to Wikipedia.

Recent heritage developments

• 2013: Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council acquired Shanganagh Castle in a land swap and committed to restoring it (Irish Times). The surrounding lands are being developed for housing (Wikipedia).
• 2018–23: test excavations in Shanganagh Park (c. 36 ha) found a ringfort, a burnt mound and possible 18th-century brickworks pits (DLR park; IAC testing report).
• The coast: Shankill's cliffs are glacial till, part of the Killiney Bay County Geological Site, and they keep eroding (GSI). The council has carried out coastal protection works at Corbawn Lane (DLR). Wikipedia claims a medieval village called "Longnon" off Quinn's Road was lost to the sea. This is unsourced and unverified.
• Walking: the Dublin Mountains Way starts on Shankill's main street and runs past Rathmichael Wood, Puck's Castle and Carrickgollogan (Wikipedia; DMP Rathmichael Wood).

Natural heritage

• Carrickgollogan. Coillte forest with a viewing rock and the lead mines chimney (Coillte).
• Rathmichael Wood. Mixed woodland and acid grassland around the hillfort (DMP).
• Ballyman Glen is a Special Area of Conservation (000713), designated for petrifying springs with tufa and alkaline fen (NPWS).
• Loughlinstown Woods and Dingle Glen are proposed NHAs.
• Dalkey Coastal Zone and Killiney Hill is a proposed NHA.
• The Scalp and Dingle Glen are meltwater channels cut about 12,000 years ago (GSI Scalp; Dingle Glen).
• The beaches at Shankill (Corbawn Lane / Quinn's Road) and Killiney (DLR).

Where the sources disagree

Key published source

• F. Elrington Ball, "Rathmichael and Its Neighbourhood", Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 5th series, vol. 32 (1902), 113–127. Read in February 1902. JSTOR. This is Ball's original paper on the parish, later reworked into Part 3 of his History of the County Dublin (1905).

• M. K. Turner, "Rathmichael: A Parish in the Pale", Dublin Historical Record 32:3 (1979), 82–93. Read to the Old Dublin Society on 29 March 1972. JSTOR

Further reading (not consulted directly)

• K. Turner, If You Seek Monuments (1983); Rathmichael: a parish history (c. 1987).
• R. Goodbody, Sir Charles Domvile and his Shankill estate, County Dublin, 1857–1871 (Four Courts Press, 2003). See Rob Goodbody for his other work on the area, much of it published by the Rathmichael Historical Society.
• C. Corlett, Antiquities of Old Rathdown (1999).
• P. Pearson, Between the Mountains and the Sea (1998).
• Rathmichael Historical Record, 1974–2003. PDFs
• The story of Crinken, 1840–1940. NLI