THE SHAPE of Dublin, in the form of its earliest map, was revealed for the first time 400 years ago this year. This is the plan of the city dated 1610 that was inserted into the corner of the map of Leinster in John Speed’s Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine.
Everyone loves maps. My experience from many years teaching them to children and adults alike is that the sense of adventure in exploring a map with the buried treasure marked with an X remains, to varying degrees of intensity, with us all. Poring over Speed’s map is a fascinating and enlightening experience for anyone interested in the evolution of Dublin. It has been the familiar cover of the Old Dublin Society’s journal, Dublin Historical Record, since its inception in 1938.
John Speed was a tailor turned map-maker from Cheshire, who may never have set foot in Dublin. As was common at the time, he relied on the work of earlier cartographers, or, as in the case of Dublin, assistants working on the ground. He acknowledged this, stating: “It may be objected that I have put my Sickle into other men’s corn”, explaining that that was the nature of the work on which he was engaged.
As cities in these islands go, Dublin’s first map is a little late. In Ireland, the first major areas that were drawn in any large scale were those on the periphery of English control, Ulster for instance. They were mapped for military purposes as part of the paraphernalia of conquest. Dublin, being at the heart of the colony, was not a priority.
The main fascination of Speed’s map is that it captures the city in the throes of a chrysalis to butterfly-like transformation. It is emerging from its medieval past surrounded by its protective walls to something approaching an early modern city.
The long campaigns against the native Irish, including those lurking menacingly in the nearby Wicklow mountains, seemed to have reached a victorious conclusion – the Battle of Kinsale had taken place only nine years previously.
The citizens of Dublin need no longer huddle inside their walls and the city is bursting out in all directions; residential areas outside the city boundaries – literally suburbs – are developing. This takes the form of ribbon development (nothing new!) along major arteries into the city: Patrick Street, Francis Street. and the Coombe to the south, and along Thomas Street to the west.
The medieval character of the city is marked by the presence of a large number of churches and recently dissolved monasteries. The density of churches is remarkable; all are within a stone’s throw of each other, and three are next door neighbours – Christchurch cathedral, St Michael’s (the tower of which still remains) and St John’s (now demolished).
Most poignant of all are the remnants still-standing of the city’s great monasteries. A gate and some walls remain of St Thomas’s, built by King Henry II in 1177 and dedicated to Thomas Becket, in whose martyrdom Henry himself had been implicated.
Greatest of all is St Mary’s Abbey – the richest in Ireland – on the north side of the wide unquayed Liffey. Speed depicts a gate, some building and its free-standing cross, no doubt a sign of refuge to countless numbers of sinners and lawbreakers seeking sanctuary.
The monastery of All Hallows, some distance outside the city to the east has become an institution of learning dedicated to the Holy Trinity and marked simply as “The Colledge”. The forerunner of another institution still with us, is the Tholsel opposite Christchurch Cathedral. Its present-day incarnation, the Civic Offices, is not so far away and its precincts include still today what remains of the graveyard of St John’s church.
There is only one bridge across the Liffey, and similar to Trinity, it is simple named as “The Bridge”. It is now the site of Fr Mathew Bridge linking Bridge Street and Church Street. The walled city is entirely a south-side phenomenon. The suburb to the north, focused on St Michan’s church, was created when the invading Normans expelled the Vikings from the city in the 12th century. It is also showing signs of expansion now that relative peace has broken out.
Speed depicts houses in almost 3D-like images. Gaps in these on Wood Quay and Winetavern Street have been seen as evidence of the huge explosion which took place at the crane on the quay in 1597 when gunpowder was being unloaded. This resulted in the loss of 126 lives.
Historians have ingeniously used the depictions of houses to attempt to estimate the population of Dublin in 1610. John Andrews, the doyen of Irish cartographic researchers, taking into account scale and the likely exaggeration of the size of houses, has estimated the population in the walled city at around 3,800, using the accepted average of five persons per house.
Similar delights of discovery await those who wish to study Speed’s maps of Cork, Limerick and Galway. A starting point (no pun) might be the free-standing structure remarkably similar in shape to the large sharp object today gracing “An Lár” in Dublin and depicted on the Cork map. It is even labelled “The Spire”. Cork one-upmanship again?