The Liffey and the City


Tere are a surprising number of rivers and streams in the Dublin area, over fifty in fact, though all but the very larg- est are now largely in underground culverts. Only the Dod- der in the south and the Tolka in the north have escaped this fate. Apart from the Poddle, which rises in Tallaght, the Camac and the Steyne come in from the south and the Bradogue from the north. Te name Steyne, sometimes Stein, is interesting. It’s Old Norse for a stone. Appar- ently the Vikings tied their ships up at two points in the city. One was the Dubh Linn where the Poddle joined the Liffey and the other at the pool where the Steyne joined the river, roughly where Hawkins Street is today. At this second mooring they erected a ‘long stone’, fourteen feet high, that apparently survived as a Dublin landmark for seven or eight hundred years – it’s certainly marked on a 1655 map. Te stone gave an old name to an area of Dublin and to the little river that once flowed through St. Stephen’s Green, down Grafton Street and in front of Trinity College.


Tese rivers, pills and tidal marshes plus the fact that the Liffey was so prone to flooding posed quite a challenge. But gradually the engineers tamed the messy landscape, the Liffey was constrained by quay walls, the marshes drained and most of the little rivers paved over.


Mouth of the Dodder


As early as about 1650 Dublin Corporation refused to al- low building on the river bank in order to allow for the construction of quays. By 1700 Te Poddle, the Steyne and the Bradogue had been put underground, the markets had been moved to the north side and the north bank of the river was lined by quays from Arran Quay to Bachelor’s Walk while the south bank had quays from Usher’s Island to the old Custom House Quay and from Aston’s Quay to


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