A brief History of Greystones

Railway

Effect on the Village

Now we come to the most significant year in the history of Greystones-1855-the year in which the Dublin and Wicklow railway was completed. (Trains had already started running between Harcourt Road and Bray in 1854. Harcourt Road, the firs terminus was on the south bank of the canal near Dartmouth road, the bridge across the canal and the Harcourt Street Terminus came in 1859.)

In March 1855 plans were submitted for the proposed station at Greystones (but it was to be called Delgany station). A firm called Messrs. Crowe and Sons secured the contract for Delgany and Wicklow stations for three thousand pounds. On 13th October a train made a trial run from Bray to Wicklow, the passengers included the railway contractor William Dargan who built Quinsboro' Road, Esplanade at Bray, and the Mount Anville at Dundrum where he lived and whose statue stands outside the National Gallery in Dublin of which he was one of the founders.

Isambard Brunel

The engineer who planned the line around Bray Head was the famous Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the engineer of the Great Western Railway.

On the 30th October the line was ceremoniously opened with the running of a special train from Harcourt road at 11.30 am, conveying The Lord Lieutenant and other dignitaries. The Freeman's Journal recorded it:

The special train reached Bray in half an hour precisely, and after a stay of 12 minutes set off upon the run round the Head which was at first doubtless one of considerable anxiety to many of its inmates. Those who had not previously visited the spot had been taught to look upon this portion of the line as a bluff rocky promontory in which each step was fraught with greater peril than the last, while those who had an opportunity of seeing the works from a higher level even within a comparatively recent period, were still more impressed with the difficulties and dangers of the route. The train was stopped at each of the points of superior interest and the excursionists were afforded the fullest opportunity of examining and admiring the details of this stupendous undertaking. The first of these was at a point known as Ram Scalp opposite Branstone tunnel at which point it has been found necessary to construct a wooden bridge 300 feet long at 75 feet altitude supported on buttresses of solid masonry. After running through various passes cleft in the solid rock a third tunnel is arrived at, one eight of a mile long, cut through apportion of the mountain known as Cable Rock.

This day, 30th October 1855, marks the beginning of Greystones, as we know it. Immediately people began to arrive by train to spend a day, a month or the prolonged leisure of retirement by the sea. Bayswater Terrace at the Harbour belongs to this early period.

Village Reshaped

Two roads were built to connect the hamlet of Greystones with Delgany Station, we now know them as Church Road and Trafalgar Road but as yet there was no Church. The road from the harbour crossed the bridge and then met the other road at an acute angle, (where a house called Mountain View stands now). That is why Mountain View does not directly face the road. Look at the house behind the thrift shop, what you see is the back of the house, its front windows looked out on the original road. It was built as a school and later was the teacher's house when a new school was built where the Thrift Shop is now. Look at Moran's fish shop beside Ally Evan's, these all mark the course of the original road. The station buildings were naturally on the Delgany side of the line and from them a road ran diagonally across the Whitshed property towards Delgany.

Railway Accident

On 8th August 1867, occurred the Brandy Hole Accident. Listen to the Freeman's Journal:

When I arrived here (Bray) this morning nothing could exceed the consternation which was caused by the terrible intelligence which was received that the up train from Enniscorthy had run over one of the fatal chasms of Bray head and that all the passengers had been killed and the carriages dashed to atoms. Telegrams announcing the accident were sent to town and Messrs Waldron Maunsell and Payne the engineers and workman proceeded by special train for the scene of the calamity which is known as Ram Scalp's bridge crossing the chasm through which the mountain torrents flow into the sea at what is known as the Brandy Hole because it was a favourite resort for smugglers running contraband. I cannot convey the slightest idea of the terrible sight that met my eyes. Beneath me at a distance of 40 feet was to be seen the engine and tender turned bottom up bulged and broken as if they had been made of tin. The platform of a third class carriage stood in a semi upright position sustaining the second-class carriage, which partially overhung the precipice.

In fact only two passengers were killed but twenty-three with the driver and fireman were injured. The derailment was caused by a faulty joint between two rails on the bridge spanning Ram Scalp. An artist's impression of the accident appeared in the Illustrated London News.

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Hawkins-Whitshed & La Touche families

1690. The Battle of the Boyne followed by the Penal laws and the century of Protestant Ascendancy. For over a hundred years there was no pitched battle fought on Irish soil. The characteristic building of this period is not a monastery or a castle but the large unfortified dwelling house with its well-proportioned rows of sashed windows.

There is only one example of this period in Greystones - Killincarrick House in the wood at the top of Whitshed road, two fields away from the ruins of the first Killincarrick house. The family who built and lived in this house were called Hawkins and they owned the townland of Killincarrick and other lands further south. The boundary of the townland runs from the sea at the station, up the lane behind Killincarrig road, along the North edge of the golf course to the Bray-Kilcoole road, through Killincarrig village to Three Trout's Bridge, then down the river to the sea at Cobblers Bulk.

The two town lands of Upper and Lower Rathdown were bought early in the 18th century by the La Touche family. They belonged to that small but important element in the Irish population - the Huguenots - French Protestant refugees from the persecuting Louis XIV, who treated his Protestant subjects with the same intolerance that the then Irish Protestant Parliament was showing against their Roman Catholic fellow countrymen.

The La Touches let Rathdown Castle fall into ruins and built their big house with its French name, Bellevue, high on the south west of Kendlestown hill, their estate extended as far inland as the Glen of the Downs.