Noel Kennedy's History of Greystones - www.greystones2000.com

I wonder how many of you know a book called "The Stones of Bray" by Cannon Digby Scott, the father of Miss Jessie Scott of Knockdolian in Church Lane? He was rector of Bray and the book was published in 1913. He begins the geology and moves from there into archaeology and history. He begins with the stones of Bray Head - Cambrian rocks, staggeringly ancient compared with the short span of human history. From Bray Head to the Murrough of Wicklow there stretches a dozen miles of low, soft easily eroded shore, broken only by this one outcrop of hard Cambrian rock on which this building stands, rising out of the sea and reaching a modest summit at the top of Jones's Hill. I am told that about 70 years ago in Bray there was an old man who used to talk about The Stones. So and so had been to The Stones [he would say but] he himself had not been to The Stones for a long time. If asked by a stranger "What Stones?" he would have replied "Why the grey stones, of course". The rocks jutting into the sea outside the new St David's school used to be marked on maps and charts as "The Grey Stones". There is no record of human habitation on this rock of ours till very late in history so I will begin by saying something about the surrounding district.

If you take the road from Redford to Little Sugar Loaf, where you reach the highest point, there is a T-junction. Just before this junction you can climb over a gate into a field on your left; cross two fields and you come to a place where four fields meet at a circular enclosure - a ditch of earth crowned by a hedge. This is the Rath of Cool na Skeagh and it is the most ancient trace of human settlement near Greystones. Rath - Bally and Kill are characteristic beginnings of Irish place names. A rath was a circular rampart of loose stones and earth crowned by a wooden paling, inside which a few families with their livestock would live in little thatched huts. All this was long before there were any towns. Canon Scott asks us to imagine the people of Cool na Skeagh looking down to the sea in 432 AD, and seeing a ship sailing northwards- Patrick's ship. He had landed on the Murrough at Wicklow and not been welcomed there so he was sailing northwards to make his next landing at an island off Skerries that we call Holmpatrick or Innispatrick-St Patrick's Island.

The inhabitants of this and other raths in the 5th century were Irish speaking, Iron Age pagans whose sons or grandsons became Christians in the next centuries when Ireland was to become famous as the Land of Saints and Scholars. Only faint ripples from the tides of history would reach this quiet backwater. Delgany - Deilgne Mochorogh - is mentioned occasionally in the annals of the 7th and 8th centuries. The Danes began their raids; they founded Dublin in 841 and its satellite Dalkey and Wicklow very soon afterwards. Some men from Cool na Skeagh may have fought with their fellow Leinstermen as allies of the Danes of Dublin against Brian Boru at Clontarf in 1014. There was another rath whose name is familiar to us. Less than half way up the main road from Redford to Windgates there is a turn to the right. This is Ennis's lane running down to a level crossing on the railway and so literally into the sea. Just beside the level crossing there used to be a lime kiln and the remains of an ancient Church. Here was Rathdown: all traces of the rath itself have disappeared. Rathdown was the centre of the Barony of Rathdown - the North Eastern corner of Co. Wicklow and the South Eastern corner of Co. Dublin. The Chieftain who lived in Rathdown was lord of all that territory long before Baronies and Counties were invented by the \Normans. The rath is described in a note to the first Ordnance Survey map in 1837.

The first Normans arrived in 1169 followed in 1171 by Henry II of England who was recognised as Lord of Ireland. The Normans built a fine new wooden castle on a great artificial mound of earth and called the place New Castle. The mount of earth is still there 800 years later, crowned by a later stone castle. The Normans began to divide Ireland into Counties but there was no County of Wicklow until after 1600. The O'Tooles, the O'Byrnes and further south, the Kavanaghs held Wicklow and defied the sheriffs of Dublin, Kildare, Carlow and Wexford. Until the end of the middle ages, Greystones was quite literally "Beyond the Pale". Then in 1536, Henry VIII's Government pushed the pale south of Bray and established a family called Talbot in the lands and castle of Rathdown. It was about this time that another Castle or rather stone Manor House was built, perhaps in the reign of Queen Elizabeth - the original Killincarrig House or Killincarrig Castle. It is the oldest building within the parish of Greystones and is well worth a visit. Go down the road running east from the Cherry Orchard and you will see this large ivy covered ruin standing in the back garden of a semi-detached house on your left. The owner courteously allowed me to go through and have a look, though he might not be pleased if the whole Greystones literary society asked him one after another. It has been roofless for at least 200 years. It was a solid stone house of two stories with lofty ceilings and a third semi attic; about 25 feet by 50 feet at ground level, with an east wing whose area might be 15 feet squared. You can see the great chimney in the thickness of the west wall and the remains of a stone staircase in a side turret. It is not known who was the builder of this "Castle" but circa 1600 the first Protestant settlers from England arrived in the district. Delgany Parish records begin in the reign of James I and from the very beginning the surnames Massey and Fox are to found. The house beside the Cherry Orchard, the Stanley's house, may go back into the 17th century; it used to belong to a branch of the Buckley family. The big tree outside the Cherry Orchard is about as old as the house. A photograph taken in 1906 shows a shop front on the side of the house nearest the road, but an ordinary window replaced that by 1922. It was in the 17th century under James I that Wicklow became a county, sending two members to Parliament in Dublin.

Then came the Confederation of 1641. The Confederate Catholics of Ireland under Owen Roe O'Neill drove out the Protestants from most of the country, and from their capital in Kilkenny negotiated with King Charles I whom they supported against the English Parliament and Puritans with the Pope - there is a portrait of Finoccini in the papal legate to The Confederacy in the Common Room of St Kieran's College, Kilkenny. A small outpost of the Confederate Army held Killincarrig House. Cromwell overthrew the Confederation. He is said to have spent a night at Killincarrig House in 1649 on his march from Drogheda to Wexford. The north wall of the east wing is missing; did he bombard it, or blow it up perhaps after using it for a night's rest to deny it to his enemies? The Cromwellian Plantation - the great influx of Protestant farmers and landlords from which most southern Protestant families can trace their descent, followed Cromwell's victory. County Wicklow received a larger proportion of this new element into its population that districts further west and south - Hepenstall and Buckley, Evans, Sutton, Holts, Cox reinforced the Massey and Fox families.

With the Protestants came the English Language. It is said that Three Trout's Bridge - the bridge beside Farrenkelly on the Kilcoole road - is a corruption of Tri Droichid - the Irish for three bridges. The bridge has given its name to the river, not the other way. The name The Grey Stones was probably given by the English-speaking sailors to this dangerous landmark on the coast. Blacklion sounds like an inn sign but Killincarrig-Clein na Carraig-the little wood on the rock is original Irish. Possibly the name refers to the rocky knoll crowned with trees just above Bellevue Heights. Cromwell ordered a survey to be made-the Down Survey; nothing to do with Rathdown or County Down, simply because the information was put down on paper. From this survey the subdivision of Counties into baronies, parishes and town lands takes shape. The three town lands we are particularly concerned with are Rathdown Upper, Rathdown Lower, and Killincarrig, all in the Parish of Delgany, Barony of Rathdown, County of Wicklow. The surveyor was Sir William Petty, and on his way he marked both Rathdown Castle and Killincarrick House by a little drawing of each; it was before the days of conventional signs.

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.

But still we have not come to the Greystones we know. Topographica Hibernica of 1795 mentions it as "a noted fishing village four miles beyond Bray; the herrings first brought into Dublin are usually taken by the fishing boats of this place". This guidebook also mentions coastguards - "a preventive water guard stationed at Blacklion". The presence of Preventive offices is explained by the existence of a vigorous smuggling trade. Fishing is not the only thing you can do with a boat. There was on Bray head a large well-concealed smugglers cave called "The Brandy Hole". It was destroyed when the railway was built.

It is often assumed that in eighteenth century Ireland, because nearly all the landlords were Protestant, all the Protestants we landlords. Even the eminent historian G.M. Trevelyan makes this elementary mistake. While the La Touches and Hawkins were living in the big houses of Bellevue and Killincarrick, the ordinary Foxes and Masseys, Evans, Buckleys, Jones, Jolts and Coxes were working as farmers, fishermen and tradesmen, bringing their children to be christened in the Old Church behind the Delgany Inn and later in Peter La Touches handsome New Delgany Church. The century ended with '98. In Antrim and Down it was an armed uprising to establish democracy on the model of revolutionary France, in Wicklow and Wexford it had more of the character of a sectarian civil war. Wicklow suffered its share of cruel deeds, of fear, hatred and anger, but not so terribly as Wexford.

The most famous Wicklow figure was Michael Dwyer who held out as an outlaw in Glenmalure and the Glen of Imaal for several years. Another Wicklow leader was Mathew Holt, a Protestant rebel who was saved from execution by the intervention of Mrs La Touche. There was a family called Holt living in Killincarrig thirty years ago. A great many of the rank and file insurgents, when they surrendered, were found to be carrying copies of patriotic songs in English in their pockets. Wicklow people by the end of the 18th century not only spoke English but also often could read and write English as well.

O Bovey's on the say
Says the Sean/Bhean Bhocht*
And the Orange will decay
Says the Sean/Bhean Bhocht.
O Boney's on the shore
Says the Sean/Bhean Bhocht
We'll be the Orange men no more
Says the Sean/Bhean Bhocht.

To protect the coasts of Ireland from French Invasion, the first Lord of the Admiralty, Lord St Vincent appointed a certain Admiral Whitshed to organise the defences of Dublin Bay. Admiral Whitshed is said to have planned the building of the Martello Towers from Portmarnock to Bray, the most famous being Joyce's Tower at Sandycove. The admiral married a daughter of the Hawkins family. She had no brothers and sisters; she was the heiress; so eventually their son Captain Sir St Vincent Bentink Hawkins succeeded to the property and after retiring from the navy lived at Killincarrig house.

For the year 1838 we have a most important historical document - the first Ordnance survey map. It shows a scatter of less than a dozen houses on the south side of the harbour and a road, the present Rathdown road, connecting them with Blacklion. One of the houses is marked 'School' but there is no church and nothing but empty fields once you leave the neighbourhood of the harbour, nothing like a village street; there is not even a man-made harbour, just rocks jutting into the sea where the pier now begins, offering some shelter from all but North Easterly winds. The dozen houses are named Greystones and the point of rock just north of the men's bathing place is named 'The Grey Stones'. A dozen years later, Greystones was still a notable fishing centre with 36 yawls - sailing boats 35 feet long, manned by five men, and registered. It seems that a lot of the fishermen lived away from the harbour in Blacklion and Killincarrig. The coast guards were now living in the nearer harbour village - the row of old one-story houses known as Kenmare terrace was their quarters and Trafalgar Lodge the residence of the commander. The fishing industry must have been important in mitigating the effects of The Great Hunger of 1847-48, though it is recorded that the Arklow fishermen were reduced to such straits that they pawned their boats and gear. Relief money given by the Society of Friends was used to redeem them-Christian aid.

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.

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.

Greystones was still just a corner of Delgany Parish in the Church of Ireland, and of Bray parish in the Roman Catholic Church. However, within two years a small Church of Ireland church was built by private subscription. It was an un-endowed unofficial chapel of Ease to the Parish Church. At this time the Church of Ireland was still the Established Church of the country and the rector of Delgany was supported by tithes paid by the La Touche and Whitshed families; the clergyman in charge of Greystones would have at first been paid by voluntary subscriptions. The founders of the Church must have been happy to see it enlarge three times in 1875, 1888 and 1898, but the parish never added a church tower. The families could not have foreseen that the Parish of Greystones would become the most populous Church of Ireland parish in the whole diocese of Glendalough. As a small boy I was taken to the Harvest Festival in Greystones in 1920 and at that service there may well have been some old people who were present at the first services in the Church.

In the 1850's, the famous novelist Anthony Trollope was head of the Irish post office. He was the inventor of the Pillar-box. The pillar-box outside the Ormonde Cinema bears the initials V-R, Victoria Regina and is of the original pattern with a knob on the top. Another example of this pattern stands opposite Bray Town Hall. I think I am right in saying that until recently the Greystones pillar-box stood at the harbour; and it may have been put there by Trollope's orders. Greystones began at the harbour and spread southwards. I have heard it said that Upton at the corner beside the flagpole was the original post office.

In 1864 the Church was raised to the status of a Parish Church and consecrated by Archbishop Trench. Perhaps it was then that it was dedicated to St Patrick. The three town lands of Upper Rathdown, Lower Rathdown and Killincarrig became the parish of Greystones St Kilian's Church in Blacklion was built in 1866 and a Roman Catholic Parish of Greystones and Blacklion were formed independent of Bray. St Kilian was one of the early Irish missionaries to the continent - there is a statue of him at Bonn.

Charles Dickens had just written Our Mutual Friend, his last complete novel, he was to start one more but did not finish it before his death in 1970. Alexandra College was founded in 1866 and 1867 was the year of the Fenian rising. W.B. Yeats was born in 1865. James Connolly in 1866. It was not only from Dublin that visitors came. The railway had changed its title to the Dublin, Wicklow, Wexford Railway Company and had reached Enniscorthy in 1863. My grandmother remembered coming up from Enniscorthy to spend a family holiday at Bayswater Terrace sometime around 1870. The expedition would have had the same adventurousness as going to Majorca or the Canary islands today. About the same time a branch line reached Shillelagh. Liscarrig, (the house is no longer standing) beside St Patrick's Hall, was built by a County Kilkenny family who travelled by horse drawn vehicle to Shillelagh and on by rail to Greystones.

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.

During the second half of Queen Victoria's reign, Greystones spread southwards along Trafalgar road and Church road towards the station, between the station and Killincarrig house there was only one cottage in the middle of the fields, it has been added to and it is now call Khiva. Later, The Burnaby grew up or rather was planned around it. A return of the Owners of land in Ireland published in 1876 shows two Whitshed's owning land in County Wicklow, 550 acres each. It is a puzzling entry as each of them has the same name and initials, the second one beginning 'Sir and ending Bart'. I think the explanation is that the same landowner has by mistake been entered twice in the same book of statistics. The area of Killincarrig townland is given as 560 acres so sir St Vincent Bentink Hawkins Whitshed, who also owned 1310 acres in County Dublin, owned the whole townland.

The other Greystones landowner William La Touche owned 2,100 acres, only 700 of which were in Greystones parish. These were modest estates by the standards of those days. Another more famous Wicklow landowner owned 4,962 acres: Charles Stewart Parnell. Sir St Vincent Whitshed died and his property passed to his daughter Elizabeth Hawkins Whitshed. As she was under 21 she became a Ward in Chancery. That is to say The Lord Chancellor became her guardian managing her property in trust until she should be 21, or until she should marry. She could not marry without his consent but if he produced an eligible bridegroom the poor girl could not very well say no. (There was an Irish Lord Chancellor as well as and English Lord Chancellor but their powers were very similar.) Do you remember the Lord Chancellor's song in [Gilbert and Sullivan's] Iolanthe?

I sit in my chancery all day long
Giving agreeable gals away.
All very agreeable gals and none
Is over the age of twenty one
With one for you and one for ye
And one for thou and one for thee
But never oh never a one for me.

The bridegroom the Lord Chancellor approved for Elizabeth Whitshed was a colourful character called Colonel Fred Burnaby of the 2nd Dragoon Guards (the Blues). (I think that is the regiment that James in Upstairs and Downstairs belonged to. They were married on 25th June 1879 nearly a hundred years ago, just about when Iolanthe was first produced in 1882. I wonder did they go to see it together? Her cousin Archer Bentinck, who later became Duke of Portland, gave her away. Sir St Vincent Whitshed had built a new house beside the sea, the third Killincarrick House. We call it the Woodlands Hotel [today] but the Ordnance Survey maps show it as Killincarrick House. It was larger and more modern than the old house with plat glass windows instead of the Georgian patterned ones with their smaller panes, and it soon had one of the new tennis lawns. Lawn tennis began in 1878. Captain Burnaby is described as a celebrity, politician, balloonist and traveller. One of his exploits was to ride out into the mysterious deserts beyond the Caspian Sea to a place called Khiva, an exploit whose name is preserved by the oldest house in the Burnaby. He was killed in 1885 at Ombdurman in the Sudan on the expedition, which reached Khartoum too late to save the life of General Gordon. Poor Elizabeth was left a widow at the age of 24. They had one son, Harry St Vincent Augusts Burnaby who was born in Killincarrig House but for Health reasons both mother and son left Ireland and settled in California.

There had been a Presbyterian congregation in Kilpedder since about 1850 but in 1885, the year of Colonel Burnaby's death, the Presbytery of Dublin appointed a licentiate to conduct summer services in Greystones as well as Kilpedder. The Rector, the Reverend E.S. Daunt allowed the National School of which he was manager to be used for services (that is, in the old school building where the Thrift Shop is now), built in 1880. Mr La Touche and that summer leased the site of the present Presbyterian Church, half way between La Touche Hotel and the Holy Rosary Church on the other side of the road, to the Presbytery for a nominal rent, services were held there in a marquee. Mr La Touche laid the foundation stone of the building on March 3rd 1887. The service of dedication was taken by the Moderator of the General Assembly (Dr Robert Ross of Derry). Dr Wigwam of Ballinasloe (the Moderator of the previous year). The Rector, Mr Daunt was still rector of Greystones in the early 1920's. His son Captain Teddy Daunt lived at Killard on Church lane until about 1945. The church was opened for service in July 1887 but it was not until 1889 that the General Assembly granted the congregation leave to call a minister of their own. The Reverend Samuel Lundie was installed in May 1890. A relative of his, the Reverend G.T. Lundie of Armagh recently visited the Church during his year of office as Moderator of the General Assembly. An agreement was made that there was to be no Methodist church: Methodists would support and join the Presbyterian Church. A corresponding arrangement was made about the Methodist church in Skerries.

Late in the century came the red brick Grand Hotel (we call it the La Touche Hotel now). Red brick is a sign of late Victorian or Edwardian building. The little letterbox ion the red brick wall beside the hotel bears the initials V.R. Photographs in the hotel show a fairly large sailing ship moored to the quay of the newly built Greystones Harbour wall, which was built in 1840. It was a coal boat, several of which imported coal through Greystones Harbour. A photograph also shows a horse-drawn stagecoach, a tourist attraction, not in serious competition with the railway, which drove from Dublin via Cabinteely. Another photograph shows the houses on the North side of Sidmonton terrace with nothing between them and the hotel. Before the hotel was built they would have had an uninterrupted view of the sea towards Wicklow. The Golf Course was laid out and the Pavilion built in 1895. It was a nine-hole course; the present numbers 1 & 2, and 12 to 18 are all in the vicinity of Jones's Hill. Who was Jones? It was the enterprise of the owners of the Grand Hotel that started the Golf Course. When it became an Independent Club its first president was the Lord Powerscourt of the Day.

It was about this time that the Ebenezer Hall congregation of Plymouth Brethren was formed and their place of worship, now known as Hillside Evangelical Church, was built.

At the beginning of this 20th century, the Burnaby agent, Mr Wynne, decided to lay out a portion of the estate as a well planned residential district, what we call the Burnaby. In 1903, the tenant farmers of Ireland had been enabled to buy their farms from the landlords with money advanced by the government on east terms. The farsighted Mr Wynne decided that leasehold residential property would provide an assured income for the estate in place of rents from farms. Most of Killincarrig townland remained a home farm managed by a branch of the Evans family who lived in the old house now known as Killincarrick Farm House, to distinguish it from the new Killincarrick House by the sea. Mrs Burnaby married again, was widowed again and was married a third time to a Mr LeBlond. The law was that all farm carts must have the owners name painted on the shafts and I can remember in the 1920s long before the days of tractors, the big cart horses drawing carts with E. LeBlond on the shafts. On the residential part of the estate strict leases prevented any kind of commercial activity not even the keeping of hens. In contrast to the rather austere greyness of the older Greystones many of the Burnaby houses were red brick, had steeply pitched red tiled roofs, bow windows, verandas and gable ends were prominent. There were private tennis courts (grass - not hard courts) in many of the gardens.

The two pillar-boxes and the wall box on the Burnaby all have the initials E. VII R, King Edward VII. Houses like the Burnaby houses can be seen on King Edward Road in Bray and Kerrymount Avenue in Foxrock. We have seen the significance of most of the road names on The Burnaby of Whitshed, Portland, St Vincent and Burnaby roads. Kinlen Road was named after a building contractor who, after building Kinlen road built the second of the Roundwood reservoirs. But why did the names Somerby and Erskine appear? The Presbyterian Manse was first on Somerby Road and then on Killincarrig Road.

In the year 1906, Holy Rosary Church was completed and consecrated; a temporary church that had stood on the site was destroyed by a storm. In 1903 came the Night of the Big Wind (The second Night of the Big Wind). The original Night of the Big Wind had happened long ago in the 1830's but the 1903 storm was horrific enough. A friend of mine told me that his sister was a baby in her cot in a top floor room in their substantial house in Rathmines that night. Her mother came into the room anxious that the baby should not be frightened by the storm. She saw the cradle rocking rhythmically as the house was shaken by the wind. Far away in Gort, County Clare, the woods surround Lady Gregory's house, Coole, were filled with fallen trees. She started a sawmill and workshop to sell furniture at cost prices to her neighbours. In 1914 the Golf Club acquired more land behind where Manor Avenue is now and laid out the outer nine holes 3 to 11. So you had a choice of a long or short round. Then and for many years, Greystones ended at Kinlan Road. The houses on the north side of Kinlan Road had an uninterrupted view across the fields towards Kilcoole. The Tennis Club was where the Rugby Club is now. It was reached by walking or bicycling. The few privileged owners of motorcars as they were called, would not have dreamed of getting out of their precious vehicles merely to go up the road to play tennis.

The war of 1914-1918 cast its shadow on Greystones as on so many other places. Greystones boys were killed and wounded. Towards the end of the war the Leinster mail boat to Holyhead-Kingstown to Holyhead, to use the language of the day, was sunk by a submarine with considerable loss of life. Three Greystones ladies were among those rescued and arrived back to tell the tale. The Captain, Birch, went down with his ship. In 1922 his sister was living in Killincarrick village in the little house between John Buckley's and the Cherry Orchard. A distinguished summer visitor to Greystones during the early years of the war was the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Wimborne, who rented Moorlands on Whitshed Road until Easter 1916. When he resigned his office and left Ireland, until his successor Lord French was appointed, Lord Justice Cherry acted as Lord Lieutenant. I recently met a lady who lived as a girl during the 1914-1918 war on Kinlen Road. She remembers a police constable coming to tell her mother that there was a possibility of a German invasion and that if it happened she was to take the children (six of them), "Round behind the Sugar Loaf Mountain." Her husband was away at the war.

Before and during the war, the railway was harassed by the problem of coast erosion. All the way from Killiney to Bray a new line was built parallel to the original, and about a quarter mile inland. On Bray Head you can still seen an empty tunnel where the line was moved in, and a new tunnel the "Half Mile Tunnel" was built. This is the last tunnel you go through if travelling from Bray to Greystones. It is 100 yards long, not quite half a mile. You enter it looking down into the sea and emerge in a cutting with green fields on either side. A feature of this tunnel is the chimney in the middle of a field on the hillside. When a train, a real steam train that is, disappears there is a pause of perhaps a minute and a puff of smoke comes out of the chimney.

The engineer of this project, which was carried out in 1917, was Mr William Hinde who then retired from practice and lived at Selston on Whitshed Road; his wife was an accomplished watercolour painter and has left many pictures of Greystones and County Wicklow. Their daughter lives at Khiva [alas, no longer, ed.], a house to which I have already mentioned.

For years the old railway line provided an easy walk from the harbour to the north end of the half mile tunnel and from it began the cliff walk to Bray; the bridge at the bottom of Ennis's lane was still standing and on the seaward side of it, a still older bridge with the embankment to right and left of it was washed away. All this was part of a far more ambitious scheme which lack of funds did not allow the railway company to undertake. They had hoped to abandon the entire line from Bray Head to the Murrough of Wicklow, to use an alternative route from the south end of the new tunnel passing to the west of Jones's Hill, along the line of the Kilcoole-Newcastle road. A new Greystones station would have been built in the hollow where the 15th green of the golf course is, "The Pig's Hollow". The new Kilcoole and Newcastle stations would have been far more convenient for most of their users. On 11th November 1918, the Armistice that stopped the fighting was signed. A small boy, a contemporary of mine, living on Church Road, was sent for a message to the Stanley Stores. He remembers Mr Doyle sticking a Union Jack into the parcel for him to take home and that night people paraded up and down the sea front singing Tipperary, Keep the Home Fire Burning, Pack up your Troubles, etcetera, etcetera.

But 1919-921 were the years of the War of Independence, the First Dail, the Declaration of Independence and The Treaty. The chairman of Wicklow County Council at this time was Mr Robert Barton of Annamoe; he was also Minister of Agriculture in the Sinn Fein Cabinet and one of the signatories of the treaty. He was the first cousin of Erskine Childers the leader, doubly first cousin, for not only were Barton's mother, a Miss Childers but Childers's mother was a Miss Barton. He lived long enough to attend the funeral of his young cousin Erskine Childers the younger, the President of Ireland who was buried in Derallossary churchyard in 1974. Greystones escaped lightly during the years of violence. The most dramatic even was the burning of the Orange Hall whose ruins were later bought by "the other side" and rebuilt as St Kilian's Hall. [ The Holy Rosary Parish sold St Kilian's for private development in 1999. Ed.]

An Orangeman, Joe Evans was threatened and left the country to live in Wales. Mr Kirkpatrick, the Presbyterian Minister of the time was climbing Little Sugar Loaf Mountain in the summer of 1922 with some friends, when he saw the smoke of a big bonfire in Greystones. "That looks very near our Church", he said anxiously. The IRA had just burnt Wicklow Presbyterian Church. Glen Lodge on the Church road was a Royal Irish Constabulary barracks surrounded by barbed wired. It was the practice of the R.I.C. to rent houses from private owners for use as police barracks; only a few larger barracks belonged to the Government.

The coastguards in their big building beside the Cove remained undisturbed. Early in July 1921 they decorated the Flagpole outside Clifden, at the corner near the harbour, with a full display of coloured flags and bunting because King George V was sailing up the Irish sea to Belfast to open the first Parliament of Northern Ireland in the City Hall. After the Treaty of December 1921, the Coast Guards disappeared and the new Civic Guards used their quarters. The records of the Presbyterian Church contain the significant entry "Constable Middleton and Mrs Middleton gone back to Scotland", "Constable Grant gone away". The small town/big village of Greystones (the population was about 800, less than one tenth of what it is now) was unique in the new Free State in having a Protestant majority. Sunday was still observed in the traditional way.

In 1920 the golf Club debated whether or not they should open the links on Sunday. In July and august the South beach, the Cove and the Men's' Bathing Place were almost deserted on a Sunday and the Tennis Club on the Delgany road, the tennis courts of the Grand Hotel and the private tennis courts in the gardens of the Burnaby houses were unused.) The modern floodlit hard courts opposite the la Touche Hotel are only about 20 years old. [In 1995 the Tennis Club move from to a new site and built a new clubhouse on Delgany Road next to Greystones Rugby Club. Ed.] The letter boxes were now painted green and Free state soldiers in their green uniforms could be see wearing black arm bands in mourning for their commander in chief, Michael Collins, who was killed in an ambush in County Cork in August 1922.

During the civil war between the Free State and the anti-Treaty Republicans, Mr De Valera lived in Kinlen Road and sometimes travelled to Dublin by train on Republican business. The Free state authorities decided to arrest him but the Greystones Civic Guards by mistake arrested instead the Church of Ireland Archbishop, Dr J. A.F. Gregg. Dr Gregg was tall, dignified, intellectual and aloof; his younger clergy referred to him as "The Marble Arch". It was natural for a young inexperienced Civic Guard to suppose that this was the elusive Mr de Valera, masquerading under a cunning disguise. Dr Gregg was held at the Golf Hotel, a small private hotel on Portland Road that no longer exists, and a retired clergyman called Mr Gage Doherty, who lived on Killincarrig road, was sent for to identify him.

One of the firs projects of the Free State Government was the Shannon Scheme, which marked the beginning of the Electricity Supply Board. Greystones already had its own small power station on Hillside Road, at the corner near Hillside Church but its range was limited. Killincarrig village was still using oil lamps in 1924; and for cooking the only alternative to the old fashioned coal burning kitchen range was some kind of paraffin cooker. Telephones were rare. If a doctor was wanted at night in Killincarrig a messenger on foot set out for Greystones finding his way as best he could through the dark wood to the top of Whitshed Road where there was a street lamp outside Crann and Nullamore. In 1924 the pylons of the Shannon scheme came up from Kilcoole past Killincarrick Castle and on towards Little Sugar Loaf en route for Dublin. The transformer on Lower Kendlestown Road linked the Greystones system into the new national grid.

Building had stopped during the War and the Troubles but now Henry Joe Evans returned from exile and new houses began to go up. A new world was added to our vocabulary: bungalow. The first was Knocklayde on the Whitshed road built in 1925 beside the first green for a cost probably of less than two thousand pounds. Was it forty thousand pounds it fetched when it changed hands some years ago? It blocked a traditional footpath from Killincarrick to the Harbour, a mass path leading to Holy Rosary Church and also the Presbyterian Church. People walked to church in those days. Meanwhile the sea continued to erode until in one disastrous storm the short road running north from The Harbour, the North Beach was washed away and the houses beside it were undermined. They had to be abandoned and the council houses between the railway and the cinema, and at Blacklion were built to replace them.

In 1927, a notable event occurred in Greystones; the Presbyterian Church called the Reverend Robert Lyle from Enniscorthy as its minister. We remember him as a devoted pastor and friend but he had other lesser claims to fame. He had had a distinguished university record at Trinity College Dublin and had played Rugby Football for Ireland. When he was in Enniscorthy he used to referee the club's home matches and sometimes if they needed a sub., he would turn out to play for them although he was no longer young and no longer in good health. At Lansdowne Road on the day of an international you could see this slight, refined gentle clergyman being welcomed with warm handshakes by hearty veterans like Danny Clinch and Ernie Crawford to the special touch line seats reserved for ex-internationals. He was the founder of our Greystones Literary Society, but he himself would like to be remembered for his 25 years faithful ministry. The last service he took in Greystones, after he had retired, was the Communion Service in the autumn of 1965 and he preached on the text, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do!"

A Dublin Minister once said to me "You belong to Greystones do you? That is where Nathaniel is Minister".

"Nathaniel?" I said. "Yes, Nathaniel; an Israelite indeed in whom is not guile". And at his funeral service in Belmont Church, Belfast, Dr James Park preached from the test "Behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile". What we now know as Ecumenism began to develop, not before it was time. There were two pipe bands in Greystones, the St Kilian's Pipe Band and the First County Wicklow Rover Scouts Lord Powerscourt's Own. (If there are any visitors from Mars here you can explain to them the significance of those two titles). One beautiful summer evening in the 1930's they enlivened the town by a joint parade playing in turns, but not in rivalry or opposition. The big drummer of Lord Powerscourt's band that day was Mr Robert Mitchell whose daughter Mrs Crean now lives at Whitefield, Church Road. And important annual ecumenical event is the Women's World Day of Prayer, on Saturday there is to be a great meeting in the national Concert Hall to commemorated the 50th anniversary of its first observance in Ireland. There were two meetings that day in 1934 and one of them led by Mrs Carrie Lye, was in Greystones.

The first bus to come near Greystones was called "The Wicklow Hills", it ran from Dublin, down the Killincarrig-Kilcoole road to Rathdrum. It did not challenge the railway by a diversion through Greystones but it dew away the meagre passenger traffic from Kilcoole and Newcastle stations. In Greystones the railway still reigned supreme. There was a train known as the Greystones express or more often as the "The five-fifteen". Starting from Amiens street it left Westland Row at 5.15 pm and stopped only at Dun Laoghaire, Dalkey, Killiney and Bray. It spent the night on the siding behind Watson and Johnson's Garage (The original Watson and Johnson's not the new one in Blacklion [Now Johnson and Staunton's. Ed.]), and did an equally quick journey (50 minutes I think) with the morning commuters to town. There was almost one train per hour; the frequency to town was greater at about 9 am, from town and 5 pm and 6 pm. The important Harcourt Street train was the 6.05. In the summer it stopped at Bray only and went as far as Wicklow. If you were concentrating on your home work you might get carried on to Wicklow, for many of the commuters were schoolboys and girls: high School, Alexandra College and Wesley College were all within easy walking distance for Harcourt Street. The mail train from Dun Laoghaire to Wexford went through early in the morning. It had a breakfast car that went to Waterford, it returned in the evening coming through Greystones at ten minutes to seven. The Rosslare Boat Train to Harcourt Street came up in the morning and went down in the evening, leaving Harcourt Street at 7.05.

About 1936 two semi detached houses on the south side of The Cove, Fermoy East and Fermoy West, were thrown together to make Carraig Eden the Christian Endeavour holiday home which has played such a large part in Greystones life for the past 40 years.

The war of 1939-1945 also claimed the lives of Greystones boys. John Robbie is not the first scrum half to come from Greystones. Duggie Doyle and Austin Carry of Old Wesley were the outstanding pair in Leinster and if international matches had not been suspended during the war, might well have played for \Ireland. Duggie Doyle joined the R.A.F. as a pilot and was one of those who were killed. His brother, Dr Eric Doyle, now Professor, was a civilian government doctor in Malta and for a while during the siege of Malta and its bombardment by German and Italian planes, he was the only doctor on his feet and able to attend to the wounded.

Killincarrick house, which in 1923 became the Clyda Hotel, was a military post during the war. The officer in command was Mr de Valera's son, Major Vivian de Valera, then a young officer, later an Elderly TD and director of the Irish Press. Another officer was Lieutenant Lionel Booth, who also for a while was a Fianna Fail TD.

In 1942 the Holy Faith Convent bought one of the houses on the sea front called St David's and opened a small secondary school for girls. It is now a 500 strong co-educational school. I once had to take the chair at school's debating competition in which debaters took part; four teams two from four different schools. The winning team, one girl and one boy came from St David's. You may have read Christina Murphy's article in praise of it in the Irish Times. In 1944, the railways, the Dublin trams, and the bus companies were combined to form C.I.E, our semi-state transport company. But until normal times returned it could only provide skeleton services. The facetious words of Percy French had come true, the guard hollers out:

Horse drawn conveyances for a year or two reasserted their supremacy over motorcars and the civilised sociability of the tea party became a rarity, (there was hardly any tea).Rationing of butter, tea and petrol continued for a year or two after the way. One way of reaching Greystones from Dublin was to take the train to Bray, then a horse dawn outside car to Windgates, and then walk the last two miles downhill. The 84-bus service had now been started by C.I.E. and as petrol became unrationed, people began to use their own cars to travel to and from town and the railway began to lose patrons.

Building continues. The houses around Killincarrick Castle had been built in the 1930's, so had the south side of Kinlen Road and the west side of Erskine Avenue but Manor Avenue dates from the 1940s. So does the new Christian Brothers school on Rathdown Road, which replaced the school, near the sawmills at the top of church Lane. The great expansion of building around the New Road dates from the 1950s and 1960s. The post war years also saw the building and flourishing of the Ormonde Cinema, which replaced a small picture house near, where the Glen Press is now. [Since demolished and replaced by apartments.]

The population of Greystones for many years was below the 1000 mark, which is perhaps the dividing line between village and town. It was a place where everybody knew everybody else (that of course is an exaggeration). Now the population is approaching the 10,000 mark. People now long take houses for the summer. If you want to have that sort of holiday you buy a bungalow or chalet at Brittas Bay or Ardamine, and at weekends in the summer the sea front and harbour and south beach are full of anonymous crowds who have come by car or bus for the day.

The Church of Ireland built their St Patrick's Hall in the 1950s; before that they had used the old national school where Percy French had once recited and sung and drawn his lightening sketches. The big new National school has succeeded it on the level ground near the railway at the bottom of Rathdown Road.

The Rugby Club was founded in 1945 and quickly reached the stature of a senior club, taking on and quite frequently beating Lansdowne, Bective, Wanderers, etc. I once happened to turn on the BBC just at news time and hear the announcer say "Cambridge University beat Oxford at Twickenham today; it was a great personal triumph for the ambridge Captain, John Robbie". [John Robbie was a fly half for Greystones and Ireland International.]

Another new arrival on the scene is the Greystones Operatic Society, which reaches such a very high standard both musically and dramatically. And the distinguished composer, A.J. Potter, who died a few years ago, lived in one of the old houses near the Harbour. I have referred to Ecumenism, we now have a united service every year during the week of prayer for Christian Unity, we still observe together Women's World Day of Prayer, which came to Greystones 50 years ago. Mrs Carrie Lyle and the present distinguished director of the Irish School of Ecumenics, the Rev. Robby Boyd preached his first sermon as a student in Greystones. When you start investigating history you find that every question answered suggests another or perhaps two to be asked. I have greatly enjoyed putting my thoughts together but I am conscious that I have left many gaps and been guilty of a number of guesses and inaccuracies.

I have used and acknowledge my indebtedness to Cannon Scott's The Stones of Bray, Mr Sam French's book "History of the Parish Greystones 1863-1863" written for the centenary of the consecration of St Patrick's Church.

Joyce's Neighbourhood of Dublin, first published in 1912 and just re-issued in a facsimile edition kindly lent me by Reverend Brian McConnell, who also lent me A history of Irish Presbyterianism in Dublin and The South and West of Ireland by C.H. Irwin 1890. The Reverend Robin Lyle's paper for the Greystones Literary society on "The History of Presbyterianism in Kilpedder and Greystones", kindly let me by Mr Claud McFarland and the 1977 handbook of Greystones Golf Club, kindly supplied by Mr Paddy Lyons, also The History of the Dublin and South Eastern Railway by W.E. Shepherd.

I am very grateful to Father O'Sullivan, P.P., for answering my questions about parish history. For the 20th century, I have also used the conversations and reminiscences of my friends and my own, not necessarily accurate memories.

Thank your for asking me to speak to you. It spurred me to revise this paper, though there is still a great deal of room for improvement. Thank you again, very much.

1 The Woodlands Hotel, built by Fred Burnaby as the home of the Burnaby estate became the Clyda Hotel, then the Woodlands before it was demolished in 1989.
2 No longer, alas.
3 The Holy Rosary Parish sold St Kilian's for private development in 1999.
4 In 1995 the Tennis Club move from to a new site and built a new clubhouse on Delgany Road next to Greystones Rugby Club.
5 Now Johnson and Staunton's.
6 Since demolished and replaced by apartments.
7 John Robbie was a fly half for Greystones and currents broadcasts as a controversial anchor in a Johannesburg radio programme.