The History of Rathmines

Published by Kevin Whooley on 14-November-201914-November-2019

For this article I wanted to learn more about the Rathmines College, Rathmines suburb, its history and its prominence in Irish history. For this I interviewed Mr. Tom Harris who is a lecturer, a local historian and a member of the Rathmines, Ranelagh and Rathfarnham Historical Society, to find the answers to my questions.

How old is Rathmines, how old is Rathmines College and what is its history?
The history of Rathmines goes back- this town hall itself is 1896-97 and the Rathmines College went under different names over many years. It goes right back to the 1930s, 1910s and 1920s. But we moved into this particular building, the town hall, in 1980. We were across the road in the complex that is part of the library but we are here now since 1980, but the school did exist many years before that.

Where does the name come from and what is it in Irish?
The name Rathmines, the raths means a fort or a fortress or a dune. And way back in the 13th century there was a family called De Meones and it was called Rath De Meones and over centuries that changed and it became, not Rath De Meones but Rathmine’s. There are no mines here, but the name goes back to that family of the Middle Ages.

How was Rathmines affected throughout history in such events such as the Rising?
During the 1916 Rising one of the generals of the English army who were stationed down  in the barracks, the Portobello barracks. He took possession of the town hall with his soldiers and they went up to the clock-tower where they had a vantage point and a view of many areas around. We wouldn’t have all the tall buildings, remember it was 1916, so the clock-tower in Rathmines was a very good vantage point so the British army took possession of it and used it as a kind of sentry point and a viewing point for security.

When was the clock installed?
The clock would have been installed around the time 1896-1897. This is a late Victorian building of brick and sandstone. The clock would have been installed at the same time I would imagine as the building itself with its four faces, sometimes called the ‘four faced liar’, but it is a very striking landmark in this part of the city.

Who are the most notable inhabitants who called Rathmines home?
Well there are many really, there’s no doubt about that. Yeats would have lived here and in fact there’s a road that use to be called Rebel Road in 1916 that a lot of the people who, one way or another were directly or indirectly involved in the 1916 Rising, lived in Belgrave Road. Constance Markievicz had a house on Leinster Road and the Fianna Eireann would often congregate there and do there training there. And also to remember that Patrick Pease’s Scoil, Scoil Eanna, was on Oakley Road which is there as you pull out of Rathmines going towards Ranelagh. That’s where initially he had Scoil Eanna, his Irish school which eventually moved out to Rathfarnham.