If you live or work in Dublin 6 at some time you will have walked or driven down Leinster Road.

 We all agree the houses are very elegant and Indeed many of us as student’s have lived in the basements, and attics .Some of us are lucky enough to even have bought one of these fine old houses and  restored it.  But to me what is most interesting about Leinster Road is the diversity in architecture between 1840 and 1920. Although we might think they are Georgain houses and they have a Georgian expression (facade), technically they are not, as the Georgian period officially ends in 1830. What we do see which is fascinating to me is the Regency period creeping in. With Dublin being so close to London no doubt the well heeled owners of Leinster Road who visited London  saw this fashionable regency style then in vogue and started coping it by  applying the fashionable plaster stucco work to the front of there own houses. You can also see at the Rathmines entrance side a magnficent examle of a stable yard entrance with a regency expresson.

Across the road  from the Stable yard entrance are three magnificent examples of Regency architecture. Note the decorative architectural plasterwork on the facade. Also typical of this period is the use of wrought iron work, presumably influneced by the Industrial Revolution where iron work became very prominent. In this case it is used on the balconies of the houses pictured above. Further up the road we see a more Victorian influence creeping in circa 1890 - 1910 and this is very evident on mid Leinster Road. These can be easily identified by their more gothic expression and decorative coloured brickwork.It takes a trained eye to pick out many of these details and indeed there are many design fanatics who can tell you a lot more than I could ever do. But at the end of the day Leinster Road is an architectural delight and when you look up and around you all you see is beauty particulalry on a warm summers day.

Officially, Leinster Road was laid out around 1840 by Frederick Jackson through the lands of Mowld’s Farm. Walter Meyler bought some acres of the farm as building ground, pulled down the old farmhouse and built ‘two houses with stucco fronts’. These are probably the two houses which stand behind the library. The road originally had gates across the entrance at the Rathmines end.

Like other parts of the area, Leinster Road was home to several historic figures. Countess Markievicz and her husband, Casimir, lived at No. 49b. The Earl and Countess of Longford, Edward and Christine, lived in No.123 Grosvenor Park, now demolished and replaced by a new development of town houses. The Longfords were probably best-known for their involvement in the Gate Theatre with their company Longford Productions. They were familiar figures in the foyer of the Gate in the 1950s with their collection boxes, trying to raise funds to keep the theatre open when the Corporation laid down stringent safety requirements. They succeeded but the refurbishment cost £30,000, much of it paid for out of their own pockets.

The gates and piers which guarded the entrance to Leinster Road were removed to form the entrance to Rathmines Waterworks at Bohemabreena.

Further along Rathmines Road is the lovely Leinster Square, which like other ‘squares’ in the city is not really a square, nor was it built as such. The terrace facing Rathmines, built in the 1830s, was originally called Leinster Terrace and the north and south sides which followed were known as Connaught and Ulster Terraces. In the 1860s, Thomas Grubb lived in No. 21 and later his son, Sir Howard Grubb, lived in No. 23. Lafcadio Hearne lived in No. 30, as did the architects John and Frederick Butler, at a later date. James Stephens lived at No. 2 in 1914. Charles Gavan Duffy lived for a short time in No.4 in the mid-1840s. Like Leinster Road the square had gates across the entrance and the two stone gateposts can still be seen to this day.

(Source: Deirdre Kelly “Four Roads to Dublin”)