The Dublin Cattle Market – A Grangegorman Neighbour

Dr Mary Muldowney, Dublin Historian-in-Residence and member of the Grangegorman Histories Working group, is publishing an upcoming book on the Dublin Cattle Market. In this article, Mary examines a landmark neighbour of the Grangegorman site, the Dublin Cattle Market.

In the one hundred and eleven years when the Dublin Cattle Market was in operation, anyone walking along the North Circular Road at its junction with Blackhorse Avenue and Prussia Street on certain days of the week would have found it thronged with cattle, horses, pigs and sheep being driven on foot and in later years in lorries, mainly to the docks. There had been a cattle market in Smithfield since the late seventeenth century and the sight of animals being moved through the local streets was a common one.[1] The new cattle market was officially opened in 1863 and became the major point of sale for cattle being brought from around the country and down through the northside streets to the docks for export.

The market opened following some years of debate about its site, as there were various proposals to upgrade or replace the existing market in Smithfield.[2] There had been constant complaints about the state of the Smithfield market for at least thirty years. Most of the criticism concerned the insanitary conditions but there were also suggestions that the sales masters, the cattle agents, were operating a cartel, despite the ‘free market’ status of Smithfield. In 1852 a Royal Commission was called to investigate, and evidence was presented of a monopoly that essentially excluded any new sales masters getting into the business. Farmers also complained about the role of the sales masters, protesting that if they tried to sell directly to consumers, their animals were run off by drovers hired by the salesmen.[3]

A Bill was enacted in July 1862 by the Westminster Parliament, approving the establishment of a new cattle market but not allocating a site or any resources for its development.[4] Finally the site between Prussia Street, Aughrim Street and the North Circular Road was purchased. It was mainly owned by the Jamesons, of the Distillery, who had bought it from its previous owners in 1804. In 1850 it was listed as having seven acres, with a rateable value of £126 per annum.[5] Building work commenced, including the construction of masonry boundary walls up to 18 feet in height, the installation of iron railings and gates and creating concrete pens to hold the animals, together with the necessary gratings and sewers. The City Engineer, Parke Neville designed the market buildings and layout.[6]

The new market was spacious and supplied with ample water, in contrast to the situation in Smithfield. A significant advantage would be the ease of access facilitated by the rail links that were a feature of trade in Ireland from the middle years of the 19th century. Most of the cattle would arrive directly at the market by rail from the most important grazing areas to the west and north of the city. An underground rail link, the Phoenix Park tunnel, would carry stock from the south and south-west. Only the cattle from the south-east would lack convenient access to the new market. The animals, when sold for export, would already be close to the embarkation point, or they could be slaughtered at the new abattoir for domestic consumption.[7]

The Dublin Metropolitan Cattle Market was formally opened on 24 November 1863. The Jameson family home had been transformed into the Cattle Market Hotel in time for the opening celebrations. A banquet for city councillors, cattle agents, investors in the Dublin Cattle Market Company and others was held in the hotel that night.[8] The name of the business was later changed to the City Arms Hotel, which remained in operation until the early 1970s. James Joyce stayed there on several occasions. The fictional protagonist of Ulysses, Leopold Bloom and his wife Molly lived in the hotel in 1893 and 1894, when Bloom was working for a trader in the Cattle Market. The building is now the home of Saor-Ollscoil na hÉireann (the Free University of Ireland).

According to the Census records from both 1901 and 1911, most male employment in the Stoneybatter, Smithfield and Markets area close to the Grangegorman campus was tied into the cattle business, between the Market itself and the associated enterprises.[9] During the early years of the twentieth century this market was the busiest of its kind in Europe; throughput in one year numbered nearly three-quarters of a million animals. [10] The sales were held each Wednesday and attracted buyers not only from Dublin’s abattoirs but also British livestock traders acting for slaughterhouses and farmers in the north of England and Scotland. There was a cluster of dealers’ and auctioneers’ offices on Prussia Street and Manor Street.

Other businesses associated with the cattle trade were abattoirs and butcher shops. The workers in these businesses were eligible to occupy some of the many houses in the area that had been built by the Dublin Artisans Dwelling Company because they had steady jobs and could supply references. The Dublin Artisans Dwelling Company had been started in 1876 by some members of the Dublin Sanitary Association.[11] Sites that were already cleared by Dublin Corporation under Public Health Acts[12] and the Artisans and Labourers Act of 1875[13] were then leased to the company and red brick one-story cottages and two-story houses were built. Houses were built for employees of the market and the ancillary businesses.

Small hotels and guesthouses accumulated along the streets leading away from the Cattle Market to accommodate the dealers and buyers acting for sales masters coming from outside the city.[14] At a time when the country’s economy depended on agriculture, and the cattle trade in particular, Dublin’s cattle market acted somewhat like a national stock exchange, effectively setting prices at fairs and markets throughout the country and processing the final sales of animals destined for export.

Livestock going directly for sale were kept initially in lairages for a day or two at least. A lairage, or cattle park is an area adjacent to an abattoir where animals are rested prior to slaughter. Their main function is to provide a secure holding area for the animals, offer protection from the elements (especially extreme weather conditions), and provide drinking water and adequate space to lie and rest.[15] The lairages for the Dublin Cattle Market and the associated abattoir[16] were located in what are now established north Dublin suburbs such as Cabra, Finglas and Castleknock. There were also some in the local area in the immediate vicinity of the Market. From the cattle parks, the livestock were shifted by local drovers into lairages or yards around Prussia Street, before being finally moved into the market on the morning of the sale.

In the twentieth century the market survived two world wars, Ireland’s Economic War with Britain and was still thriving in 1957 when the number of store and fat cattle sold there peaked at 249,776 animals.[17] A record number of sheep were sold in 1960 when the figure topped 425,000.[18] Dealers and buyers acting for sales masters bought cattle at fairs or off the land right across the south, midlands and west. These cattle were then moved by train or road east to the counties of Kildare, Meath, and Dublin to be finished or sold immediately in the market.

When the Market opened in 1863, it was on the outskirts of Dublin city but one hundred years later, it was in the middle of a busy residential and business district. There were frequent complaints about the disruption caused by the movement of animals through the streets from the Market to the Docks, as well as the problem of cleaning up the waste left behind. In the September 1967, another difficulty for residents of the area was raised, when Councillor Gerard English asked if steps would be taken to provide off-street parking facilities for cattle trucks in the Cattle Market area, ‘in view of the fact that present parking arrangements are causing a traffic hazard and a health problem’.[19] He was told that the Corporation had no sites in the vicinity of the Market which could be used for off-street parking of cattle lorries, nor were there any other sites in the area suitable for this purpose.

The Dublin Cattle Market had always started early. The gates opened for livestock at 3 am, although originally it had been midnight; the sale started at 5 am and everything was over by noon at the latest.[20] However, as the century went on, although proceedings at Prussia Street were over in a matter of hours, coverage on RTE radio and national newspapers meant the impact of each sale lasted at least a week as the market set cattle and sheep prices at fairs right around the country.

Financial problems were bedevilling the Market by the mid to late 1960s and they were frequently questioned at Dublin Corporation meetings. Councillor John J. Walsh regularly raised the issue of the losses in the Market that were effectively being subsidised by the Corporation and by extension the ratepayers. In the year 1962/63 the estimated excess of expenditure over income in respect of the Cattle Market was £4,339.[21] In subsequent years, when Councillor Walsh raised the issue again the deficit had risen – slowly at first but more dramatically in the later years of its operation. In March 1967 Councillor Joe Dowling asked the City Manager to list the various services provided by the Corporation which were operating at a loss. He was told that the estimated excess of expenditure over income in the current year was £46,396 in the case of the Abattoir and £17,280 for the Market.[22]

The sustained growth of the mart movement, the practice of buying and selling animals in fairs held much closer to the localities in which they were being raised, had a negative impact on the Dublin Market, as the fairs were its primary source of cattle. Numbers sold each week decreased steadily, dropping from around 5,000 head in the early 1960s to under seven hundred by 1970.[23] Lower throughput meant growing losses, and by the time the deficit reached £39,000 in 1972 Dublin Corporation managers had decided that the Market had no future in the cattle business.

Legal wrangles meant the Market lingered on for another year. However, its glory days were long past and just 325 cattle were traded at the last sale on May 9, 1973.[24] Over the next year, questions asked of the City Manager by Councillors suggest a site in limbo. In November 1973, the Manager explained that the site was the subject of discussion, but no decision had been made as to its future. Nearly a year later, in October 1974, Councillor Richard Gogan TD asked what steps had been taken to remove the itinerant dealers who had occupied the Cattle Market at North Circular Road.[25] He was told that the Maintenance Branch was in the course of demolishing the structures on the Cattle Market and would seal off entrances. The closure of the Abattoir followed in 1976. Dublin’s renowned Cattle Market was no more. The Corporation built the Drumalee estate on the site, responding to yet another housing crisis in the city’s history. The economic recession in the 1970s and 1980s led to significant cuts in government investments in welfare policies, particularly in social housing.[26]

Heritage policies now recognise the value of industrial heritage and the importance of commemorating workplaces that were once central to the development of an area but have now disappeared. The Cattle Market lives on in street names, plaques and especially in the memories of the people who lived and worked in its vicinity. This quintessentially rural workplace was based in an urban setting for over a century and is still part of the fabric of the area around Grangegorman.

 

[1] Grainne Doran, “Smithfield Market. Past and Present” in Dublin Historical Record, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 105-118.
[2] Juliana Adelman, Civilised by Beasts. Animals and Urban Change in Nineteenth-Century Dublin, Manchester University Press, 2020, pp. 91-126.
[3] Liam Clare, “The rise and demise of the Dublin Cattle Market” in Dublin Historical Record, Vol. 55, No. 2 (Autumn, 2002), p. 166.
[4] Dublin Cattle Market Act 1862, 25 & 26 Vic. c. 155. (https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla_18620155_en.pdf legislation.gov.uk ) Downloaded 2 July 2023.
[5]A brief history of Number 55 Prussia Street (www.saor-ollscoil.ie/about the building) Downloaded 7 May 2022.
[6] Stephanie P. Jones, “Parke Neville” in Dictionary of Irish Biography (dib.ie) Downloaded 7 May 2022.
[7] Clare, “The Dublin Cattle Market” in Dublin Historical Record, p. 171.
[8] Ibid., p. 169.
[9] Census of Ireland, General Report, 1901, Industrial Classes, pp 24-26: http://www.histpop.org/ohpr/servlet/PageBrowser?path=Browse/Census%20(by%20date)/1901/and Census of General report, Ireland, 1911, Industrial Classes, pp xxvii-xxix; http://www.histpop.org/ohpr/servlet/PageBrowser?path=Browse/Census%20(by%20date)/1911/. Downloaded 14 July 2022.
[10] Thom’s Irish Almanac and Official Directory 1912, p. 1650.
[11] Jacinta Prunty, Dublin Slums 1800-1925, A Study in Urban Geography. Irish Academic Press, 1999, pp 229-230.
[12] The Public Health (Ireland) Act 1878 (41 & 42 Vict. c. 52) was an Act of the Westminster Parliament which introduced a comprehensive code of sanitary law in Ireland, in line with the provisions of the Public Health Act 1875, which applied to England and Wales.
[13] The Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict c 36) was an Act of the Westminster Parliament which allowed local councils to buy up areas of slum dwellings in order to clear and then rebuild them.
[14] Thoms’ Directories, 1862 to 1970.
[15] Science Direct journal https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/lairage
[16] The abattoir serving the Dublin Cattle Market was situated on Blackhorse Avenue, across the road from the entrance to the Market on North Circular Road.
[17] Professor John Martin of the Department of History, Reading University quoted by Dr Declan O’Brien in “Remembering when Dublin dominated the cattle trade” in Irish Farmers Journal, 5 January 2022.
[18] Declan O’Brien, The Dublin Cattle Market’s Decline, 1955-73. Four Courts Press, 2021.
[19] Minutes of the meeting of Dublin Corporation on 4 September 1967, p. 199, Dublin City Library and Archives (DCLA).
[20] Information provided by a number of interviewees contributing to the history of the Dublin Cattle Market being written by Mary Muldowney and Declan O’Brien, which will incorporate oral history interviews about the Market in the twentieth century.
[21] Dublin Corporation meeting Minutes, 6 May 1963, p. 109, DCLA.
[22] Dublin Corporation