Parnell Street

Renamed from Great Britain Street.

Parnell Street runs east from Capel Street to Summerhill.

As far back as 1328 it was recorded as as running ‘from Oustmantown so far as Tulghan [Tolka?] by the middle way of the town of Ballyboght‘ and referred to as ‘The King’s Highway’.¹ It is shown without a name on De Gomme’s map of 1673.²

By the early 1700s the street was known as Great Britain Street, and by 1710 it was familiar enough as to be used in an advertisement for ‘a new house on Jervis Street, near Great Britain Street‘.³

In April 1718 Sir John Eccles (see Eccles Street) was given £100 by the Corporation towards the building of a new church on Great Britain Street, to be called St George’s.⁴ The church is shown on Brooking’s map of 1728⁵ and it stood on the site until 1894. (The bell tower of the church can still be seen in Hill Street.)

M’Cready, less than helpfully, tells us that ‘It is called (not from Britain, but) from Great Britain‘, but does note that the name ‘Great Britain’ was first used by James VI & I in 1604.⁶ That, of course, doesn’t tell us ‘why’ the street was so named.

On 8 October 1899, at the junction of Sackville Street, the foundation stone of the Parnell Monument was laid.⁷ The monument was ‘unveiled’ on 1 October 1911,⁸ and the following day the Corporation adopted a motion to change the name of the street to Parnell Street.⁹

1. CARD, vol I, p. 158. ↩︎
2. Bernard De Gomme, The city and suburbs of Dublin, from Kilmainham to Rings-End wherein the rivers, streets, lanes, allys, churches, gates & c. are exactly described, 1673, 1673. (https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-541695) ↩︎
3. ‘A new house in Jervis Street, near Great Britain Street’ in Dublin Intelligence, 25 Feb. 1710, p. 2. ↩︎
4. CARD, vol. VII, pp. 58-59. ↩︎
5. Charles Brooking, ‘A map of the city and suburbs of Dublin. And also the Archbishop and Earl of Meath’s liberties with the bounds of each parish, drawn from an actual survey. With inset ‘A prospect of the city of Dublin from the north”. Dublin, 1728. ↩︎
6. Rev’d C.T. M’Cready, Dublin street names : dated and explained (Dublin, 1892) ↩︎
7. ‘The Parnell Demonstration: extraordinary scenes’ in Dublin Evening Telegraph, 9 October 1899, p. 4 ↩︎
8. ‘Parnell’s Memory: the statue unveiled’ in Irish Independent, 2 October 1911, p. 5. ↩︎
9. Minutes 1911/669. ↩︎