Vernon Avenue

Vernon Avenue runs north from the seafront to the junction with Sybil Hill, and then turns west as far as Castle Avenue.

A laneway at the time, it is shown on Rocque’s map of 1760,¹ but is not named. Taylor’s map of 1816 names it ‘Green Lane’,² as does an estate map of 1823.³

The first reference to the current name is in the Ordnance Survey name books (1824 to 1842), where the stretch from the seafront to Sybill Hill is described as ‘A bye road leading from Clontarf Parochial School, through The Sheds of Clontarf Village, to the Shore; in good repair‘.⁴

The western part of the road continued to be called Green Lanes, with the once-off appellation of ‘Verville Road’, until in 1971 the Ordnance Survey referred to it as ‘Vernon Avenue’.⁵

The name is derived from the Vernon family, who were the owners of the nearby Clontarf Castle until 1933.

1. Rocque, 1756. ↩︎
2. Taylor’s map of the environs of Dublin, extending 10 to 14 miles from the castle, by an actual survey (1816), in Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (https://virtualtreasury.ie/item/LBC-GJ-13-2) (24 Sept. 2024). ↩︎
3. Colm Lennon, Clontarf (Irish Historic Towns Atlas: Suburbs, 1) (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2018), p. 46. ↩︎
4. Ordnance Survey name books, Dublin City and county, 1836. ↩︎
5. Lennon, Clontarf, p. 46. ↩︎