Aston Place

Running from Fleet Street to Aston Quay, the name of this laneway was changed from Lee’s Lane in 1884.

The laneway appears as ‘Lees Lane’ in Rocque,¹ and also in a map of 1764.²

In February 1884, the owners and tenants of houses on the laneway asked the Corporation to change the name to Aston Place.³

According to the letter submitted, the ‘representative of the late David M’Birney⁴ has expended over £1,000 on building houses therein’, and M’Birney’s intended spending twice that in the coming year. However, they were having difficulty attracting tenants, as people didn’t like the term ‘lane’.

The Corporation agreed to change the name to Aston Place, ‘Aston’ being the name of the adjoining quay.⁵

1. Rocque, 1756.
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2. ‘Map of Fleet Street and How Set 17 Sept 1764.’ Digital Repository of Ireland. Dublin City Library and Archive (https://doi.org/10.7486/DRI.g445s3993). ↩︎
3. Reports 1884/72. ↩︎
4. Shaun Boylan, ‘McBirney, David’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography (https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.005559.v1). ↩︎
5. Minutes 1884/284. ↩︎