Addison Road

Running west from Annesley Bridge Road, this cul-de-sac was developed between 1897 and 1902 on a plot of land to the north of the Vitriol Works at Ballybough.

The road was originally named Addison ‘street’, but on 10 November 1902, the Corporation’s Paving Committee reported:

Your Committee beg to report that they have received a memorial from the owners and occupiers of Addison Street, Fairview, praying that the name of that thoroughfare may be changed to Addison Road.¹

The Committee, noting that the road had only recently come into existence, and that the name plate had yet to be erected, recommended that the name be changed. The name was formally approved by the Corporation on 5 January 1903.²

The houses are shown, along with those on Cadogan Road and those on Annesley Road (facing the park), on the Ordnance Survey 6″ map that was revised between 1907 and 1908.³

Addison Road first appears in Thom’s for 1902, although only one house was occupied, and others recorded as ‘building ground’ or ‘vacant’.⁴ The following year 61 houses are listed.⁵

I can find no evidence as to the origin of the name, but perhaps it derives somehow from ‘Addison Lodge’, further up the Tolka?

Note: the original version of this entry noted that in the Thom’s for 1905 there’s a Mr Joseph Nannetti listed as living at 9 Addison Road. I mistakenly said that this was Joseph Patrick Nannetti (1851-1915), trade unionist and politician, who appears in Joyce’s Ulysses. It was, of course, his son.

1. Reports 1902/196. ↩︎
2. Minutes 1903/17. ↩︎
3. OS 6”, 1912. ↩︎
4. Thom’s, 1902. ↩︎
5. Thom’s, 1903. ↩︎