Cathedral Street

Running from O’Connell Street to Marlborough Street, down the side of the Pro-Cathedral, for which it is named, this street went by three other names previously.

It appears as ‘Stable Lane’ on Rocque’s map (1756),¹ but within twenty years was called ‘Elephant Lane’. There’s no evidence for the origin of that name, but we do know that in 1776, George Mowlds, Milltown, was contracted by the Lord Mayor to clean the street every Monday and Friday.²

It is shown as ‘Elephant Lane’ on the first OS map (1837), but was later called ‘Tyrone Place’. M’Cready says this that this derives from Tyrone House, the residence of the Marquis of Waterford,³ now and long since the Department of Education.

On 1 October 1900 the Corporation decided to change the name to Cathedral Street.⁴ By 11 October Hickey’s felt confident enough in the new name to include it unqualified in an advertisement,⁵ although later in the month another advertisement felt the need to say ‘Cathedral Street (Tyrone Place)’.⁶

1. Rocque, 1756. ↩︎
2. Saunders Newsletter, 21 October 1776, p.3 ↩︎
3. M’Cready. ↩︎
4. Minutes 1900/534. ↩︎
5. Dublin Evening Telegraph, 11 October 1900. ↩︎
6. Dublin Evening Telegraph, 27 October 1900. ↩︎