Donore Avenue

Donore Avenue is one of several streets in the City which at one time bore the name ‘Love Lane’.

The street itself dates from as early as the mid-eighteenth century,¹ and it’s shown on Rocque’s map the same year.²

In 1895 the Corporation’s Paving Committee received, and agreed with, ‘a numerously signed memorial from resident [sic] and others living in the immediate vicinity’ asking that the name of the street be changed to Donore Avenue.³

The name ‘Donore’, as proposed by the memorialists, derives from ‘Donore Castle’ which stood in the locality, and which is shown on the first Ordnance Survey map.⁴

Initially, the Corporation approved the change in name by 17 to 15,⁵ but at a following meeting that decision was rescinded by 21 to 11, on foot of a motion proposed by Alderman Flanagan.⁶ The decision to rescind the change was reported in the newspapers,⁷ but no reason for the rescinding of the change is given.

However, at a subsequent meeting of the Council the very same Alderman Flanagan proposed that the name be changed after all. The Town Clerk reported that a memorial of the ratepayers and residents, submitted to Alderman Flanagan, stated that only 3 of 100 objected to the change.⁸

Alderman Flanagan’s apparent u-turn was criticised by other councillors, but he claimed that, while he personally was in favour of keeping the name ‘Love Lane’, he was putting the motion ‘in deference to the memorialists’.

The outcome was that the Council voted 13 to 6 to change the name to Donore Avenue.

1. Pue’s Occurences, 20 July 1756, p. 2. ↩︎
2. Rocque, 1756. ↩︎
3. Reports 1895/149. ↩︎
4. OS, 1837. ↩︎
5. Minutes 1895/442. ↩︎
6. Minutes 1895/467. ↩︎
7. Freeman’s Journal, 24 December 1895, p. 3. ↩︎
8. Freeman’s Journal, 13 October, 1896, p. 2. ↩︎