Earlsfort Place

This terrace of five houses on Adelaide Road, next to the Eye & Ear, was originally called ‘Salem Place’. M’Cready dates it to 1848, but the houses are listed in Thom’s for 1847.¹ The earliest map I can find it on is from 1883.²

Salem is a place in the Bible, and of course Salem, Massachusetts, was the location of the notorious witch trials; I can find no reason for the name of the terrace.

In 1891 the Corporation changed the name to Earlsfort Place (from the nearby Earlsfort Terrace) but there’s no evidence as to why.

The terrace continued to be listed as Earlsfort Place until 1925/26; in 1927 Thom’s says ‘now 61-65 Adelaide Road’.³

Douglas Hyde, first President of Ireland, lived at number 1 Earlsfort Place, later 65 Adelaide Road, from 1911 until 1933, when he retired from the post of Professor of Irish at UCD.

1. Thom’s, 1847. ↩︎
2. Lett’s, Son, & Co., Plan of the City of Dublin, 1883 (David Rumsey Historical Map Collection). ↩︎
3. Thom’s, 1927. ↩︎