Eccles Place

A laneway running to the rere of the houses on the north side of Eccles Street, this street was listed as ‘Eccles Lane’ by Whitelaw in 1798.

As reported by M’Cready, the name comes from John Eccles, Lord Mayor in 1710, who owned property here.¹

Although it appears as ‘Stable Lane’ on Campbell’s Map of 1811, and on the 1837 Ordnance Survey, it continued to be known as Eccles Lane, as evidenced by a newspaper advertisement of 1829,² and an electoral list of 1832.³

By the 1860s the houses on the lane had deteriorated, and it’s worth reproducing the report of the Registrar of the district:

In 1888 the Corporation’s Paving Committee reported:

A memorial was submitted to this Committee from persons whose property is bounded by Eccles Lane, Lower, and also residents in said lane, requesting the Committee to have the name changed… to Eccles Place as valuable houses are being erected there and the neighbourhood is improving. Your Committee recommend the prayer of the Memorial to be heard, and the Eccles Lane Lower be in future called Eccles Place’.⁴

The western portion of Eccles Place disappeared under the car park of the Mater Hospital [when?] but the stretch from Dorset Street links up with Leo Street.

1. M’Cready, p. 33. ↩︎
2. Saunders’s Newsletter, 22 January 1829, p. 4. ↩︎
3. Dublin Observer, 29 December 1832, p. 14. See also Freeman’s Journal, 18 December 1844, p.3. ↩︎
4. Reports 1888/3. ↩︎