Hill Street

Off Summerhill, Hill Street was formerly called Temple Street Lower.

Dating from the 1770s, by 1885 this part of Temple Street had gained a poor reputation. In that year the Corporation’s Paving Committee reported that it had received:

[M]emorials from the inhabitants and owners of house property in Upper Temple-street and Lower Temple-street, praying that the name of the latter street may be changed, in consequence of the very serious deterioration in the value of property in those streets, owing to the fact that certain houses in lower Temple-street have been for some time past occupied by immoral characters.¹

The Committee recommended that the name be changed to ‘Hill Street’, but when the full Council considered the proposal, Councillor Kennedy put forward an amendment that the new name be ‘Chatteron Street’.²

This got the support of the majority, but conservative members of the Council weren’t too happy, as the suggestion was actually a sarcastic attack on Hedges Eyre Chatterton, who, as vice-Chancellor, was the judge who ruled that the Corporation didn’t have the power to rename Sackville Street.³

In the end, the matter was referred back to the Paving Committee,⁴ who repeated their recommendation that the new name be ‘Hill Street’, that name being chosen as the street was, in fact, on a hill.⁵

The Council adopted the new name in January 1886.⁶

1. Reports 1885/149.
2. ‘The Corporation’ in Freeman’s Journal, 10 Nov. 1885, p. 3.
3. ‘The vice-Chancellor and the Corporation’ in Dublin Evening Mail, 13 July 1885, p. 2.
4. Minutes 1885/308.
5. Reports 1885/203.
6. Minutes 1886/107.