County Dublin
County Dublin is a county in Ireland, and holds its capital city, Dublin. It is located on the island's east coast, within the province of Leinster. Until 1994, County Dublin was a single local government area; in that year, the county council was divided into three new administrative counties: DĂșn LaoghaireâRathdown, Fingal and South Dublin. The three administrative counties together with Dublin City proper form a NUTS III statistical region of Ireland. County Dublin remains a single administrative unit for the purposes of the courts and Dublin County combined with Dublin City forms the Judicial County of Dublin, including Dublin Circuit Court, the Dublin County Registrar and the Dublin Metropolitan District Court. Dublin also sees law enforcement and fire services administered county-wide.
Dublin is Ireland's most populous county, with a population of 1,458,154 as of 2022 â approximately 28% of the Republic of Ireland's total population. Dublin city is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Ireland, and the largest city on the island of Ireland. Roughly 9 out of every 10 people in County Dublin lives within Dublin city and its suburbs. Several sizeable towns that are considered separate from the city, such as Rush, Donabate and Balbriggan, are located in the far north of the county. Swords, while separated from the city by a green belt around Dublin Airport, is considered a suburban commuter town and an emerging small city.
The third smallest county by land area, Dublin is bordered by Meath to the west and north, Kildare to the west, Wicklow to the south and the Irish Sea to the east. The southern part of the county is dominated by the Dublin Mountains, which rise to around and contain numerous valleys, reservoirs and forests. The county's east coast is punctuated by several bays and inlets, including Rogerstown Estuary, Broadmeadow Estuary, Baldoyle Bay and most prominently, Dublin Bay. The northern section of the county, today known as Fingal, varies enormously in character, from densely populated suburban towns of the city's commuter belt to flat, fertile plains, which are some of the country's largest horticultural and agricultural hubs.
Dublin is the oldest county in Ireland, and was the first part of the island to be shired following the Norman invasion in the late 1100s. While it is no longer a local government area, Dublin retains a strong identity, and continues to be referred to as both a region and county interchangeably, including at government body level.
Etymology
County Dublin is named after the city of Dublin, which is an anglicisation of its Old Norse name Dyflin. The city was founded in the 9th century AD by Viking settlers who established the Kingdom of Dublin. The Viking settlement was preceded by a Christian ecclesiastical site known as Duiblinn, from which italic=unset took its name. italic=unset derives from the Middle Irish word Dublind, from dub "black, dark" and lind "pool", referring to a dark tidal pool. This tidal pool was located where the River Poddle entered the Liffey, to the rear of Dublin Castle.The hinterland of Dublin in the Norse period was named.
In addition to italic=unset, a Gaelic settlement known as italic=unset was located further up the Liffey, near present-day Father Mathew Bridge. Baile Ătha Cliath means 'town of the hurdled ford', with Ăth Cliath referring to a fording point along the river. As with italic=unset, an early Christian monastery was also located at italic=unset, on the site that is currently occupied by the Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church.
Dublin was the first county in Ireland to be shired after the Norman Conquest in the late 12th century. The Normans captured the Kingdom of Dublin from its Norse-Gael rulers and the name was used as the basis for the county's official Anglo-Norman, and later English name. In Modern Irish the region was named after the Gaelic settlement of italic=unset or simply italic=unset. As a result, Dublin is one of four counties in Ireland with a different name origin for both Irish and English â the others being Wexford, Waterford, and Wicklow, whose English names are also derived from Old Norse.
History
The earliest recorded inhabitants of present-day Dublin settled along the mouth of the River Liffey. The remains of five wooden fish traps were discovered near Spencer Dock in 2007. These traps were designed to catch incoming fish at high tide and could be retrieved at low tide. Thin-bladed stone axes were used to craft the traps and radiocarbon dating places them in the Late Mesolithic period.The Vikings invaded the region in the mid-9th century AD and founded what would become the city of Dublin. Over time they mixed with the natives of the area, becoming NorseâGaels. The Vikings raided across Ireland, Britain, France and Spain during this period and under their rule Dublin developed into the largest slave market in Western Europe. While the Vikings were formidable at sea, the superiority of Irish land forces soon became apparent, and the kingdom's Norse rulers were first exiled from the region as early as 902. Dublin was captured by the High King of Ireland, MĂĄel Sechnaill II, in 980, who freed the kingdom's Gaelic slaves. Dublin was again defeated by MĂĄel Sechnaill in 988 and forced to accept Brehon law and pay taxes to the High King. Successive defeats at the hands of Brian Boru in 999 and, most famously, at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, relegated Dublin to the status of lesser kingdom.
In 1170, the ousted king of Leinster, Diarmait Mac Murchada, and his Norman allies agreed to capture Dublin at a war council in Waterford. They evaded the intercepting army of High King RuaidrĂ Ua Conchobair by marching through the Wicklow Mountains, arriving outside the walls of Dublin in late September. The king of Dublin, Ascall mac Ragnaill, met with Mac Murchada for negotiations; however, while talks were ongoing, the Normans, led by de Cogan and FitzGerald, stormed Dublin and overwhelmed its defenders, forcing mac Ragnaill to flee to the Northern Isles. Separate attempts to retake Dublin were launched by both Ua Conchobair and mac Ragnaill in 1171, both of which were unsuccessful.
The authority over Ireland established by the Anglo-Norman king Henry II was gradually lost during the Gaelic resurgence from the 13th century onwards. English power diminished so significantly that by the early 16th century English laws and customs were restricted to a small area around Dublin known as "The Pale". The Earl of Kildare's failed rebellion in 1535 reignited Tudor interest in Ireland, and Henry VIII proclaimed the Kingdom of Ireland in 1542, with Dublin as its capital. Over the next 60 years the Tudor conquest spread to every corner of the island, which was fully subdued by 1603.
Despite harsh penal laws and unfavourable trade restrictions imposed upon Ireland, Dublin flourished in the 18th century. The Georgian buildings which still define much of Dublin's architectural landscape to this day were mostly built over a 50-year period spanning from about 1750 to 1800. Bodies such as the Wide Streets Commission completely reshaped the city, demolishing most of medieval Dublin in the process. During the Enlightenment, the penal laws were gradually repealed and members of the Protestant Ascendancy began to regard themselves as citizens of a distinct Irish nation. The Irish Patriot Party, led by Henry Grattan, agitated for greater autonomy from Great Britain, which was achieved under the Constitution of 1782. These freedoms proved short-lived, as the Irish Parliament was abolished under the Acts of Union 1800 and Ireland was incorporated into the United Kingdom. Dublin lost its political status as a capital and went into a marked decline throughout the 19th century, leading to widespread demands to repeal the union.
Although at one time the second city of the British Empire, by the late 1800s Dublin was one of the poorest cities in Europe. The city had the worst housing conditions of anywhere in the United Kingdom, and overcrowding, disease and malnourishment were rife within central Dublin. In 1901, The Irish Times reported that the disease and mortality rates in Calcutta during the 1897 bubonic plague outbreak compared "favourably with those of Dublin at the present moment". Most of the upper and middle class residents of Dublin had moved to wealthier suburbs, and the grand Georgian homes of the 1700s were converted en masse into tenement slums. In 1911, over 20,000 families in Dublin were living in one-room tenements which they rented from wealthy landlords. Henrietta Street was particularly infamous for the density of its tenements, with 845 people living on the street in 1911, including 19 families â totalling 109 people â living in just one house.
After decades of political unrest, Ireland appeared to be on the brink of civil war as a result of the Home Rule crisis. Despite being the centre of Irish unionism outside of Ulster, Dublin was overwhelmingly in favour of Home Rule. Unionist parties had performed poorly in the county since the 1870s, leading contemporary historian W. E. H. Lecky to conclude that "Ulster unionism is the only form of Irish unionism that is likely to count as a serious political force". Unlike their counterparts in the north, "southern unionists" were a clear minority in the rest of Ireland, and as such were much more willing to co-operate with the Irish Parliamentary Party to avoid partition. Following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Belfast unionist Dawson Bates decried the "effusive professions of loyalty and confidence in the Provisional Government" that was displayed by former unionists in the new Irish Free State.
The question of Home Rule was put on hold due to the outbreak of the First World War but was never to be revisited as a series of missteps by the British government, such as executing the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising and the Conscription Crisis of 1918, fuelled the Irish revolutionary period. The IPP were nearly wiped out by Sinn FĂ©in in the 1918 general election and, following a brief war of independence, 26 of Ireland's 32 counties seceded from the United Kingdom in December 1922, with Dublin becoming the capital of the Irish Free State, and later the Republic of Ireland.
From the 1960s onwards, Dublin city greatly expanded due to urban renewal works and the construction of large suburbs such as Tallaght, Coolock and Ballymun, which resettled both the rural and urban poor of County Dublin in newer state-built accommodation. Dublin was the driving force behind Ireland's Celtic Tiger period, an era of rapid economic growth that started in the early 1990s. In stark contrast to the turn of the 20th century, Dublin entered the 21st century as one of Europe's richest cities, attracting immigrants and investment from all over the world.