River Poddle
The River Poddle is a river in Dublin, Ireland, a pool of which gave the city its English language name. Boosted by a channel made by the Abbey of St. Thomas à Becket, taking water from the far larger River Dodder, the Poddle was the main source of drinking water for the city for more than 500 years, from the 1240s. The Poddle, which flows wholly within the traditional County Dublin, is one of around a hundred members of the River Liffey system, and one of over 135 watercourses in the county; it has just one significant natural tributary, the Commons Water from Crumlin.
The Poddle rises in the southwest of County Dublin, in the Cookstown area, northwest of Tallaght, in the county of South Dublin, and flows into the River Liffey at Wellington Quay in central Dublin. Flowing in the open almost to the Grand Canal at Harold's Cross, its lower reaches, including multiple connected artificial channels, are almost entirely culverted. Aside from supplying potable water for the city from the 13th century to the 18th, to homes, and to businesses including breweries and distilleries, the river also provided wash water for skinners, tanners and dyers. Its volume was boosted by a drawing off from the much larger River Dodder, it powered multiple mills, including flour, paper and iron production facilities, from at least the 12th century until the 20th. It also provided water for the moat at Dublin Castle, through the grounds of which it still runs underground.
The Poddle has frequently caused flooding, notably around St. Patrick's Cathedral, and for some centuries there was a commission of senior state and municipal officials to try to manage this, with the power to levy and collect a Poddle Tax. The flooding led both to the lack of a crypt at the cathedral and to the moving of the graves of satirist Dean Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels, and his friend Stella. The river and its associated watercourses were famously polluted in certain periods, at one point allegedly sufficiently so as to kill animals drinking the water. The river is mentioned briefly in James Joyce's novel Ulysses, and multiple times in Finnegans Wake, which mentions its role in Dublin's growth.
Names
Poddell and Salach
The name Poddle is first recorded in 1493, as Podell, in 1603 as Puddell. The modern spelling Poddle is first found in 1695. P.J. McCall in 1894 attempted to etymologise the name as from the term pottle, a measure of land. Carroll considers a possible derivation from the English puddle, most likely as a "translation" of the older Irish name.An alternative Irish language name for the river, Abhainn Sáile or Salach, has also been Anglicised colloquially as "the river Salach", Salagh, Glasholac, and similar. Salach would in this case be used in the sense of "muddy pool" – the Irish salach means "dirty, filthy" in general, but in toponyms refers to a puddle or mire.
Dubh Linn and Dublin
A large pool once existed at the confluence of the River Poddle with the Liffey, which was wider then. This water in the pool was dark, probably due to peat staining, and so it was named dubh linn in Irish, which means dark pool or black pool. This historic pool existed under the present site of the coach house and castle gardens of Dublin Castle. A settlement in the vicinity was known as Dyfflin by its Viking founders, derived from the Irish name.Related names
The stretches of artificially made stream from Balrothery to Kimmage, and from Harold's Cross to the City Basin were both known as the City Watercourse. The offtake from the site of Donore Castle through Marrowbone Lane is known as the Tenter Water but was previously also called the Pimlico River.Course
Origins: Cookstown and Tallaght
The Poddle begins as the Tymon River in the Cookstown area of "Greater Tallaght", northwest of Tallaght village, between Tallaght Hospital and Cookstown Industrial Estate. After a largely culverted stretch, its early open course, near Old Belgard Road and the former Jacob's Biscuit factory, has been straightened where it flows in what is now an area of light industrial development. It runs to the north of the former Institute of Technology, Tallaght campus, and passes the Tallaght Athletics track before going through a small public park, Bancroft Park. It continues to the east, past where a tributary from the vicinity of Tallaght Priory used to flow in. The small river goes on through Tymon North, turning northeast and passing schools and St Aengus Church, then between a special school and Tallaght Community School, to come to Tymon Lane, formerly the only road for miles, linking Templeogue and then-remote Greenhills, when Tallaght was a small village.Tymon Park and after
The river flows north into the western division of Tymon Park, a large public park formed in the 1980s and 1990s, where it curves northwest and then east again. It runs below both the site of the ruined Tymon Castle and the site of the later house of the same name, through an area of three small ponds, and one main one, and then crosses under the M50 orbital motorway to the eastern division of the park.In this division, after passing Limekiln Rounders Club and Clondalkin Cricket Club, the Poddle runs east. Additional small ponds, and one larger one, sometimes Tymon Lake, were added to its course here. The river reaches in this eastern section are to be redesigned, and made the centrepiece of a flood capture area, during flood alleviation works, with an Integrated Constructed Wetland also to be added. It then parallels Limekiln Road before passing under Wellington Road, going east and turning northeast by Glendown Drive. In this area, it forms the northern border of Templeogue, towards Greenhills, and then the southern border of the small district of Perrystown.
Near Templeville Road, the Poddle used to receive the artificial stream from the direction of Templeogue and Firhouse. This channel, the first stretch of City Watercourse, carried water from the River Dodder extracted at Balrothery Weir in Firhouse; as of 2020, it has been dry for at least two decades. It then passes into Kimmage via Wainsfort Manor, and by Wainsfort Manor Green there is a sluice gate to manage high flow. If the water backs up, some is diverted into what is today the Lakelands Overflow culvert. Historically a surface channel, this now runs underground to cross Wainsfort Road, runs along past the Terenure College buildings and comes out at the western end of the college's lake.
The City Watercourse
The Poddle's modest volume was boosted for over 700 years by a significant addition of water diverted from the River Dodder at a large weir at Balrothery in Firhouse, and carried by the three-kilometre first section of the City Watercourse. The ancient artificial watercourse was made by monks not later than the 1240s, and its use later extended with the sanction of the Anglo-Norman administration in Ireland. The watercourse takes an interesting bend after it crosses under Wellington Lane, which looks like the reuse of an existing ditch around an earlier ecclesiastical site. Often roads follow the boundaries of such sites, and this would be a rare example of a watercourse doing so. Near the northern end of the artificial connection was a major milling complex, the Mount Down Mill.Kimmage, Crumlin and The Tongue
The point in Kimmage where the City Watercourse joined the river is known exclusively as the Poddle. It continues on through the district, tending northeast, and passing through the Kimmage Manor complex, where it actually goes under one of the buildings. The river's main course through the manor complex is supplemented by a culverted channel along its edge; the flow goes through the surface channel only in normal conditions but when it rises in spate, it overflows into the culvert too. At the end of the grounds, the flows combine and exit in a culvert for some hundreds of metres.The Poddle passes the K.C.R., and Poddle Park and Ravensdale Park, once the site of another mill complex and now a small public park. After a mix of culverted and open sections, it reaches Sundrive Road in Crumlin, where a shopping centre was built on the site of another former mill, the Larkfield complex.
The river's line divided at the site of an ancient structure called "The Tongue", near what is now Mount Argus monastery in Harold's Cross. This is a wedge of stone, also known as the "Stone Boat", that divides the flow, in a 2:1 proportion when a certain depth of flow is reached. While the current "Stone Boat" is a modern replacement, it was formed based on the preceding structure, which lay in an open area called the Tongue-field; it is now on a suburban street. The restoration or rebuilding was done by the company, Tiernan Builders, who built the modern housing adjacent.
The lesser portion formed the second section of the man-made City Watercourse, heading north for Crumlin Road and Dolphin's Barn. Its line passes the Grand Canal east of Dolphin's Barn Bridge, where it is intercepted by the Grand Canal Tunnel Sewer, and on through the Back of the Pipes, to the "City Basin" reservoir in Basin Street. The City Basin was said to be one of the first urban water reservoirs in modern Europe, and the City Watercourse and Basin allowed many distilleries and breweries to be set up on the western edge of the city in the 1700s, including the St James's Gate Brewery. Near the City Basin was the original starting point of the Grand Canal, and a supply of canal water eventually replaced Poddle water for some purposes, including the making of Guinness.
The greater flow continues along a form of the original river bed. In the 1990s, changes were made in the Kimmage and Harold's Cross areas, including the formation of a decorative small pond as part of flood capture works, with a large fountain to the river. The main course of the Poddle passes the Russian Orthodox Church community complex and runs along the edge of Mount Jerome Cemetery. It then goes into a culvert to pass under the grounds of Harold's Cross Hospice, Greenmount Lane and Greenmount Business Park, where the river once supplied a pond and mills. It travels under the Grand Canal in a syphon, with an overflow to the Greater Dublin Drainage Scheme pipe, and enters the inner city. It was confirmed in 2020 that there is still a continuous flow through to the Liffey.