Best of luck to all the postal workers who are moving out of College Street and down to the Baldoyke Industrial estate. We will miss you, but we will drop up to sell you copies of the Socialist (news paper) from time to time

reblog: from www.irishpostalworker.com
BALDOYLE SORTING OFFICE

After serving the hinterland of Baldoyle in a most effective manner for over thirty years now, the Dublin 13 Sorting Office is to close at the end of May and its function transfer to an industrial unit at The Baldoyle Industrial Estate.  Perhaps this is a timely opportunity to look at the site on College Street (formerly known as “Back Street”) and its tenants heretofore.

The building in 1960s

Mrs. Isabella Duff had a public house in College Street before 1885. This was known as Seaview House (as late as 1925) and later The Cyclist’s House (my 1960’s memories in above sketch as I have not been able to locate a photograph!).  It was an elaborate spacious premises with a large ballroom, snugs and parlours and an assortment of outbuildings. Seaview House which was on the site of the present postal sorting office, also doubled on occasion as a morgue, for the law relating to death in the streets dictated that any persons found dead on the road or washed up on the beach be brought to the nearest tavern, there to await identification or post mortem examination.

So it was that Bella Duff was obliged to receive a few corpses in her time and these were invariably placed on a couple of stout planks supported by two barrels in the corner of the ballroom. A constable of the R.I.C. had to attend guard over the body, and was wont ? when the body was a decomposed one – to “bless” the victim with liberal and regular sprinklings of a mop which stood nearby in a bucket of Jeyes’ Fluid. 

It often happened that a corpse and his or her guard rested in the ballroom while a dance was in progress but as neither the corpse nor the dancers took offence the revelry went on.  The late Joe Burns once told me that he had attended a wedding there and that there was a corpse in the corner ballroom all the while the wedding was in progress.

The premises were used extensively for weddings and socials and were especially busy on days on which the Baldoyle horse races were in progress.   

Mrs Duff also had the privilege of having a seven day licence when the other inns in the village were limited to 6-day, Monday to Saturday trading.  In the 1960’s after Paddy Carroll had purchased both the “Trigo” (now Grainger’s) on Main Street and the “Cyclists’ House” he opened the latter on Sundays only until he went through the courts to have the licences exchanged.

A Baldoyle lady has told me that as a young child she often witnessed fights at night as people left the “Cyclists” and a not uncommon sight was people helping drivers of horse drawn vehicles onto their seats as they were too intoxicated to mount the carts.  No breathalyser in those easygoing times.

After the inn closed down completely a school friend of mine came to live with his mother in the ballroom.  They divided the spacious, albeit draughty room into sections for sleeping, dining, and cooking and I went there frequently to play after school. 

It was like going in to a modern Irish Bar to see the elaborate brass beer and porter pumps on the magnificent mahogany counter, and the  array of advertising mirrors on the walls.  Valuable antiques were they around today. Christy Kane and his family continued to live in the northernmost part of the premises for another twenty years until this too was demolished and a modern house built on its site.

What remained of the building in the 1980s

The last remaining portion of Duff’s Cyclists’ House about 1980 with the name of the inn just barely legible on the gable of the next house along.

About Michael J Hurley

Was born in Baldoyle in 1950, and went to local national school. Published the following books :Where Came Dark Strangers – A View From The Grandstand – The Train To Howth – Tales of Old Baldoyle – Baldoyle The Racecourse Village

Two DVDs: Dark Strangers – Baldoyle, Faces and Places.Most books had all proceeds donated to local charities.The only items stilla available are Faces and Places DVDThe Racecourse village,both available from Michael at 48 Abbey Park. Baldoyle