An Irishman’s Diary: About Tom Clarke and Dublin’s revolutionary waterways

It appears I owe the Dublin bridge formerly known as the East-Link an apology. Writing here recently about a new book on the history of all the Liffey bridges, I suggested the one built between Ringsend and North Wall in the 1980s was so ugly nobody had ever campaigned for it to be renamed in honour of a dead writer or patriot.

I now realise this statement resulted from what the authorities in Dublin Castle, circa 1916, might have called a catastrophic intelligence failure.

Unknown to me, plans were already afoot then, involving a veteran Fenian and a shadowy organisation called “Dublin City Council”, to change the East-Link’s name (utterly). Not even Yeats would claim that a terrible beauty has been born as a result. But as of Tuesday afternoon last, the structure is now the Tom Clarke Bridge.

To me this seems a bit harsh on somebody President Michael D Higgins called “one of the key architects of the Rising”. Although being a man of action rather than aesthetics, Clarke would hardly have minded the lack of beauty.

Dynamite

In fact, insofar as he had any working relationship with bridges, it was the opposite of architectural. In 1883, as part of the Fenian dynamite campaign, he plotted to blow up London Bridge. He failed was jailed for 15 years.

So perhaps if Clarke had been able to choose a Dublin river crossing to be called after him, he might have picked a different structure than the East-Link, but in the same general area. I’m thinking of the one near the Aviva Stadium, little known in its own right, that gives “Londonbridge Road” its name.

That bridge crosses the Dodder, which in many ways is a river more fitting for a revolutionary. After all, despite its innocuous title, which could be designed to lull the unwary, the Dodder is notorious for outbreaks of extreme militancy.

Add the effect of its subversive sister river, the Poddle (another perfect cover name), which does much of its work underground, in the process threatening the foundations of Dublin Castle, and, well, you have a river system with which any old Fenian would be proud to associate.

As it happens, The Rivers Dodder & Poddle are the combined subject – and the title – of yet another new book that landed on my desk lately, co-authored by two city council veterans, Don McEntee and Michael Corcoran.

Both men have spent part of their careers helping to manage Dublin’s drainage. So they know what the well-named 17th-century writer George Boate meant when he described how, after any heavy rain, the Dodder “groweth thereby so deep, and exceeding violent, that many persons have lost their lives therein”.

That was back in 1652. But more than 350 years later, the Dodder is still capable of rising like a rebel conspiracy at short notice and sweeping away anything its path.

River rages

As the authors explain, there are several reasons for its volatility. One is that the Wicklow mountains, where it comes from, get a lot of rain. Another is the geology up there – granite overlaid with peat – which means a very high-volume run-off.

Combine this was a catchment area large in proportion to the river’s length, plus the fact that the Dodder usually has Ireland’s prevailing wind (south-westerly) behind it, and you have a perfect recipe for chaos in the leafy suburbs through which the river rages, as it did infamously during Hurricane Charlie.

The Poddle too has a storied and turbulent past. Its many alternative names have included the Salach (Irish for "dirty"), in which guise it inspired the old murder ballad, Down by the River Sáile. And its infiltration of Dublin Castle has been a source of concern for security forces, leading occasionally to the welding of manhole covers when VIPs visit.

If not mad or bad, exactly, the Poddle can be dangerous to know. In 1921, during the War of Independence, the city engineer in charge of sewers was taken from his home on one occasion, interrogated about sewer movements and forced to accompany a British officer on an investigatory tour of the Poddle culvert.

But getting back to the Dodder, and why its London Bridge might have made a better match for Tom Clarke. The original version, as depicted in an 1841 drawing, was a fragile wooden affair. And sure enough, that was swept away eventually by the insurrectionary river.

The current, sturdier version dates from 1857. As, give or take a year, did Clarke.