| Broadstone is an old area of Dublin, of quiet residential streets just a few hundred metres from O'Connell Street. Most of these streets of small red-brick houses were built in the last quarter of the nineteenth century - a hundred years after the building of Gardiner's Georgian Dublin. One aspect of Georgian architecture was retained in these modest homes - the ornate doorways with half-circle fanlights which are a feature of the neighbourhood. By the time these streets were built, political control of the city had largely passed from the Protestent ascendancy to nationalist Catholics. So the names of the streets reflected Irish aspirations rather than the glories of Empire: Fontenoy, Shamrock, Geraldine, Goldsmith, O'Connell. O'Connell Avenue (ironically one of the shortest streets in the neighbourhood) was once called O'Connell Street, but had to cede that title to what is now the Capital's main thoroughfare. |