Firhouse

Firhouse (Irish: Teach Giúise) is a suburb in South Dublin, Ireland, Its Eircode routing code starts with D24, However is most definitely not Tallaght. Despite what Niamh Blighe thinks..

The pronunciation of Firhouse is as contentious an issue as its origin among the local population, some using "Fir" and some "Fur", though the use on historical maps, which tended to be phonetic, of "Furhouse", suggests the probable form.

The origin of the place-name may derive from the Irish word "fir", which means "of the man". It may also come from a manor that was located at the top of the laneway joining Scoil Treasa and Scoil Carmel. Like much of the rest of the area, this laneway, which led up to the main house, was lined with fir trees.

Firhouse was historically the site of a small rural settlement near the river bank. In the 14th century, a weir, the City Weir or Great Weir, was made in the Dodder there, named for Balrothery, the district on the north bank opposite, and much of the Dodder's water was diverted to the course of the River Poddle, to supply the then-small Dublin city.

Firhouse was the site, in 1816, of the hanging of the Kearneys, a father and two sons. Following the disappearance of gamekeeper John Kinlen, a bloody axe was found near the Kearneys' pub in Firhouse and they were convicted of the killing. A gallows was built at the scene of the crime, outside their pub, for their hanging. When the son, William, fell through the gallows, it was discovered that he was too tall to be strangled by the rope around his neck, so a hole was dug under the gallows, the hangman then pulled down on his legs and held onto him until he was dead. No public reference to this bloody incident can be found in modern Firhouse.

While there was no bridge near in a south westerly direction until the 20th century, a bridge was made just north of the village. The settlement grew further in the 19th century, and a number of mills existed in the vicinity, including a paper mill across the river. By the 1910s, the village already extended for half a mile, with a school, church, convent, public house and two smithies, but the population remained small until suburban development began in the 1960s and 1970s.

A brief history of Firhouse (as "Fir-house") is included in "The History and Antiquities of Tallaght in the County of Dublin", a comprehensive account of the large historic ecclesiastical and later civil parish of Tallaght. Handcock in fact refers to two villages of Fir-house, the main settlement and another he calls "the village of Upper Fir-house." The scholar Gerry Smyth has written a cultural history of Firhouse in his book Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination.

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