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2. Walking up towards Balrothery Weir
The Balrothery Weir along the Dodder River
Further along the N81, beyond the roundabout, the contrasts between old and new are even more dramatic. To the west there is a new development, which carries the name Spawell, with its functions ordered by demands of recreation (a kind of modern turnpike inn). Across the road is an eighteenth century house and below it, on the river's strand, sits the remnants of earlier cottage settlements.
Recent plans have designated both sides of the riverbank as a linear parkland but the incessant pressures for housing and bridges means that the park it is becoming narrower. Moving west along the N81 there is ample testimony to the Ireland of the 21st century and its icon, the motorway. Some twenty years ago this was farmland, mainly dairying for Dublin's liquid milk market. Now the Southern Cross motorway (M50) has cut a huge swathe through old meadows. Eventually it will link airport and seaport in a giant semi-circle. Here, its path is parallel to the Greenhills esker and the medieval road which passed by the tower house at Tymon. The M50 will be the focus for new urban growth in much the same way as earlier Dublin followed the tidal Liffey and, in the eighteenth century, the canals and inner circular roads.
View of the new M50 Balrothery Junction
At this point there is a new bridge over the Dodder and beside it are
the remains of the weir system which diverted water from the river to
supplement the city's supply from early medieval times. Significantly,
if you examine the early maps of Templogue townland, you will see that
the southern boundary is elongated in a narrow strip to incorporate
and presumably control the flow to the citys's watercourse.
The massive roundabout that links the N81 and the M50 is known as the
Balrothery Interchange. Balrothery (Bal an Ridire) means the
knight's portion and the townland adjoining to the west is Tymon or
Teach Munna, the house of Mun(na). So here, in this changing landscape,
the placenames carry connections of times past.
Tymon is now a major regional park formed in the 1970s from what were
separate farmsteads. Parks may well be the only clues we can get to
the older shapes which preceded the suburban sprawl and it would be
an ideal project to reconstruct the farms and fields of the parkland.
The park is almost bisected by the M50 but, thankfully the Park Authorities
preserved the old Tymon lane as an integral feature. This route is carried
on the Greenhills Esker, a reminder of the glacial processes that fashioned
the physical landscape and left the valuable sand resources. The use
of sand through the ages in the building industry is a major theme in
the geography of this district of Dublin and both sand and stone quarries
are prominent features of the landscape.
Keeping the river on our left we find that all along it
is a stretch of open space which has long been designated as the Dodder
Linear Park. It was a laudable idea to have this silver of green running
alongside the river but practise rarely matches theory and much of the
original area has been eaten into by a variety of land uses. Hopefully
enough will remain to have a walking route from Kippure to the sea at
Ringsend which would be the best text book of the geography of Dublin.
