Ballymun () is a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, at the northern edge of the city's Northside. The population was 22,321 at the 2022 census. Ballymun is close to Dublin Airport and borders the suburbs of Finglas, Glasnevin and Santry.
The area was noted for the rapid and massive development of publicly funded housing in the 1960s, especially the high-rise Ballymun Flats, and subsequent social issues, as well as a strong culture of community organisation. In the early 2000s, it was the subject of a billion euro regeneration scheme, which delivered new housing stock to replace the towers of flats, but left the area with few retail facilities, and was connected with the closure of many community groups. As part of the regeneration, major arts projects were funded, including the establishment of a civic theatre and the mass tree-planting social artwork amaptocare.
Geography
Ballymun lies on the plains of southern Fingal (the historic area, rather than the modern county), sloping from northwest to southeast, from the catchment of the Santry River through that of the Wad River. The Santry River rises in Harristown and Dubber, northwest of Ballymun, and crosses and drains the northern parts of the district. The Wad is the area's main watershed, with several branches around Poppintree; it flows southeast, eventually reaching the estuary of the River Tolka at Clontarf.
Ballymun neighbours the suburbs of Finglas, Glasnevin and Santry. It contains five neighbourhoods, Coultry, Poppintree, Shangan, Balcurris and Sillogue. The latter takes its name from the townland of Silloge () which is in the civil parish in Santry.
Name The name Ballymun derives from the Irish (meaning 'town') and or (whose meaning is uncertain). The Placenames Database of Ireland notes that, while the meaning of Munna is "uncertain", the placenames surveys undertaken by John O'Donovan in the mid-19th century indicate that it may refer to a "family name". Risteard Ó Foghludha, who published a dictionary of Irish placenames in the early 20th century, indicated that the name may be derived from Bealach Munna ('the way of Munna', with Munna potentially a "saint's name"). In his work History of Santry Parish, Rev. Benjamin Adams says that Ballymun derived from the family name Munn. In his book The Villages of Dublin, Jimmy Wren theorises that Baile Muin means 'town of the shrubland' in reference to the dense forests that once grew there. "The Rev. Benjamin Adams in his "History of Santry Parish" refers to Ballymun as derived from the family of Munn (Munn's Town) but a more likely meaning is Baile Muin or "The Town of the Shrubland", a reference to the dense forest that originally grew there"
History Early history Evidence of ancient settlement in the Ballymun area includes a number of ringfort, burnt mound and enclosure sites in the townlands of Ballymun, Balcurris and Jamestown.
St. Pappin came to the area from Kerry in the sixth century to study at the University of St. Móibhí, Glasnevin. After completing his studies, he built the Church of St Macdara, and converted the people there from Druidism to Catholicism. By 1709, when St. Pappan's Church was built, this church had long vanished.
In the 1300s, the lands at Ballymun were controlled by Baron Skryne, based in County Meath. Richard Stanyhurst was granted 180 acres in the area in 1473 upon his marriage to Agneta of the Barons of Scyrne family.
Early modern period The Burnell family held the lands of Ballymun and Balgriffin until 1534, when John Burnell was executed for supporting the rebellion of Silken Thomas. The lands then passed to the Bathe family of Drumcondra. By 1615, Robert Barnwell of Dunbro held the lands of Ballymun, and by 1641 there were just 2 or 3 cottages and a single thatched house in the area. The population in 1659 was 10 people, 4 born in England, and 6 Irish. In 1662, just 3 residents paid a hearth tax in the area.
In the early 1700s, the tower house at Ballymun was constructed as a mill, which was subsequently taken over by an English educational society in 1744 to found a girls Charter School. It was later converted to a boys school, before closing in 1825. The building still stands and is today called Santry Lodge. Due to the dense woodland and sparse population, the area was generally regarded as dangerous in the early 1700s, with numerous highwaymen operating on the Drogheda Road. In 1829, the Freeman's Journal noted that Ballymun was a popular place for duels. The area known as Stormanstown is named after Lord Stormingston who was granted land in Ballymun by Henry VIII, with the original Stormanstown House which was built in the early 18th century. This tiled mansion was demolished in 1823, and another house of the same name replaced it. This house was used by the Albert Agricultural College as offices in the 20th century until it was demolished in 1970. Another house called Stormanstown on the corner of Glasnevin Avenue and Ballymun Road was the former residence of Brian O'Higgins. It too was demolished in the 1970s.
Public housing for Dublin By the 1960s, Dublin's housing stock was not only under pressure from a rising population but was also poorly maintained. House collapses in Bolton Street and Fenian Street in 1963 led to the death of four people, forcing Dublin Corporation to adopt 'emergency measures' to deal with the crisis. In 1964, in a response to this housing crisis in inner city areas of the capital, plans were made to build high-rise flat complexes; construction started in 1966 and were completed by the following year. The seven 15-storey towers were named after Irish Republican revolutionaries, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising. The flat complexes consisted of five 8-storey "districts" (Balbutcher, Balcurris, Coultry, Shangan and Sillogue) and three 4-storey "districts," two of which were part of Shangan and Sillogue, the third being located in Sandyhill. The Poppintree area of Ballymun was constructed in the late 1970s.
Original development
At the time of its construction, Ballymun was a sought-after location and prospective tenants had to pass an interview to get housing there. There were three types of apartment building: seven "fifteen-storey" towers (which actually had 16 storeys plus plant rooms above), nineteen eight-storey blocks and ten four-storey blocks. The flats were built in the 1960s on contracts from the National Building Agency under the authority of Neil Blaney, the Minister for Local Government.
Later commentators described the development of the flats and the district as problematic, with the environmental journalist Frank McDonald, in his book The Construction of Dublin, calling it the Irish state's "worst planning disaster", but the issues were not with the apartment buildings as such but the failure to integrate construction of accommodation with provision of services, problematic maintenance, notably of the lifts, the lack of social mix, and the abrupt move of tightly knit inner-city community families to an isolated area on the very edge of the city. Dublin's City Architect, Ali Grehan, after working as a lead architect and designer with the Ballymun regeneration project, commented that the concept of the area, developed from green fields, and its new (for Ireland) types of accommodation were a "really great idea" but that the project was "doomed to fall into decline" due to poor planning and central government policies. She especially highlighted the scale of the development, its purely public housing nature, and its location — a "constructed around a roundabout ... a dead end". She also noted that the concept envisaged the shopping centre being available from the start, but delayed for years, and the issues with lift and centralised heating system (also a new idea for Ireland) maintenance.
The corporation had more gradual plans for development in multiple locations, and according to geographer Joe Brady of University College Dublin, Dublin Corporation were sceptical about the Ballymun scheme but given the weakness of Irish local government and especially its funding, had little choice but to work with the proposal from national government:
The first tenants moved in between August 1966 and December 1966. By February 1969, when the National Building Agency's contract for Ballymun ceased and control of Ballymun was handed to Dublin Corporation, there was a total of 3,021 dwellings, fully comprising publicly owned social housing.
Social challenges, community activity Some social problems occurred in the early years, as families which had grown up in dense city terraces close to Dublin's retail core, found themselves at the edge of the city, with few amenities beyond a small and expensive travelling "van shop". Over time, Ballymun became notorious for a number of social problems, such as drug abuse and unemployment, and was impacted by negative media coverage of the area. At the same time, a wide range of local community organisations emerged, for particular areas and towers, and for purposes such as small enterprise support, anti-drugs campaigning and community project support.
The current Ballymun district is not substantially in the townland historically called "Ballymun" — instead, it occupies several nearby townlands, the most significant of which is Stormanstown. Due to what were seen to be undesirable associations, some say that the area has shrunk since the completion of the tower blocks. For instance, in the early days of Dublin City University (DCU), then called NIHE, Dublin, this institution was sometimes referred to as being in Ballymun (part of the "Ballymun Project"), or sometimes in Whitehall, while today it is referred to and has a postal address in Glasnevin, even though it has not changed location. Indeed, much of the present day central Ballymun lies on lands once in the northern reaches of the Albert Agricultural College estate, the forerunner of the present-day DCU. Streets have also been renamed — for example, Ballymun Avenue (which was previously Collins Avenue Extension) was renamed Glasnevin Avenue after a local plebiscite in the 1970s.
The city architect commented in 2015 that the "killer blow" for Ballymun was the offering of a tenant-purchase scheme in 1985, which gave good terms for local authority tenants to buy out their accommodation, but only if they had a house, not a flat, which led to many committed community members moving from Ballymun to be able to avail of the offer. This led to a "cycle of decline" and ultimately the need for a regeneration.
Regeneration
The government and Dublin City Council agreed an ambitious regeneration plan for Ballymun, with a budget exceeding €440 million. The creation of Ballymun Regeneration Limited as a limited company controlled by Dublin City Council initiated the main part of the project, beginning of the demolition of the Ballymun flats, and planned to conclude with the emergence of a "new town" of Ballymun. , six of the seven towers (Pearse, Ceannt, McDermott, McDonagh, Connolly, and Clarke) as well as three eight-storey blocks and seven four-storey blocks had been demolished by DSM, with the residents generally rehoused in new "state-of-the-art" housing in Ballymun. The new housing is a mixture of public, private, voluntary and co-operative housing. The residential aspects of the "new Ballymun" were largely completed by 2013. Several films and documentary TV programmes were produced during the regeneration period.
Criticisms