Kingsland is the last of the ‘rebooted D8’ churches to be repurposed

You haven’t heard of Kingsland Park, Liverpool Road and Bloomfield Place in Dublin City? That’s because the names of these streets were changed in the 1860s as part of an extraordinary rebranding campaign led by one man; to reboot the Dublin 8 ‘brand’, boost property values and flush away the lingering red light district reputation which had reduced them.

Builder politician Frederick Stokes was so successful that not only did uppercrust buyers bite on the homes he was building, but suddenly all creeds wanted to build a church here. Among them the Primitive Wesleyan Methodists who funded Kingsland Park Church, constructed by between 1865 and 1871 along with an adjoining small primary school. And Stokes got to build that too.

The former church (the congregation retired it in the 1950s) was more recently bought by Harcourt Developments and after 18 months of restoration and repurposing, has been transformed into three A-rated apartments and a new mews house. This week one of those apartments have been placed for sale. One more and the mews house are expected to be offered going forward.

Since being retired it has been used since the 1950s as a base for the Women’s Only Employment Exchange, assisting women to progress in an area which had, a century previous, denigrated them.

From the 1830s Kingsland Park was known for the beautiful Royal Portobello Gardens that developed from the Kingsland Estate. The area’s homes were fashionable. But with ever larger numbers of British soldiers stationed at Portobello Barracks (today Cathal Brugha) and at Wellington Barracks off the South Circular Road (now Newman College), increasing numbers of prostitutes began to work in the area and crime soon followed.

Dublin City already had Europe’s biggest red light district with the notorious ‘Monto’ located around Summerhill and Foley Street containing an estimated 1,600 sex workers.

And with prostitution establishing itself near Portobello Barracks, many of the good burghers living around Liverpool Street and Kingsland Park began to move out and property values soon fell. This sparked businesses in the area to urge that redevelopment become a tool to recreate the area.

 

Source: 
Mark Keenan
Irish Independent