Ballsbridge - Ballsbridge 4.84

Ballsbridge or Ball's Bridge is an affluent neighbourhood of the city of Dublin, capital of the Republic of Ireland. The neighbourhood is situated around and to the north and west of a three-arch stone bridge built in 1791, which spans the River Dodder on the south side of the city. The sign on the bridge still proclaims it as "Ball's Bridge" in recognition of the fact that the original bridge on that location was built and owned by the Ball family, a well-known Dublin merchant family in the 1500s and 1600s.Ballsbridge was once part of the Pembroke Township. However, that name is little used.History18th century maps show that the area of Dublin that is now Ballsbridge was originally mud-flats and marsh, with many roads converging on a small village located around the bridge, and known already as Ballsbridge. Situated on the river Dodder, this village had a ready source of power for small industries, including by the 1720s a linen and cotton printers, and by the 1750s a paper-mill and a gunpowder factory.By the early 1800s Ballsbridge was a small settlement on a major highway linking Dublin city with the port of Dalkey, where most of the shipping freight was landed, due to the shallow waters of the river Liffey estuary. The land around Ballsbridge was rural, and mostly belonged to the Earl of Pembroke. After the Royal Dublin Society moved into its present site near Ballsbridge in 1879, the Earl of Pembroke began to develop these lands into suburban residential housing. The RDS held their first show on their new premises in the early 1880s.