8. Beano.

[Narration] Broombridge Road.

You have now reached the section of the tour about Broombridge.

As you continue walking along this road, you are following a route that has changed a lot over the years, but still holds many memories for Cabra West.

The road takes its name from Broombridge itself, which crosses the Royal Canal just ahead. You will see the canal at the end of this story.

The bridge and the road were named after William Broome, who was one of the directors of the Royal Canal Company, and the surrounding area also took its name from him.

Jaysus, you wouldn’t mind an area being named after you.

If you look around you now, it is hard to imagine how different this road looked in the late nineteenth century. At that time only a small number of houses stood here, including Broome Ville near Ventry Road and Broome Lodge near the junction of Carnlough Road.

Just across the bridge on the Finglas side once stood Broombridge House on the site where the Broombridge Industrial Estate stands today.

One of the most remembered local characters connected with this road was a man named Joe Mooney, known to many people in Cabra simply as Beano.

He lived at Tolka Park on several acres of farmland close to the canal.

Every summer, Beano organised groups of local children from Cabra to help him clear scrap metal that had been thrown into the Royal Canal.

He paid the children for what they collected, giving them some useful pocket money.

Later in the evening he gathered the scrap together and brought it into the city centre on his horse and cart, travelling along roads like the ones you are walking today.

Of course, there was always a bit of messing as well.

Some of the older youngfellas would sneak over Beano’s back garden wall, take pieces of scrap metal from his yard, dip them back into the canal, and sell them to him again the following day.

Very cheeky of them.

Stories like these help us imagine what life along the canal was like for children growing up in this area many years ago.

[Directions] Now keep walking and make your way over towards the entrance of the LUAS depo, where the next story will begin.

[Music Refernce] Music: “All of This and Nothing” by Ashot_Danielyan (via Pixabay)