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Ireland (Historical Counties) => Ireland => Dublin => Topic started by: luas on Saturday 28 June 08 18:18 BST (UK)
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My father often spoke of Verschoyle's Fields when he reminisced about his childhood. He lived near Leonard's Corner in Dublin, so I assume this place was somewhere in that area or the Liberties. The period in question would have been from the Great War until the Emergency. Could anyone enlighten me where Verschoyle's Fields were, please?
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I have just come across this thread. I believe my father, who lived in the south circular road area around Leonard's Corner once mentioned that Verschoyle's field or fields was part of what were more generally known as the Tenters or tenterfields. The Ordnance Survey 25" map of 1888 shows the area as Tenter Fields (market gardens). Perhaps Verschoyle was a market gardener. The area was also known as Fairbrother's Fields when Dublin Corporation built a housing estate on it in the early 1920s. The main roads through the estate are O'Donovan Road and Clarence Mangan Road. The rest of the estate is to the north of those roads.
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Thanks for the information. I'd forgotten posting this thread. The tenter's fields may have become market gardens later, but their original purpose would have been as a place to dry cloth after the fulling process. The cloth was stretched on frames, known as tenterhooks, from which the expression "on tenterhooks" derives. Areas where cloth was manufactured had fields full of these frames, and they appear on many old maps as tenter's fields or some variation of the phrase. That part of Dublin was a centre of silk manufacturing, often conducted as a cottage industry in people's own houses, some of which were built with special lofts where looms were located. My own grandmother was a silk weaver, who came to Dublin from Macclesfield in Cheshire, another great silk town. Her grandfather had emigrated to Cheshire from King's County, where he was a tailor. I only recently found that out, but I always found Tullamore a friendly place, little realising I had ancestors from that area as well as Dublin.
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When I lived in Dublin, I lived for about 25 years in the Tenters (Donore Road). In all those years I never heard any reference to Verschoyles Field(s). Of course that is not to say it did not exist. OTOH there was a Verschoyles Court between Upper and Lower Mount Street.
Perhaps the Gilbert Library in Pearse Street might be able to advise...
David.