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.
