The Pisser Dignam could have the last laugh. Among the suggestions in the ambitious Local Area Plan for Phibsborough/Mountjoy is that the new "prime urban centre" should include that most fashionable of offerings – a farmers' market. If the plan is adopted, history will have come full circle – a century ago, part of the Bohemians FC pitch at Dalymount Park was originally a vegetable plot known as the Pisser Dignam's field.
A stock of fine red-brick terraces grew up in the surrounding Phibsborough area at about the same time, resulting in Victorian and Edwardian residences – many richer in architectural character than the supposedly swankier boroughs of Dublin 6 and 8.
Then, in what was considered progress during the late l960s, a row of such period houses was demolished on Phibsborough Road to make way for one of the first, but possibly the ugliest, of shopping centres built in Dublin. Just as the plans for a new shopping centre are on the cards, and hopes that the area will get that boost so long overdue, it was the building of the original seven-storey tower in 1969, just past Doyle's Corner, that marked the decline of Phibsborough as one of the city's oldest villages.
Sunday Independent
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