History of the Area Surrounding the Sean McDermott Street Magdalene Institution

The 2-acre former Magdalene Laundry site at Sean McDermott Street is an area bounded by Talbot Street, Amiens Street, Gardiner Street and Seán McDermott Street (formerly Gloucester Street). This area of less than one square mile was known throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century as The Monto (as Montgomery Street was its central thoroughfare) and it was one of the world’s largest red light areas, due to the fact that Dublin was one of the most heavily garrisoned cities of the British Empire.

The Monto was also fondly known as ‘the Village’ to many of its regular denizens who liked to drink in the neighbourhood pubs and James Joyce memorialised the lively, bawdy, demi-monde community of Monto as ‘Nighttown’ in the fifteenth chapter (“Circe”) in Ulysses. ‘The Village’ was central to the streets and docks where most of the early twentieth century Republican (Feminist & Socialist) Revolutionaries lived and this was the neighbourhood where Ireland’s ‘Cultural Revival’ was made manifest: in the theatre of the Trade Union building Liberty Hall, in the Abbey Theatre founded by William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory and now known as the Irish National Theatre and in the feminist, socialist and Irish cultural publications produced in the presses of that area.

It was in the surrounding tenements that Peadar Kearney wrote Ireland’s national anthem and if the landmarks of Monto could reveal their secrets, they would illuminate our understanding of our revolutionary past as it was also here that many a note was passed, in local pubs such as Phil Shanahan’s, or Cleary’s, which acted as rendezvous points for Irish Republicans during the revolutionary period.

Current Environment of the Site
There still exists a thriving community in Monto, full of characters adding ever more layers to the cultural tapestry of the area.

Still living in close proximity to the Magdalene Laundry site at Sean McDermott Street is playwright and actor, Thommas Kane Byrne, who recently completed his “Monto Trilogy” of plays which explored the heart and humour of modern inner city life.

If you take a walk through Monto today, you’ll see pictures of local hero and world champion boxer Kelly Harrington adorning the streets where she still lives today. You’ll probably bump into Hollywood actor Barry Keoghan or Ireland’s soccer hero, Troy Parrott visiting their families and undoubtedly, you’ll spot local folklorist Terry Fagan working hard to preserve and pass on the proud history of the community to the younger generations.

The architectural history of the buildings close to the Magdalene Laundry site is equally spectacular, and their decayed stated equally lamentable. The long promised regeneration of the Rutland Street school building seems closer than ever, but still, this building – which could act as the centre of a cultural revival in the area – remains vacant and lifeless. The many vital projects of the Lourdes Youth & Community Services, such as the crèche and adult education programmes which for decades kept a presence in the ‘Red Brick Slaughter House’, were removed in 2019 on the promise that they could return once the building was restored by Dublin City Council.

Just a stone’s throw from the Sean McDermott Street Magdalene Laundry site is the now derelict Aldborough House, one of the finest examples of eighteenth century Georgian architecture that remains standing. A building upon which Leinster House was modelled, Aldborough House stands as a cautionary tale regarding what can occur to buildings of historical importance that are relinquished from state ownership. It has for almost three decades been passed from owner to owner, without finding any purpose or investment in its care.

What is distinctive about the area that surrounds the Laundry is just how many of its locals continue to work to the aid of their community. Locals work in community youth groups such as The Belvedere Youth club, set up to provide a place to the ‘newsboys’ of decades ago, while childcare providers such as the LYCS and the Community After Schools Project are essential supports to the community and locally run.

Organisations such as ICON, the Crinan and the SWAN youth services have provided community leadership for many years in response to the drugs epidemic that engulfed Dublin from the early eighties. These groups remain present in the community today and are essential to the fabric of the area.

The iconic Liberty Hall and the world famous Abbey are less than ten minutes’ walk from the Sean McDermott Street Magdalene Laundry site. Within five minutes’ walk from the site lie: the Custom House on the River Liffey; the Irish Financial Services (IFSC) district; Ireland’s largest railway station and largest bus station, as well as the capital’s main street, O’Connell Street. The proximity to such vibrancy underscores the eerie quietness of the site to be developed and brings into sharp relief how the surrounding streets of the former Monto/Village seem pock-marked with social deprivation: many commercial units remain empty at the street level in the former Montgomery St (now called James Joyce Street). A rare burst of life in the area can be seen in the flurries of arrival and departure of the multi-ethnic 160 young children who attend the Rutland National School, which is officially ranked as a school catering to the most economically vulnerable.

The Open Heart City Collective was founded when a politician from the area, the Social Democrats’ Gary Gannon, led a movement to stop the site moving from public ownership. Gary began to work with Maeve O’Rourke and Katherine O’Donnell of Justice for Magdalenes Research and this alliance in turn led to the establishment of the Open Heart City Collective.