A Ramble about Tallaght

The Baby Farms of Tallaght For many years in the first half of the twentieth century, much of the agricultural hinterland around Tallaght was commonly referred to as “The Baby Farms”- notably the hills above Tallaght- around Mount Pelier (or Pelia ), Bohernabreena, Piperstown, Ballinascorney, Glassamucky and Killinarden Hill. Baby Farms were not unique to Tallaght, to Dublin, or indeed to Ireland. Nor were they new.  The practice had been common in the previous century, and was from the 1860s subject to regular criticism, scandal and outrage, though perhaps not robust enough legislation, reform or inspection. Baby Farming, involved the ‘fostering’ (and sometimes trading) of other people’s children for a fixed upfront fee, a regular payment, or occasionally both.  It routinely involved ‘registered’, and ‘unregistered’ children or infants.  Under The Children Act, one was legally obliged to register a child taken in, within 48 hours, with the Local Union (S...

THE OLD MILL, TALLAGHT, SINCE 1871  (Bridget Burke’s ‘Old Bawn Tavern’, Burke's, Kennedy’s, Lennon’s, Jordan's, Burke's) There is a generation of people living in Tallaght for whom The Old Mill at Old Bawn Cross, will forever be known as 'Burke's' of Old Bawn.  It is a generation, most probably now in decline and slowly dwindling.  And so it was one hundred years ago in 1919, when locals in the district still referred to the licensed bar and grocery at Old Bawn Cross, as Mr. Burke’s, despite it not having been so for over 25 years. The site on which the Old Mill now stands was once part of an extensive and farmed estate attached to Allenton House, only a stone’s throw away from the bar and grocery, up a tree lined avenue. While a licensed grocery shop has operated here since at least 1871, it was in the early years a modest and marginal enterprise.  The principal interest in the lease on much of the lands at Allenton changed...