Iveagh Hostel still trusts its century-old founding ethos

TRADE NAMES:The Iveagh Hostel in Dublin 8 has played an important role in the life of the city for over a century

THE IVEAGH HOSTEL, on Dublin's Bride Road, is more than an awesomely Victorian landmark in red brick. It's been, and is, home, security and salvation to many in this city since 1905.

The seed that grew the Iveagh Hostel goes back further.

Dublin, in 1890, wasn't the place to be poor. More than a third of the city's population lived in over-crowded, insanitary one-roomed tenements. Disease was rampant, infant mortality one of the highest in Europe, poverty endemic. The miasma rolling off the Liffey didn't help. Dublin stank.

But there was help, for some; 1890 was the year Sir Edward Cecil Guinness, great grandson of the brewery founder, set up the Guinness Trust, a philanthropic trust to provide housing and other amenities for the "labouring poor" of Dublin and London.

The ancient, historic area of Dublin around the brewery was squalid beyond compare, an infamous warren of twisted laneways, enclosed courts, brothels, doss houses and flop houses. In 1899 Sir Edward used the Dublin Improvement (Bull Alley Area) Act to acquire, clear and rebuild the area at his own expense.

By the time it was finished the Bull Alley location had a lodging house/hostel on Bride Road, swimming baths opposite and a play centre with integrated concert hall facing the cathedral on Bull Alley. Almost all of the building materials used were Irish.

Guinness had by now become the first Earl of Iveagh. In 1903, when the Dublin part of the Guinness Trust separated to operate as the Iveagh Trust in this city, the Iveagh name became forever synonymous with an area and collection of buildings just north of St Patrick's Cathedral.

The five-storey Iveagh Hostel opened as a hostel for men in 1905. It had 508 cubicles, a diningroom, smoking and reading rooms, wash house and barber shop and was described as "a palatial workmen's hotel". The hostel's guiding ethos was non-denominational; it gave residents a right to their privacy and eshewed righteous preaching.

These, and other fundamentals, haven't changed in the Iveagh Hostel's 103 years on Bride Road.

Manager Kevin Byrne has overseen life there for 36 of those years. He feels he was "born and raised" in the hostel - though that privilege belongs to Ballyfermot and he was 18 when, on holiday relief work, "the trust got me and I've been here ever since".

Chief executive officer Gene Clayton has been with the Iveagh Trust for a fledgling five years. Before him Fred Stephen was on the job for 45 years: "Before me, too, the job title was general manager. I'm only the fifth person in the job since 1890."

Their commitment to the hostel, and trust, is total, their dedication to the work complete. "Our ESB bills are still addressed to the original Workmen's Hostel," Kevin says. "People coming in can stay for a night, a week, a year or years. There are people living here for 30 and more out of choice."

Both are anxious to put the hostel in context, part of "a trust which is a massive concern", Kevin says "and part of a major late 19th century development." A development which is ongoing.

Lord Iveagh, according to Gene Clayton, "was in the tradition of great Victorian philanthropists like Toynbee and William Sutcliffe. He put his hand in his pocket and bought all around here. The interesting thing about the trust is that it was the only housing association founded by an act of British parliament which was later enacted by act of the Oireachtas. Any change involves primary legislation - which can be both good and bad, a bit of an obstacle at times.

"The original hostel was based on the Rowton model of large cheap hotels for working men so as they would have somewhere half decent to live, and so work."

There's memorabilia galore. An original egg cup has the original Iveagh Hostel crest. An exact model of a cubicle is made from original wood and uses original bedding and flooring. The wall safe behind us dates from 1856.

Early lodging costs compare favourably with today's. From 1909 to 1926 a night's lodgings cost 7d, a week's 3/6. Between 1926 and 1940 comparative prices were 10d and 5/6. Current prices, which have just been increased, are €21.80 and €113.40 - with the latter minus rent subsidies where applicable. This includes, as ever, four meals a day, the use of laundry facilities, computer room, light cooking facilities and a fitness room.

"Each landing," Kevin says and shows a typical and well fitted kitchen to me, "is supplied with eggs, milk and other basics. Men are encouraged to look after themselves so as they can take charge of their lives."

Early residents, he says, "were returned emigrants, soldiers returning from the Boer War and from the first and second World War, seasonal workers home from the potato and beet harvests in Scotland. When I started here 90 per cent of the men were over 50, returned emigrants needing companionship, security, who didn't want to go back down the country. Some men stay on here for those things; companionship and security." Kevin Byrne says the trust "never had a tendency to blow its own horn. Probably because the individual who founded it preferred to remain anonymous and get on with the work."

Getting on with the work is what the Iveagh Trust does continuing, as in the beginning, to provide housing too. "We've got 1,200 units altogether," Gene Clayton says, "215 in Bull Alley, 486 in the nearby Kevin Street estate, 110 units out in Swords and a 141 in a scheme being completed for pensioners in Rathmines.

"A pensioners' scheme in neighbouring Moyne House has 28. People who qualify on local housing lists, or who're in housing need, can qualify. There's a preconception that the hostel, accommodation and trust facilities are, or were, for Guinness employees. This is wrong. It was and is for anyone needing accommodation."

Value, as ever, is a given: a three-bed apartment in Kevin Street costs between €75-€80 a week.

The 508 original cubicles have become 195 bedrooms. "The numbers fell over the years and during the 1980s," Kevin explains, "and a decision was taken to renovate the hostel, develop part of it into the Moyne House for pensioners. The first type of new room opened in 1990 with a bed, wardrobe, bedside table. There are 44 rooms for emergency accommodation and the rest are in permanent or semi-permanent use by those needing a leg-up and those hoping to go on and find private or city council accommodation."

Gene adds that "the trust has transitional bedsits on Bull Alley estate from where, if people continue to make progress, they'll be offered permanent accommodation."

"People turn up on a nightly basis," says Kevin. "We've still got an open door policy. If we've a vacancy we won't refuse someone a place; people are given an information sheet showing who the trust will and won't accept. We've a policy of no drugs. I've sympathy for drug users but drugs aren't just a personal problem. There's crime associated with drugs, and health and safety issues as well. Drinkers are accepted once they don't create problems. If they do so once we warn them, if it continues they're out. You can't have alcoholic violence with 195 people staying. We've a great cross-section living here and we've had everyone from politicians to actors to doctors staying."

Writers too. Liam O'Flaherty stayed in the Iveagh Hostel when he was invalided out of the army in 1917 and Patrick Kavanagh stayed there when he arrived from Monaghan in 1939.

"A feature of the Iveagh Hostel," Kevin continues, "is that residents often move on to work for the Iveagh Trust. A lot of those who move through the hostel are just people who need accommodation at a particular time in their lives and we're here. They are not," he's adamant, "to be labelled tramps or whatever."

Gene, with like energy, concurs. "The hostel," he says, "is here to facilitate people's progress without being intrusive."

As it was in the beginning.