The Commissioners of Dublin City are about to assume control of Saint Patrick's Park, and in future it will be maintained at the cost of the citizens. For more than a quarter of a century this park has been maintained by the Iveagh Trust, which was founded by the late Lord Iveagh for the provision of better housing accommodation for workers in the area immediately surrounding Saint Patrick's Cathedral. So much good work has been done by the Iveagh Trust in that area that the whole district has been transformed.
Twenty-five years ago, or thereabouts, the Bull alley area, as it was then termed, was one of the most unsightly and evil smelling slums in the city. It was a maze of tortuous alleys and lanes which cannot be equalled in the city anywhere to-day. There everything seemed to be stale; meat jostled with the discarded clothing which was for sale, and the odours encountered in a walk through the district would nowadays call for the assistance of a gas-mask.
For all that the district could gather its crowds. In it was held the bird market, which still survives in another place close by, but in a very much diminished form.
The Irish Times, August 7th, 1929.