Just the other day, I talked with one of that select group of Dublin residents, the people who live on Bull Island on the city' s northside, writes Hugh Oram.
Louis Barton is a member of one of the three families who still live in the cottages on the island, just past the century-old wooden bridge, as you head towards the Royal Dublin Golf Club. He reckons that about 16 people in all live in that cluster of homes and he says he is the only one to have been born and reared on Bull Island.
Louis worked for the Irish Press until it closed in 1995. He spent nearly 40 years at Burgh Quay, first as a compositor then as a journalist. He says he's quite happy living on Bull Island, a seaside oasis just three kilometres from the city centre. The only problem is one common in Dublin these days: the sheer volume of traffic passing to and fro across the bridge. The only other way on to the island is by the main causeway, built in the early 1960s.
Earlier, in glorious summer sunshine, I had walked along Dollymount beach, which runs the length of the seaward side of the island. The sand was white and the beach was clean; the setting could have been a blue-seas island in the Caribbean, far away from any big conurbation. The island wasn't always as clean as this; a serious litter problem prompted action and every third Saturday, the Bull Island Action Group does a clean-up.
Rubbish could have been a much more bigger feature of the island. Back in 1971, incredible as it now sounds, the then Dublin Corporation proposed that the island be used as a dump for household waste. Fortunately, that plan never materialised. The corporation had bought the island, apart from the Royal Dublin golf course and the land owned by the old Dublin Port and Docks Board, back in 1955.
There was an earlier and even more bizarre plan for Bull Island. In 1944, the then Irish Tourist Board announced that it had taken control of the island and was preparing to develop a holiday camp there. At the end of the following year, the plans were unveiled, showing a proposed cinema, dance hall and restaurant. But they never got off the drawing-board.
During the first World War, the island had been taken over by the British military as a firing range. Afterwards the place needed considerable rehabilitation. Many of the Royal Dublin's tees and greens had disappeared, while the clubhouse was almost derelict. The course was redesigned and rebuilt.
Today, Bull Island is a specially protected area, renowned for its flora and fauna. In 1981, it was designated by Unesco as a biosphere reserve, the only one of its kind in the world so near the centre of a capital city. In 1988, the island got further protection, as a nature reserve. Dublin Corporation built a visitor and interpretative centre, though it was padlocked on my recent visit.
Other attractions include the statue of Our Lady of Dublin Port, which is down the causeway, past the entrance to the Royal Dublin Golf Club. The statue was unveiled and blessed in 1972 by the then Archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Ryan. A breakwater runs from the statue down to the North Bull lighthouse.
The island is, of course, an artificial creation; just over 200 years ago, it didn't exist. The South Bull Wall was built during the 18th century to improve navigation into the port of Dublin. It didn't bring the expected improvements, so in 1800, the Royal Navy's Capt William Bligh ( yes, he of the Bounty) carried out a survey of Dublin Bay and proposed the building of the North Bull Wall, which was completed by 1823.
After the building of the South Bull Wall, tidal patterns in the bay had started changing. In 1800, a new sandbank was seen off Dollymount and over the succeeding two centuries, the tides have swept in sand to build up Bull Island, which is now over 5 km long and 800m wide. What is properly called North Bull Island now covers over 350 hectares and is still growing, year by year.
In 1889, the Royal Dublin Golf Course got the permission of Col Edward Vernon of Clontarf Castle, who then owned most of the island, and of the then Dublin Port and Docks Board, to lay out a golf course, which has been there ever since. The Royal Dublin is Ireland's second oldest golf club; it started in the Phoenix Park, then flitted to Sutton, before settling on Bull Island in 1889. The other course on the island, St Anne's, opened in 1921. The links on both courses are superbly maintained, while their club houses offer a high standard of services and comforts for golfers, but both clubs are highly respectful of the wonderful island paradise that is their home.
Bull Island boasts habitats ranging from salt marshes to dunes. It has a vast array of plant species and is noted for its wild flowers, especially orchids. Many bird species live on the island, including the Brent geese from northern Canada which winter here each year. There may be up to about 30,000 birds at any one time. The island is noted also for its hares and its mice.
As for the name of the island, it derives from the Irish name for Clontarf, Cluain Tairbh, or Meadow of the Bull. Before the harbour walls were built, the sound of the waves crashing on the shoreline was said to have resembled a bull bellowing.