Early history Evidence of ancient settlement in the Ballymun area includes a number of
ringfort,
burnt mound and
enclosure sites in the
townlands of Ballymun, Balcurris and Jamestown. In the 1300s, the lands at Ballymun were controlled by the
Baron Skryne,
County Meath. Richard Stanyhurst was granted 180 acres in the area in 1473 upon his marriage to Agneta of the Barons of Scyrne family.
Early modern period The
Burnell family held the lands of Ballymun and
Balgriffin until 1534, when John Burnell was executed for supporting the rebellion of
Silken Thomas. The lands then passed to the Bathe family of
Drumcondra. By 1615, Robert Barnwell of Dunbro held the lands of Ballymun, and by 1641 there were just 2 or 3 cottages and a single thatched house in the area. The population in 1659 was 10 people, 4 born in England, and 6 Irish. In 1662, just 3 residents paid a hearth tax in the area. In the early 1700s, the tower house at Ballymun was constructed as a mill, which was subsequently taken over by an English educational society in 1744 to found a girls
Charter School. It was later converted to a boys school, before closing in 1825. The building still stands and is today called Santry Lodge. Due to the dense woodland and sparse population, the area was generally regarded as dangerous in the early 1700s, with numerous highwaymen operating on the Drogheda Road. In 1829, the ''
Freeman's Journal'' noted that Ballymun was a popular place for
duels. The area known as Stormanstown is named after Lord Stormingston who was granted land in Ballymun by Henry VIII, with the original Stormanstown House which was built in the early 18th century. This tiled mansion was demolished in 1823, and another house of the same name replaced it. This house was used by the
Albert Agricultural College as offices in the 20th century until it was demolished in 1970. Another house called Stormanstown on the corner of Glasnevin Avenue and Ballymun Road was the former residence of
Brian O'Higgins. It too was demolished in the 1970s. In 1964, in a response to this housing crisis in inner city areas of the capital, plans were made to build high-rise flat complexes; construction started in 1966 and were completed by the following year. The seven 15-storey towers were named after Irish Republican revolutionaries, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the
1916 Easter Rising. The flat complexes consisted of five 8-storey "districts" (Balbutcher, Balcurris, Coultry, Shangan and Sillogue) and three 4-storey "districts," two of which were part of Shangan and Sillogue, the third being located in Sandyhill. The Poppintree area of Ballymun was constructed in the late 1970s.
Original development At the time of its construction, Ballymun was a sought-after location and prospective tenants had to pass an interview to get housing there. There were three types of apartment building: seven "fifteen-storey" towers (which actually had 16 storeys plus plant rooms above), nineteen eight-storey blocks and ten four-storey blocks. The flats were built in the 1960s on contracts from the National Building Agency under the authority of
Neil Blaney, the Minister for Local Government. Later commentators described the development of the flats and the district as problematic, with the environmental journalist Frank McDonald, in his book
The Construction of Dublin, calling it the Irish state's "worst planning disaster", but the issues were not with the apartment buildings as such but the failure to integrate construction of accommodation with provision of services, problematic maintenance, notably of the lifts, the lack of social mix, and the abrupt move of tightly knit inner-city community families to an isolated area on the very edge of the city. Dublin's City Architect, Ali Grehan, after working as a lead architect and designer with the Ballymun regeneration project, commented that the concept of the area, developed from green fields, and its new (for Ireland) types of accommodation were a "really great idea" but that the project was "doomed to fall into decline" due to poor planning and central government policies. She especially highlighted the scale of the development, its purely public housing nature, and its location — a "constructed around a roundabout ... a dead end". She also noted that the concept envisaged the shopping centre being available from the start, but delayed for years, and the issues with lift and centralised heating system (also a new idea for Ireland) maintenance. The corporation had more gradual plans for development in multiple locations, and according to geographer Joe Brady of
University College Dublin,
Dublin Corporation were sceptical about the Ballymun scheme but given the weakness of Irish local government and especially its funding, had little choice but to work with the proposal from national government: The first tenants moved in between August 1966 and December 1966. By February 1969, when the National Building Agency's contract for Ballymun ceased and control of Ballymun was handed to
Dublin Corporation, there was a total of 3,021 dwellings, fully comprising publicly owned social housing.
Social challenges, community activity Some social problems occurred in the early years, as families which had grown up in dense city terraces close to Dublin's retail core, found themselves at the edge of the city, with few amenities beyond a small and expensive travelling "van shop". Over time, Ballymun became notorious for a number of social problems, such as drug abuse and unemployment, and was impacted by negative media coverage of the area. At the same time, a wide range of local community organisations emerged, for particular areas and towers, and for purposes such as small enterprise support, anti-drugs campaigning and community project support. The current Ballymun district is not substantially in the townland historically called "Ballymun" — instead, it occupies several nearby
townlands, the most significant of which is Stormanstown. Due to what were seen to be undesirable associations, some say that the area has shrunk since the completion of the tower blocks. For instance, in the early days of
Dublin City University (DCU), then called
NIHE, Dublin, this institution was sometimes referred to as being in Ballymun (part of the "Ballymun Project"), or sometimes in Whitehall, while today it is referred to and has a postal address in
Glasnevin, even though it has not changed location. Indeed, much of the present day central Ballymun lies on lands once in the northern reaches of the
Albert Agricultural College estate, the forerunner of the present-day DCU. Streets have also been renamed — for example, Ballymun Avenue (which was previously Collins Avenue Extension) was renamed Glasnevin Avenue after a local plebiscite in the 1970s. The city architect commented in 2015 that the "killer blow" for Ballymun was the offering of a tenant-purchase scheme in 1985, which gave good terms for local authority tenants to buy out their accommodation, but only if they had a house, not a flat, which led to many committed community members moving from Ballymun to be able to avail of the offer. This led to a "cycle of decline" and ultimately the need for a regeneration. The regeneration saw the loss of many shops, including the emptying of the only shopping centre,
Ballymun Shopping Centre. This meant the 18,000 residents had to travel to other districts for major grocery, and virtually all non-grocery, shopping. The shopping centre was eventually demolished in 2021. The plan for a replacement centre failed.
Arts during the regeneration During the regeneration, an organisation named Breaking Ground was set up as a "percent for art" scheme. This organisation commissioned a range of projects, including sculptures, and two headline projects, Hotel Ballymun and
amaptocare. In 2007, a floor of the by-then vacant Thomas Clarke Tower was temporarily transformed into a hotel as part of the Hotel Ballymun art project; the project ran for a month and was heavily booked, with a waiting list. The tree-planting project called 'amaptocare' was one of the two highest-funded arts projects in Ballymun. It involved more than 600 people sponsoring the planting of around 635 trees, and providing inscription texts to be engraved on plaques near the trees. Sponsors were informed that the all trees would be identified on a glass panel at Ballymun's central plaza. While the plaza was completed by 2013, the panel had, as of 2017, not yet been made. The most-publicised sculpture was , which portrayed a young local woman on a horse, at 1.5 times life size. The model, Toni Marie Shields, was selected by public auditions, and 3D-imaged in London. Designed to be placed centrally in the district, it was temporarily erected in front of the area's only secondary school, where, as of 2021, it remained.
After regeneration Local area plan In 2017, with the formal end of the regeneration, and the dissolution of Ballymun Regeneration Limited, 2,820 apartments had been replaced by just under 2,000 units of social housing, and 1,350 units of privately owned housing, mostly rented out. The area had moved from 80% of residents living in social housing to just under 60%, with one in eight in private rental, and 28% owner-occupied. In July 2017, the City Council approved a Local Area Plan for the area, to govern future development. This plan provided for around 2,000 housing units, of which a significant percentage would be for sale, but with developers to be required to sell 10% to the council or an Approved Housing Body for social housing. The plan included guidance for 31 distinct sites, totalling 34 hectares, and including as a priority redevelopment of the almost-derelict central shopping centre.
2018 Metro Hotel Dublin A multistorey
hotel fire occurred in the building containing the Metro Hotel Dublin and two floors of apartments, on 21 March 2018. The fire broke out in a private residence on the 13th floor, above rooms for hotel guests, at approximately 8.00 pm. It affected the top seven floors of the building. At least 12 units of
Dublin Fire Brigade attended the building, and confirmed that the hotel was successfully evacuated. The fire was extinguished and there were no reports of any casualties or people unaccounted for. The 15-storey hotel and apartment building was built as part of the Ballymun renewal, developed in 2006 by Pierce Contracting and a group of investors who included businessman Paddy Kelly. The hotel was designed by Shay Cleary Architects for Pierse Contracting and was originally scheduled to open in June 2006, and was operated by the Days Inn Hotel group. In 2007 a charter plane with 118 passengers and crew narrowly avoided crashing into the hotel after its pilot mistook the red lighting on the hotel's roof combined with its white internal light for the approach lights of a Dublin Airport runway. The incident occurred at 11.34 pm on the night of 16 August 2007, when the McDonnell Douglas jet was carrying 112 passengers and six crew on a charter flight from Lisbon to Dublin. In April 2014, the 88-bedroom Metro Hotel was put on the market in the region of €2.5 million. Along with the hotel, the sellers sought €3 million for the 30 two-bed apartments on the upper floors of the property. In July 2016, planning permission was refused for the retention of masts and antennae on the hotel. ==Transport==