Early to medieval Drimnagh derives its name from the word
druimneach, or country with ridges. A
Neolithic settlement discovered and a funerary bowl found in a burial site. The site was demolished, but the bowl is on view in the
National Museum. The lands of Drimnagh were taken from their Irish owners by
Richard de Clare, 2nd Earl of Pembroke (Strongbow), who gave them to the Barnwell family, who had arrived in Ireland with Strongbow in
1167 and had settled in Berehaven in
Munster. The family were killed in Munster, except for Hugh de Barnwell, who was given lands at Drimnagh as compensation. The area was considered safe, as it was relatively far away from the Irish strongholds in the
Wicklow Mountains.
Drimnagh Castle, which was first built by the Barnwell family in the 12th century, is the only castle in Ireland which still has a moat encircling it. It is one of Dublin's few remaining medieval castles. The medieval story of
the Abbot of Drimnagh was set in Drimnagh and nearby Crumlin.
20th century Drimnagh was farmland until the mid-1930s, when some of the first tenement clearances brought city centre residents from one-room hovels to terraced and semi-detached houses in a series of roads named after the mountain ranges of Ireland. The suburb consists of one area close to Drimnagh Castle and Lansdowne Valley, with three-bedroom private housing built by Associated Properties, and another area (the larger part) built by
Dublin Corporation and consisting of three-bedroom 'kitchen houses' and two-bedroom 'parlour houses' bordering the Grand Canal and Crumlin. The two areas meet at the parish church, the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel (Mourne Road Church), in the centre of Drimnagh, which was built in 1943.
Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin opened in the area in 1956. The Dublin Corporation housing area was originally considered part of an area known as North Crumlin from its construction in the mid-1930s until the introduction of the postal code system during the mid-1970s. ==Transport==