The name Kimmage can be referenced back to at least the time of the patent rolls of 1415. Larkfield, an old mill and farm in Kimmage owned by the family of
Joseph Plunkett, was used as a clearing station for arms imported in the 1914
Howth gun-running for use in the 1916
Easter Rising. An
Irish Volunteers secret camp, the Kimmage Garrison, was established by Plunkett and his brother
George Oliver Plunkett. IRB members with engineering skills came from England and Scotland and lived rough for three months while they manufactured bombs, bayonets and pikes for the coming
Easter Rising on the site that is now the SuperValu shopping centre. On
Easter Monday, 1916, Captain George Plunkett waved down a
tram with his revolver at
Harold's Cross, ordered on his volunteers armed with
shotguns,
pikes and
homemade bombs, took out his wallet and said "Fifty-two
tuppenny tickets to the city centre please". The group went to
Liberty Hall before being organised into four companies, and with the other volunteers, marched to seize the
General Post Office. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the park facing the end of Stannaway Road was known locally as the 'Tip'. The Tip had a water-filled quarry which froze over in the winter. In one tragic incident during the summer of 1941, an 11 year old boy drowned while traversing the water on a makeshift raft. The Poddle fed the millrace at the end of the pond in the grounds of the nearby monastery of Mount Argus. In the 1950s and 1960s, this two-storey building housed St Gabriel's Boys Club, which was well supported by the local community when they staged
Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. The residential area between Ferns Road and Kildare Road was architecturally designed in the shape of a
Celtic Cross, with a mirror image each side of Armagh Road. Locally this road was considered as dividing Crumlin and Kimmage. The majority of these roads were named after mediaeval monasteries such as
Clonmacnoise,
Clonard,
Kells and
Monasterboice. Stannaway Road originally ran from Sundrive Road, up to and just beyond Cashel Road, where the scheme ended with a wall across the roadway that was demolished in the 1940s/1950s when an extension to the original scheme commenced. Blarney Park also had a similar wall separating the Dublin Corporation houses from a private scheme. In the 1950s, residents in the Corporation houses objected to being cut off and broke a hole through. The hole was gradually made larger and the Corporation deemed the wall unsafe and eventually demolished it. Access through the private section then became the norm. The Corporation devised a privatisation policy in the 1970s and sold council homes to the existing tenants. Captain's Road (previously Captain's Lane) runs from the top of Windmill Road in Crumlin to Kimmage Road. There were only a few houses between the schools (St Columcille CBS and the girls' convent opposite) on Armagh Road and St Agnes Church. ==Features and facilities==