Page 80 - Greystones Archaeological Historical Society

A WALK AROUND GREYSTONES

Following service with an ambulance unit in France during WW1,
Averil studied law at Trinity College, Dublin and King’s Inns, and
on 1 November 1921 was called to the Irish Bar, together with
one other woman and eighteen men, who included her twin
brother, Captain William Deverell. Throughout her career she
was a staunch champion of gender equality within the legal
profession, and her name is commemorated by a lectureship in
law established under the terms of her will at TCD. She also bred
dogs – with her first earnings as a barrister, she bought a Cairn
terrier, and later established her own kennels, named
(presumably in a nod to her ‘day job’) the Brehon Kennels.

On the other side of the road, St Patrick’s National School is
situated on what used to be known as Carr’s Bog, or the Circus
Field. This building, opened in 1975, replaces an earlier school
on La Touche Place. Carr’s Bog was where Greystones’s first
GAA team, the Wolfe Tones, played their matches during the
early years of the twentieth century. It was also – as its
alternative name suggests – where the travelling circus pitched
its tents on its infrequent visits to the town.

Trenarren Court, towards the end of Church Road, opposite
the petrol station, was built as two houses, and later became one
of Greystones’s many hotels – at one time there were as many
as fifteen in the town. Facing you, on Victoria Road, is Brady’s
Hardware, on the site of which a forge once stood, and adjoining
Brady’s is the now-disused Ormonde Cinema, which has
appeared in The passion of St Tibulus episode of Father Ted, in
which it is picketed by Ted and Dougal carrying placards reading
‘Down with this sort of thing’ and ‘Careful now’. Built in 1947, this
replaced an earlier cinema off Sidmonton Road.

Turning right into Victoria Road, on the right-hand side, as
you approach the railway bridge, was located a small shop, the
site of the murder, on 26 June 1890, of a young woman,
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