Kingstown Harbour. Co. Dublin, Ireland

The present town of D?n Laoghaire dates from the 1820s.An earlier Dun Laoghaire village was located around the area where "The Purty Kitchen" pub is now located (sometimes mapped as "Old Dun Laoghaire"). Dun Laoghaire had a coffee house, and a small cove, both of which are shown on a number of old maps, and it may have had a salt mine (Salthill is close by). At that time, the area on which the town is currently located was a craggy, rocky pasture area with some quarries.The events of the night of November 18/19, 1807 were to lead eventually to the transformation of the area. On that night, the troopships, the Prince of Wales, and the Rochdale, both of which had departed from Dublin, were driven on the rocks between Blackrock and Dun Laoghaire with the combined loss of over 400 lives. This disaster gave new impetus to an existing campaign for a new harbour to be constructed near Dublin. By 1816, the legislation was passed authorising the construction of what is now called the "West Pier". When King George IV came to visit the new port under construction in 1821, the name Dunleary was dropped in favour of the name "Kingstown"; the town returned to its former name with the creation of the Irish Free State in 1921.Some maps show the commencement of a small town centre along what is now Cumberland St, close to the junction with York Road, but from the 1820s the harbour brought new business to the area, and a new town centre began to form along Georges St. That street may originally have been laid out as a military road connecting the D?n Laoghaire Martello Towers?one at the "Peoples Park", the other near the end of the West Pier?both of which have long disappeared.The harbour in D?n Laoghaire, then known as Kingstown, in about 1895.