page_title: Greystones
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Greystones / History
caption_attribution_description: Greystones Panorama, County Wicklow, Ireland - August 2014
context_page_description: Greystones is a coastal town and seaside resort in County Wicklow, Ireland. It lies on Ireland's east coast, 3.5 km south of Bray and 24 km south of Dublin city centre and has a population of 18,140. The town is bordered by the Irish Sea to the east, Bray Head to the north and the Wicklow Mountains to the west. It is the second biggest town in the county.
  The town was named after a half-mile or one-kilometre stretch of grey stones between two beaches on the seafront. The harbour area and Greystones railway station are at the northern and southern ends respectively. The North Beach, which begins at the harbour, is a stony beach, and some of its length is overlooked by the southern cliffs of Bray Head, which are subject to erosion. The South Beach is a broad sandy beach about one kilometre long. It is a Blue Flag beach and receives many visitors and tourists, mainly in the summer.
  In 2008, Greystones was named as the world's 'most liveable community' at the LivCom Awards in China.
context_section_description: Greystones is located south of the site of an ancient castle of the Barony of Rathdown. There was a hamlet which, like Rathdown Castle, was known as Rathdown, and which appeared on a 1712 map. This site occupied an area now known as the Grove, north of Greystones harbour, but only the ruins of a chapel, St. Crispin's Cell, survive. Greystones is a much more recent settlement and is first mentioned in Topographia Hibernica, a 1795 publication. Here it is described as a "noted fishing place four miles beyond Bray."
  In the early 19th century, there were some families scattered around the harbour, Blacklion, Windgates, Killincarrig and Rathdown. Delgany was a more substantial and longer established village. However, Greystones was put on the map with the coming of the railway in 1855, a difficult undertaking which was performed in consultation with Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the famous engineer. The railway station was built on the line dividing the properties of two landowners: the La Touche family of Bellevue House (now in ruins, near Delgany), and the Hawkins-Whitshed family of Killincarrig House (which is now Greystones Golf Club). It provided links with Bray and Dublin and left room for development on the adjoining estates.
  Elizabeth Hawkins-Whitshed (better known as Lizzie Le Blond) owned the Hawkins-Whitshed estate from 1871 and she developed Ireland's first planned housing estate, an area currently known as the Burnaby. Lizzie was a trailblazing mountaineer and explorer, a photographer, author of mountaineering books, fiction, travel writing and a film-maker. She donated for a nominal rent the site upon which the library in Greystones is built. Her first marriage to Frederick Gustavus Burnaby was short-lived and he is only known to have visited Wicklow once/ However the area is still given his surname. An adjoining estate to that of Elizabeth Hawkins-Whitshed was owned by the La Touche Family. It was during the time William Robert La Touche owned the estate that Greystones' developed rapidly. To the north of the station, Church Road, Victoria Road and Trafalgar Road were laid out, and many houses were built. In the early 20th century, the Burnabys began to expand the town on their side of the station, and the roads and houses of the Burnaby were developed and the population grew considerably. The names of these two families remain well known today, with many roads and housing estates bearing their names.
  Between 1885 and 1897, the people of Greystones campaigned for a harbour to aid the fishing industry and imports such as coal. The original pier, dock, sea wall and boat-slip remained pre-2009 but had endured substantial damage. In the early 20th century, the town felt the effects of coastal erosion (which is still a major problem); the loss of fields and most of the houses on the North Beach Road, and the costly inland relocation of the railway have all resulted. In 1968, the old Kish lighthouse foundation was added to the end of the pier.
  At the end of World War II, cars and petrol became widely available, allowing Greystones to gradually expand, filling in space between itself and outlying areas such as Blacklion, Killincarrig and Delgany. However, the popularity of the railway declined; its very existence being in jeopardy during the 1980s, as government cutbacks reduced the service to just a few trains per day. The 1990s brought a revival with the arrival of the electrified DART from Bray, and a much more frequent schedule.
caption: Greystones panorama
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