placenamesCabragh
An Chabrach
Cabra’s planned housing, Deaf community and canal-side mathematical landmark give the Dublin district several distinct histories.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- An Chabrach · Irish · main form · validated name
- Cabragh · English · main form
- Cabra · English · main form · local name
Place & story
A planned suburb built in stages
Dublin Corporation began developing Cabra’s housing estates in 1929 after acquiring land and laying out roads and sewers. The early phases centred on Fassaugh Lane, Beggsboro and Annamoe Road; Cabra West followed in 1942. The Housing the People exhibition identifies the 1931 Fassaugh Lane cottages as the last tenant-purchase houses built in Dublin until the 1950s. Applicants were required to have at least four children under 21, tying the scheme’s allocation to family circumstances. [2]
Deaf education and community
Cabra became an important centre of Deaf life through St Mary’s school for girls, founded in 1846, and St Joseph’s school for boys, opened in 1857. Professor Lorraine Leeson, who grew up in Cabra, describes the community around these institutions in a Trinity interview. She began working at St Joseph’s in 1990 and recalls how little access pupils then had to information about sign language and Deaf culture. Her later linguistic research and interpreting work developed from that experience. [3]
Hamilton’s discovery beside the canal
At Broombridge on the Royal Canal, William Rowan Hamilton recalled discovering the fundamental relations of quaternions on 16 October 1843 while walking towards Dublin with his wife. In later letters he described cutting the formula into a bridge stone, while noting that the inscription had already weathered away. The connection rests on Hamilton’s own account of a particular walk; it does not depend on the original scratched marks surviving. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Dublin
- Barony
- Coolock
- Barony
- Castleknock
- Civil parish
- Castleknock
- Civil parish
- Finglas
- Civil parish
- Grangegorman
- Coordinates
- 53.36191, -6.28739 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1165587 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Cabragh. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Cabra: An Indication of Changing Policies · Housing the People exhibition
- Lorraine Leeson: Irish Sign Language and the Deaf Community in Dublin · Dr Kate Smyth, Trinity College Dublin
- Letters describing the Discovery of Quaternions · William Rowan Hamilton; transcribed by David R. Wilkins, Trinity College Dublin
- Broome Bridge on the Royal Canal, near Cabragh illustration: based on a Broome Bridge on the Royal Canal by JP. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2016-04-11. How this page was prepared.