Cooke’s Lane, Dublin

My father’s father’s family lived in the area around Watling Street, Dublin, Ireland in the late 19th Century.
One of the longest running addresses that they had was on the now extinct Cooke’s Lane.
I have run across mentions of this laneway on maps from the 18th Century, and every time I find a new-to-me old map of Dublin, I look for Cooke’s Lane.
Interestingly, I have somehow always given the famous Griffith’s Valuation a pass when it came to this family. Truth is, Griffith’s would maybe list my father’s father’s father’s father, but there would be no way for me to know that this man was the father of my great grandfather. He has been a lifelong brick wall for me. I cannot find who his father was. I’ve found the man’s brothers, but not the man himself.
Anyway, I decided to take a look at the Griffith’s Valuation map for this area of Dublin just to see what I could see. I was not disappointed!
This is the most detailed map of the lane that I have seen, and I’ve probably seen most of them.

What is amazing to me is that the building footprints are shown. In one of those houses, my ancestors lived.
As you can see from the map, the area was surrounded by various breweries. In the early 20th Century, the Guinness brewery expanded to such an extent that it swallowed up the smaller breweries and plowed under Cooke’s Lane.
Here is the same section of map, more or less on the edges.

You can still see where Cooke’s Lane used to be.

Griffith’s Valuation is a great resource for Irish genealogy. I particularly love the blended maps feature available at AskAboutIreland.ie. In some places out in the country, you can still see scars on the land from where there used to be houses when the maps were created. Defo worth messing around with for an hour or so.

Anyway, now to look at the actual records associated with Cooke’s Lane and Watling Street. The area had many Hannons living there for a time. Perhaps, I will see the name of my great grandfather’s father, even if I can’t do anything with it.