The Dublin Manure Company [updated]

Consulting Chemist:
Professor CAMERON, MD, MRIA
Secretary:
J G DAWSON
Offices:
20 USHER’S QUAY
Works — SEVENTH LOCK, ROYAL CANAL

The Company manufacture Superphosphate, Urate, Corn, Grass, Potato, and Blood Manure. These Manures are made from the best materials (which are purchased in the cheapest markets), and sold at the lowest remunerative price.

BRAZILIAN GUANO, sold only by the Company, at £9 15s per ton, is the best Guano for general purposes offered to the Public.

That is from the Freeman’s Journal of 12 June 1861. In a Comment [see below], Ewan Duffy asked:

Any idea where this was located? Neither of the historic OS maps online show anything in the vicinity of the 7th Lock/Liffey Junction.

I replied:

No, but perhaps Liffey Junction abolished it. It’s right in the middle of the period spanned by the two online maps, alas.

Later, I searched the Freeman’s Journal at the British Newspaper Archive for 1860 to 1880. The only ads for the Dublin Manure Company were in 1861. In December of that year the National Manure Company was being set up in Ringsend and featured someone who was “late of” the London and Dublin Manure Companies. After that there was just a single mention, in Shipping Intelligence in 1868, of the Dublin Manure Company; that could be an error, and I suspected that the company didn’t last into 1862.

However, Thom’s for 1868 listed the company offices at Usher’s Quay and the Chemical Works still at 7th Lock on the Royal [I wonder how it fitted in amongst the railway lines]. Slater’s 1870 had the Dublin and Wicklow Manure Company, offices 4 College St, works Dublin and Wicklow; later it said that the works were at Ballybough Bridge. There were no manure works listed at 7th Lock in that year.

Carthach O.Maonaigh very kindly pointed me to an article on the website of the Marino Historical Society, “Ref: 62 – Vitriol and Manure Works Fire – Ballybough Bridge – March 3rd 1890”, about a fire at the Dublin and Wicklow Manure Company’s works at Ballybough Bridge. I don’t think there is a direct link to the article but you’ll find it by searching the page for “manure”. The site is shown on the OSI Historic 25″ map here.

Carthach writes:

From what I recall hearing from my grand-parents, who lived in  the Ballybough area, this firm moved from the Royal Canal site when it joined with a similar business, The Wicklow Manure Company, located on the Murrough, Wicklow Town, to a site between Ballybough Bridge and Annesley Bridge sometime in the 1880s. Whilst jobs in the business was welcomed by the local community you can visualise their reaction to the strong smell that arose from the manufacturing end. The business closed in the early 1900s. The site was derelict for years before the Dublin Corporation bought it to build flats. An article was also published in the Journal of the Wicklow Historical Society in 2012 or 2013 about the firm in Wicklow Town.

I can’t find a site for the Wicklow Historical Society, its journal or the article in question, alas, but if anyone knows of one I’ll add a link.

We still don’t know exactly where the 7th Lock works were or how they fitted in with Liffey Junction; more information welcome.