I recently started to research my ancestry. My first Google search was for John Kirwan from Rathfarnham. This was the name of both my Grandfather and Great Grandfather on my Mother's side. To my surprise a short piece popped up on a website called AskaboutIreland.com . In the housing section there was a paragraph that read:

“The 1901 census shows that John Kirwan, a farm labourer from Rathfarnham, and his wife Esther, lived in a three roomed house with their ten children. For this reason, some rooms had to have multiple uses. The sitting room was probably converted into a bedroom at night. Arrangements like this were typical in many rural families at the time”

That John and Esther Kirwan were my Great Grandparents, and one of their sons was my Grandad. I wondered what made the authors of that website, chose their Census entry out of the thousands living in South Dublin then.

Another thing it made me think about was the living conditions back then for my paternal Great Grandparents and Grandparents. Census records revealed that they were living in the tenements in Dublin.

Closer examination of their Household returns, show that they were living in one room. Not unusual for those times. The Irish census website cites the case of Henrietta Street, where in 1911 eight hundred and thirty five people were living in fifteen houses. Number seven housed one hundred and four people alone.

Records show that in 1911, almost twenty six thousand people were living in the tenements in Dublin city and of this number, twenty thousand lived in one room.

It is almost impossible to imagine all of those people living in the one house, with one outdoor toilet, if any, sometimes sharing their back yards with livestock. The hall doors appeared never to have been closed so any random person could wander into the house.

Can you imagine the sounds in those houses? People coming and going, countless children playing and babies crying. Men - often spending their days searching for casual work, women carrying buckets of water up flights of stairs to cook on an open fire.

So many people died younger back then so there were lots of widowed parents, struggling to rear their children. Children who were often malnourished and prone to disease. Dealing with the sometimes multiple deaths of their children. Dank rooms with very little, if any furniture. Many sleeping on the floor.

My paternal Grandfathers family are listed on the 1901 census as living in Gardiner Street Dublin. My great Grandmother was widowed at this stage. They had all been born in Mallow. My Greatgrand parents were born early in the early 1850's. This was only a few years after the famine. What happened to their parents? How did the famine affect them?

My little bit of reading about conditions in the tenements in the early 1900's makes me think that the living conditions of John Kirwan and his family in Rathfarnham were somewhat grand. Three rooms. In the countryside with fields and mountains.

Obviously it was a small cottage, and their lives were no doubt very difficult but it seems to have been so much more than their city counterparts had. I'd hope that they had a few chickens and a vegetable patch at least.

I'd like to believe that life in the tenements got a bit easier for my own Fathers generation. His family did progress from more than one room. Although we have no access to records from when he was born in 1919,

I know that he lived at various addresses in town and then in Middle Gardiner Street until he married his girl from Rathfarnham in the 1940s

And then to think about years later, when they started to build social housing in the suburbs and move people out to live there, it is wonderful to think of parents being given keys to shiney new houses. With their own bathroom and a garden.

How exciting it must have been for them. Not having to share facilities with others, having their own front doors and proper bedrooms for everyone. Having safe green spaces where children could kick footballs and ride bikes.

Of course there were other social issues and problems but the freedom must have been wonderful for the children.

But for some people things have come full circle. Today there is a website called gardinerstreetdublin.com. On it are listed ten guesthouses and bed and breakfasts.

I wonder how many homeless families are living in these buildings. How many of their descendents had lived in the same type of house. It's hard to fathom that all these years later, we have reverted back to families, often with just one parent, living in one room. Sadly a case of history repeating itself.

These were once the glamorous Georgian homes of the gentry and wealthy professionals. If only those walls could talk.

Note: I found a photo recently on an old photographic website, it is a paid image which I keep meaning to buy .It is of a cottage near Loreto Convent in Rathfarnham so it just might be it- or somewhere similar - as John Kirwan's address on the 1901 Census is Convent Lane, Rathfarnham. And there are chickens in the garden!