During the 1940s and 1950s, the area along the Grand Canal, taking in Dublin 2 and 4, was alive with artists, poets, writers, actors and general characters. Extending roughly one kilometer in all directions from the epicenter of Baggot Bridge, this bohemian heartland, brimming with creativity and, some might say debauchery, was known as Baggotonia. With Patrick Kavanagh, Lucian Freud, Brendan Behan, Jack Yeats and Francis Bacon, among the tapestry of its landscape.

The now refined roads of Raglan, Elgin, Pembroke and Wellington, once filled with dismal flats, where creatives lived and loved. Patrick Kavanagh’s most famed poem, On Raglan Road, captures the mood perfectly.

While the bars of Baggot Street, Upper and Lower, were where creative minds wiled away the days, usually, and blissfully in drunken stupor. The area may have cleaned up its act today, but the history will never be removed. Take a stroll along the canal, or on the leafy roads leading from Baggot Street, and you are walking in the footsteps of literary legends, and artistic heros of Ireland.

Photos © Keith Nolan