Dubliners views on Dublin City, Ireland 1965

A look at the changing face of Dublin through the eyes of Dubliners.
‘Discovery: The Heart of Dublin’ provides a profile of the city of Dublin.
Grafton Street was once upon a time... a country lane. Now it is... festooned on both sides with boutiques and fancy shops where the gentry and gentility of the outer suburbs can come in to display themselves as though they were part of the eighteenth century scene.
This excerpt from the programme looks at the area around Grafton Street and Saint Stephen’s Green. We get a Dubliner’s view of the city as members of the public give their impressions of the area. One man comments:
"When I was a young man, they very nearly wouldn’t let you in to Grafton Street."
The Guards are an impressive force, big men suggesting bogland scenes in the centre of gas and petrol fumes, suggesting also comfort and stability.
‘Discovery: Heart of Dublin’ was broadcast on 2 July 1965.
Discovery was a documentary series broadcast on RTÉ between 1964 and 1967. The series which first aired on 14 January 1964, touched on many aspects of Irish life with an occasional spotlight on events of particular interest.

[@patrickmccarthy3123]

Yes Grafton St was a wonderland with magic in the air as our own late Pete St John wrote his famous song Dublin in the rare old times.

[@patrickmccarthy3123]

@Pa Gall Yes known as Pete St John

[@LaurenceOConnor-fg4dk]

"rare old times" you say, ya gobshite.

[@alllovingcowherdboy4475]

Some years back I was managing a shop there and had accommodation upstairs. I had let a Christmas candle burn upstairs while I stocked the shop for the next days sales. Many hours later I finally went up to find that it had burned a hole in the table. Ten minutes more and grafton St would have been aflame as the roofs are old and dry and it would have spread like wildfire

[@musashidanmcgrath]

Grafton St. Used to have such great character with very unique shops and old coffee/teahouses. They've ruined it. Now it's just like any other generic corporate high street in Europe. It's lost all character, just like the Dublin itself.

[@Harveybeau]

Same is happening to Cork City. It hurts To see it being destroyed by the planners.

[@deejaykay1975]

Exactly!

[@caracortage3270]

And what have you ruined today?

[@Joedirt3349]

ya mum..lol! takin' the piss!

[@kevinindublin]

"They've ruined it"? Who exactly? Global free market capitalism changed it.

[@PlanetImo]

Fascinating stuff. Thanks for the share. X

[@Lar308]

Love the little fella with the toy bus at 2:29 - reminds me of me back then - although I always had cars. I would not be pleased that that man reading the paper meant my bus had to take a diversion around him though.

[@thesatisfiedcustomer4869]

People whether it’s NYC or Dublin in the 20th century seem to have a composure, vocabulary & tone that we have lost & it’s a big loss. What’s happened to the world?

[@Sonia76373]

Woke, political incorrectness bullshit, left Liberal government...the list goes on

[@Irish780]

@@tommyoconnor1224 zionists

[@gwim999]

@@tommyoconnor1224 based?

[@CELTIC-CROSS]

socialism

[@hugostiglitz6914]

The people who were interviewed were well vetted!

[@seandelap6268]

It looked like a cool place to be at the time.

[@Fred6789-s4p]

It was awful!

[@bahoonies]

​@@Fred6789-s4pNonsense. Dublin had so much character then.

[@Macca-rb5ok]

Far cooler now.

[@JJ2023.]

Everyone nicely dressed , very few overweight people

[@TheGreatWhiteCount]

Stephens Green is the exact same now as it was then. Its a pity you don't get that in the rest of Dublin

[@vilamor007]

People who begged in Dublin back then we're genuinely poor not like most of the beggars today

[@noon4545]

I’m sure they said the same then …. 🙄

[@bahoonies]

​@@noon4545We weren't plagued with Roma begging gangs back then.

[@malahammer]

@@bahoonies yawn

[@bahoonies]

@@malahammer It must be past your bedtime.

[@davidorourke4311]

One good thing in short video is nobody is stuck looking at there Smartphone

[@chrisclark1761]

There was no KZbin back then. Nothing much to look at.

[@pagethreemodel]

Their* 🙄🙄

[@bahoonies]

​@@pagethreemodelRun for your lives. It's the grammar police.

[@PatrickCooney-y3z]

💯

[@davidbrims5825]

No immigrants…

[@spazzymacgee5648]

Shut up you jackeen traitor.

[@malahammer]

Yeah just a couple of million Irish emigrants given homes in the US and the UK and elsewhere.

[@davidbrims5825]

@@malahammer 🤡

[@TheToolnut]

​@@malahammerWe weren't given anything by the Brits or the Yanks, we worked like dogs in those countries and made them what they are. There was no freebies for Paddy only hard graft in all weather's for buttons.

[@jamesbradshaw3389]

People were far better dressed in those days, they wore the finest tailored clothes

[@stephenkingfilm]

Hey great footage! Im an editor working on a documentary and would love to use some of this! is that possible?

[@scottscott232]

0:55 - 0:58 - Beautiful Irish Lady.

[@chrisclark1761]

That was a 15 year old schoolboy.

[@scottscott232]

@@chrisclark1761 You need help with your eyesight. YOU see what YOU want to see. Everyone else sees reality. Good luck with that.

[@EpicAelflaed]

@@scottscott232 to be fare it was a he she but whatever floats your boat

[@noeleen-58]

The police man directing the traffic speeding past him 😮

[@Fred6789-s4p]

You won’t find a pub like a Dublin pub anywhere in the world!

[@trishfindlater1236]

And absolutely no seagulls

[@noelflynn3137]

even with the traffic Grafton st was special nice shops mostly Irish, now it like any street in uk as usual corpo involved in wrecking it, people well dressed as well.

[@CELTIC-CROSS]

they are turning in their graves looking at Dublin destroyed today

[@tiagopaes9524]

Dublin has ALWAYS been destroyed actually

[@johnkilcullen1051]

Si do you think that a city that had slum tenements a few hundred yards from O'Connell Street and the emigrant boat on Custom House Quay was better than what we have now, do you?

[@CELTIC-CROSS]

@@johnkilcullen1051 what do we have now,a city full of criminals that we dont know,irish citizens living on the streets,including children. Immigrants boats full of prison releases from all over the world docking.wake up you fool

[@yonderorphan7499]

​@@johnkilcullen1051ye now it's a foreign dump with gangs of foreign men loitering on every street corner

[@MrDastardly]

For a capital city, Dublin is a run-down mess. 😩

[@chrismccormack2064]

1:08 Swastika Laundry Ltd. Ballsbridge Pre WW2

[@edwardkennedy9919]

Full of refugees now

[@secondchance6603]

Refugees no, Illegal immigrant fifth columnist single males... yes.

[@marisgarcia6314]

💟💟💟💟💟💟💟

[@eaomonn1215]

I was born in 65

[@grahamluna6935]

Dublin is temporarily sick at the moment...Though I do believe she will recover .

[@spazzymacgee5648]

Sick of the jackeens ruining everything.

[@malahammer]

I was in Dublin the other day and I was amazed....it was still there....not sick and looking great. Ya big drama queen!

[@spazzymacgee5648]

@malahammer ignore these minority of far right scum. Dublin is a great city.

[@chrisclassical7]

anyone remember shouting out "l o b" look out boys, when the gardiner was coming and you were up to no good on the grass.

[@frankgilligan7768]

130ish years after the famine ended....we had come a long way...look at us now. 0rogress will always continue.

[@frankgilligan7768]

Progress

[@michaelwalsh9145]

Except the globalists want to end progress now but not for themselves of course.

[@thet1375]

@@frankgilligan7768 You call Ireland 2022 progress?????

[@NaCreagachaDubha]

Apparently we were a third world country back then. Looks so much better than nowadays. Dublin is a horrible city nowadays. Nothing to recommend it whatsoever

[@OscarOSullivan]

You had a lot of dereliction and tenements existed until 1979

[@spazzymacgee5648]

Jackeen scumbag detected. Far right scum.

[@k1k2lee]

WTF was Molly doing at the bottom of Grafton Street😂

[@plasticbucket]

Didn't see myself

[@Buildbeautiful]

Naźi van at 1.08

[@phucknuts.7065]

Good spot, that was a swastika.

[@notch4president]

It was a laundry company from before world war 2

[@notch4president]

"The Swastika Laundry was an Irish business founded in 1912, located on Shelbourne Road, Ballsbridge, a district of Dublin. Due to its name and logo being associated with the Nazi Party in Germany, the name was changed in 1939 but their logo endured."

[@freespeechisneverwrong9351]

I remember the swastika on the channel money stack in Ballsbridge. It must have been the nineties or later before it was removed. Pathetic really.

[@missingno88]

nice

[@threerock.redmond7550]

swastika laundry van driving past at 1.08

[@williamc6564]

Those self entitled people at the end of this clip with their big long hair. What is this country coming to at all at all? The next thing they be walking around with hand bags and shopping. Dublin is going to rack and ruin.

[@patrickball2493]

Entitled to your long hair 😃 .

[@Fred6789-s4p]

Dublin was a kip. Now it’s a Wonderful city!

[@Parasmunt]

This new culture war to portray Ireland pre EU pre open borders as some kind of hellish Catholic dystopia. It is an assault waged by the media and many have bought into the lie.

[@Fatfrogsrock]

Great video. I miss that old thick Dublin accent, had a real quality and character to it. It seems to have evolved into a high pitched whiny accent now.

[@IXLDGOLD]

i find the old ''thick'' accent in the video is whiny as. clear british influence obviously had a major part in the accents in those days. dublin sounded more like Ireland when I grew up, nowadays its literally just american slang and uk roadman arse talk, no culture anymore

[@brianmaughan1853]

&

[@colinsweetman4570]

Same! It's a if people turn up the dial on their Dublin accent to sound 'hard'

[@johnmc3862]

@@IXLDGOLD😅😅😅

[@norwegianzound]

Janowha'eyemeain?

[@mijicmugendo]

Love the videos. Keep up the great work

[@johnnielson7676]

Everyone dressed so nicely back then. The autos were stylish as well, but of course their mechanicals were junk back then

[@73reider]

A Woman of African origin at 0:17, Now that had to be rare in Ireland 1965..

[@freespeechisneverwrong9351]

God bless your eyesight. I grew up in Dublin in the 70’s-80’s and the first black person I met was in the late 80’s. I’m sure if you were black in Ireland at the time people would have stopped and stared and I’m talking about the 70-80’s.

[@Jen-lg4hp]

@@freespeechisneverwrong9351 Nowadays I stop and stare if I see a Native White Irish English speaker in Dublin- we've been bred and immigrated almost our of existence! The Native Irish are now a rare endangered species in our own country!

[@freespeechisneverwrong9351]

@@Jen-lg4hp Totally Agree and Ireland has only started.

[@hensonlaura]

@@freespeechisneverwrong9351 and yet no one did.

[@freespeechisneverwrong9351]

@@hensonlaura Actually they did. I repeated my Leaving Certificate in Ringsend Tech in 1988 and there was one black kid from the states. He loves being the celebrity black guy because there were so few black people in Ireland. He took it as a compliment that people actually said to him “Jaysus there’s a black fella” He knew people were not racist but genuinely surprised to see someone black amongst them.

[@seandelap6268]

The Swastika is an ancient symbol still used in places like India and Nepal today obviously it's now most associated with the Nazi regime in Germany during the 1930s but it predates it by centuries.

[@tireachan6178]

Did you wander in accidentally from a Third Reich documentary?

[@emmetpower3610]

Ok…

[@sean_d]

He is referring to the vehicle at 1:08, from the Swastika Laundry, which used to have a tall brick chimney with a Swastika on it, and was well known. It pre-dated the Nazis and outlived them.

[@oliviamartini9700]

@@sean_d Many thanks, that desperately wanted context!

[@oliviamartini9700]

@@tireachan6178 weeping laughing

[@Del-yv1qy]

Don't belive that the ole days were better for one moment. People had nothing and worked hard for the bit they had.Yes in general life was slower but alot of people had alot of worries.

[@TRAVELLINGCHANNEL1]

the 60's was the best decade not only in Ireland but in every single country even my country was not a third world place at the time.

[@michaelwalsh9145]

Back then they had nothing and they had everything today people have everything and they have nothing.

[@noon4545]

@@TRAVELLINGCHANNEL1 ah yes the mother and baby homes were a blast

[@thet1375]

@@noon4545 Know your real enemy! Today Ireland is ran by an atheistic communist anti Irish govt who are about to bring in hate speech laws against Irish people, also a new law is about to be introduced that will give the govt power to take our property from us and give it to refugees, and read yesterday that 'refugees' will not have to pay tax, that's just for the Irish! fun times ahead! Welcome to Ireland 2022 where Irish are hated by their own govt.

[@patrickmccarthy3123]

They did not have a lot back then but they had respect,comradrie,and they were very witty as Dubs are.

[@AnthonyMcRedmond-Vg2ry]

Nazi van at 1.07 must have been that old laundry

[@malahammer]

It was

[@MrDastardly]

At 1:08, a box van from the ‘swastika laundry, Ballsbridge’ passes!! 🤔🤷‍♂️

[@novo611]

I weep for whats happening 😢😢

[@mcmurder8835]

My father grew up in the Gardner st area in the 50's and 60's and still speaks very fondly of his experience. Sadly the local communities were decimated by unemployment and drug epidemics in the late 70's and 80's. Heroin especially absolutely wiped out whole communities in a shockingly short time. I found myself with time to kill in the city centre and queys recently and took a good long walk around - I still find it pleasent and full of youth and atmosphere. However the north city area around Summerhill, Ballybough and East Wall remains shamefully neglected, and the area around Abbey/Talbot/O'Connell st can still feel salty at times. The city still has plenty of potential, but more work needs to be done.

[@helenflynn96]

Does anybody remember the year it was pedestrianised please? I tried to look it up but the answer was beyond ambiguous. I'm in Dublin now for 42 years and I can't remember a time when it wasn't pedestrianised but my memory may serve me wrong. I really miss the Dublin that I loved

[@connoroleary591]

Around the year 1976.

[@rootsquare]

1:07... Swasitika Laundry???

[@RobertK1993]

Hindu symbol got hijacked by Nazi's

[@OscarOSullivan]

Was a laundry set up in the early 1900’s which used the Swastika which is a good luck symbol

[@markjohnston8989]

God bless your eyes.

[@Kerygmame]

Great

[@headgroundsman1650]

enjoying the birds......on the lake.....😄 02:06

[@thomasboyd2969]

Three Arrows German SPD German government. Yes won Germany Thomas. He good German politically he told Martin sellner Austrian the truth politically Austrian government his.

[@arthurashton8389]

I was in Dublin in 1964 on holiday from Liverpool . I at to wait for a bus to travel to Port Marnick. I noticed the big houses opposite the bus stop. Stayed in a caravan of a house named Iona in Port marnick. I remember the family had 2 daughters one Bridget who I feel in love with after a day . Her dad looked after the local golf course. She showed me how. to play golf . And we went for walks along the beech . I went for a drink had. 2 pints and was drunk. The pub was more like a night club. Fell in love with the girl the people the place and culture and Dublin .Portmarnock . The music .and Ireland 🇮🇪

[@ad567]

Its a shame what Dublin has turned into now in 2024, its changed for the worse. A city which no one feels pround of and a city council which has let it go to rack and ruin.

[@spazzymacgee5648]

Jackeens have ruined the city with their lack of education and treachery.

[@OndaBoosters]

I see we had multiculturalism back then too🍷

[@freespeechisneverwrong9351]

Don’t worry they’ll be telling you in ten years that Ireland was always multicultural and without it you would never have the country you have today. They’re already rewriting history in the UK.

[@samnicholson5051]

10% of the student population in Ireland in the 1960s was African so yes, kind of. And there was quite a few Italian immigrants too.

[@freespeechisneverwrong9351]

@@samnicholson5051 where do you get your facts? When I grew up in Ireland and anyone saw a black person we were shocked so to say there were any blacks in any numbers is nonsense.

[@freespeechisneverwrong9351]

@@samnicholson5051 200% of them were dwarves. Now I can say that with conviction because of feelings. Now I can also say that’s not factual. Now please confirm the source of your feelings(?) BTW I grew up in Ireland in the 70’s and didn’t see a black person until the 80’s. And I’m talking singular here not plural. So come on tell where you got your feelings, sorry facts from.

[@dublinthebest]

@@samnicholson5051 Not sure about that? I saw very few Africans in Dublin , in the 60's and 70's. Lots and lots of Spanish students in the 70's though.

[@patrickdoyle9304]

Awful time in Ireland . Glad I wasn’t born after the war

[@thet1375]

Better time than today. Woke Ireland is a horrible place under a puppet govt to the EU and UN

[@Parasmunt]

That's not what parents say, they say it was great. They were poor but it was great.

[@alllovingcowherdboy4475]

Dubliners love to make drama... "they very nearly wouldn't let you in".... Who was stopping them 🙄

[@andrewg.carvill4596]

It was mainly themselves stopping them. My mother who worked in a drapery in neighbouring Suffolk Street in the 1940's used to say that she and her friends "would be ashamed to walk down Grafton Street on a Saturday, without 'dressing up in their best' ".

[@Paul5520]

That last lady sounded like Kathleen behan ?

[@phucknuts.7065]

Love these old yins.