Neighbourhood Map

I know that all of the family will recognise the neighbourhood, but I also know that many who drop in here haven't a clue about where I'm talking about. I'm thinking of the lovely people from the GB too, many of who (whom?) are far away from Dublin. So I found this map, hoping it would help to sort of put a 'face' to where I'm talking about. The map looks a bit raggy. That's because originally it had hotels and other places on it, so I had to do a little bit of editing in Photoshop. But I hope you can follow it anyway, and I hope you can see the numbers on it. To see it better you can click on it and it should open in full size in another window. Above I'll also insert a satellite image of the area from Google Earth.

Okay, let's begin with....

1. Summerhill, where I was born. All of my cousins were born there too (hi Liz :-)
2. Gardiner Street. My sisters, Marie, Chris and Ellen were born here.
3. The Diamond (or to give it it's full title Nth. Gloucester Place). My brother Tony was born here.
4. This is the site of The 27 Steps, of which more anon.
5. Mountjoy Square. 'The Square' was where we went to play when we weren't playing or getting up to anything around the streets.
6. A place to where we were brought quite often. The Children's Hospital. Where most of our 'war wounds' were patched up. And where Tony was rushed to after swallowing the marble that Marie mentioned in the Chatterbox. (That marble is still missing!)
7. The church where we were all baptised, and where Liz's brother Mikey served as an altar boy. (I was married there too)
8. The approximate spot where the bomb exploded on the North Strand.
9. The Plaza Cinema. We went there each Saturday to see the 'follyin' uppers'... the cliffhangers. Those movies always ended with the hero in big trouble, and we had to wait till the following week to find out if he managed to get out of trouble. His predicament was the subject of animated discussion during the week. The movie often broke down and when that happened there'd be mayhem in the cinema with kids throwing things at the screen to the chant of "Show the film, show the film!" The usher would run around doing his best to shut us up. He mustn't have been a very good usher because he always failed to shut us up.
10. The Maro. Another of our cinema's. Long wooden bench type seats and cold in Winter. But they showed good Westerns.
11. Our other cinema. The official name of it was The New Electric, but it was known to all simply as The Leck. This was an interesting cinema in that the railway ran overhead and whenever a train was passing you could feel the vibrations and hear the rumble of the wheels. But at least the seats had cushions!
12. Back nearer Summerhill again, and this time to our school. We knew it as the Red Brick Slaughterhouse -- corporal punishment was allowed back then -- in fact I think the teachers thought it was compulsory!
13. Don't know why I marked this place. It's the Mater Hospital and you had to be over 13 (an adult) to be seen there. So see 6 above.
14. This marks the spot where the shops below used to be -- all gone now.

Finally. For our GB friends I've marked where the cams are situated. If you look at the word Street in Gardiner Street, those two little marks each side of the first 'e' are approximately where the cams are situated.

Oops! That No 9 (The Plaza) should not be where I have it!. Please, in your imagination move it to the next corner (the corner of Parnell Square and Dorset Street) and forgive me for allowing my brain to stray.