The Story of the Greystones Name

The Irish name of Greystones is Na Clocha Liatha, meaning “the grey stones.” Unlike many Irish place-names whose meanings have become obscure over the centuries, Greystones retains a wonderfully straightforward connection with the landscape. The name refers to the grey stones covering the beach and shoreline.

For much of its early history, Greystones was not really a town at all.

The area was associated with the older settlements of Rathdown and Delgany, while Greystones itself consisted of little more than scattered houses and fishing families. In 1795 it was described as a noted fishing place a few miles beyond Bray. By the early nineteenth century it remained a small coastal community, with cottages, fishermen and a coastguard station.

The great event that changed Greystones was the arrival of the railway.

In the 1850s, engineers began constructing the difficult coastal railway between Bray and Wicklow. The project involved tunnels, bridges and steep sections of coastline, and the famous engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel was involved in designing the line. The railway opened in 1855, with the station following soon afterwards.

The railway transformed the little fishing settlement.

Suddenly Greystones could be reached easily from Dublin. Houses began appearing along Church Road and Trafalgar Road, while the area around the harbour was developed. The La Touche family of nearby Bellevue played an important role in laying out parts of the new settlement.

The contrast between old and new Greystones was striking.

The old community had been a collection of cottages scattered around the coast. The new Greystones was planned, connected and increasingly fashionable. Its position beneath the Wicklow Mountains and beside the Irish Sea made it particularly attractive to people seeking a home away from Dublin.

The harbour itself became one of the defining features of the town, while the railway gave Greystones a permanent connection with the capital.

The population remained small at first. In 1861 there were only a few hundred inhabitants, but the number steadily increased as the new town developed.

The old fishing community never completely disappeared from the character of the place, but Greystones gradually became a substantial residential and commuter town.

Today Greystones and neighbouring Delgany form one of the largest population centres in County Wicklow. The modern town is considerably larger than the little fishing settlement described by nineteenth-century visitors, but the physical landscape that gave the place its name remains.

The grey stones are still there.

They connect the modern town with the quiet coastal settlement that existed before the railway, before the terraces, before the commuters and before Greystones became one of the most desirable towns on the Wicklow coast.

The story of Greystones is therefore a story of transformation: from fishing village to railway town, from railway town to seaside resort, and finally to one of the largest communities in modern Wicklow.