Looking back to a time when Ballymun had only 61 residents
For the first time in history, the doors of 1920s Dublin have been opened, allowing us to step inside the homes of a fledgling nation through the newly released 1926 Census.
On April 18, 2026, the National Archives finally unsealed the first Census of the Irish Free State after a century-long limitation expired. Taken just ten years after the Easter Rising, the records capture a nation still reeling from the War of Independence and the Civil War.
These aren't just dry statistics, as the details revealed within the Census offer a unique window for historians to examine not only where people lived, but how they lived. One expert who has been unpacking the fascinating insights of the Census for the past several weeks is the Historian in Residence for the Dublin North West Dr Caitlin White, who recently spoke at Ballymun Library about its revelations.
While the high-level statistics have been available for decades, the significance of these records is that they include the personal, handwritten returns of the Census. This means it's possible to navigate the individual lived experiences of the Irish population at that time.
Dr White told Dublin Live about the findings within the Census and how one hundred years ago Ballymun was just a quiet patch of farmland home to 61 people. The surrounding area had many different names as it encompassed different townlands and farms with major development not happening until the 1960s.
“At the time, it's very rural,” Dr White explained. “When you look at the Ordnance Survey map of 1924, there's very little infrastructure or buildings between Finglas and Santry.”
What is now one of Dublin’s most densely populated suburbs was then part of a much wider rural electoral division called Drumcondra Rural, which included areas such as Beaumont, Ballymun, Santry, Killester, Artane and parts of Coolock. In total, just 4,317 people lived across the entire district.
The Census also reveals how the foundations of modern Ireland were beginning to emerge. Many residents in Ballymun were employed by nearby agricultural institutions, while others had moved into the area specifically for work.
“You can see the beginnings of different industries and different economies bringing people to particular places to settle down,” Dr White said.
The records also expose how the State would soon begin reshaping Dublin itself. Census data was later used by the government to identify overcrowded inner-city areas, helping determine which families would be relocated into new housing developments in places like Marino and Crumlin during the 1930s.
But beyond the development of Dublin, the Census paints a fascinating portrait of Irish society as a whole. The Irish Free State in 1926 was just four years old, with almost 30% of the population aged 14 or under. Dr White said this was largely due to mass emigration, which saw huge numbers of adults leave the country.
“It’s a very young population. A lot of people over that age bracket are beginning to emigrate and leave,” she explained.
However, not everyone was so young, as Dr White revealed the top age recorded in the Census was a woman aged 111. "But she's not entirely reliable as her age conflates quite a lot. In the 1901 and 1911, between those 10 years she aged 15 years. Her age jumps again in the 1926. Not reliable, but that's the information we have to go by.
"It was a much less regulated society. You have much more home births and much less record keeping. You don't have that digital footprint following you to have a username or PPS number where all your info will pop up on a screen."
While Ireland at the time and for generations into the future would be commonly associated with emigration as people left the country in search of opportunities in places like New York, the records challenge the notion that it was totally isolated. Statistics show that more than 67,000 people living in the Irish Free State had been born outside the country.
While most came from Britain, Northern Ireland, or the United States, the Census also recorded nearly 1,000 German-born residents, hundreds of French citizens, three people from Finland and 129 people born in Africa. “It’s by no means as diverse as it is today, but it's not this monocultural society that sometimes it's assumed to be,” Dr White said.
Around 500 German nationals were connected to the Shannon hydroelectric scheme, where engineers relocated to work. Dr White said the Census even reveals an Italian gelato making living above his shop in Dublin city. This shows that many of Dublin’s international community in 1926 weren’t just passing by or visiting, but actually had registered businesses.
One notable discovery in the Census was the unusually large number of boys aged between 10 and 19 living within the wider Drumcondra Rural district, who made up 955 of the 4,317 inhabitants in the area. Dr White explained this was due to the Artane Industrial School complex, where 705 people were living at the time of the Census, including 630 boys under the age of 18 who were listed as “boarders”.
Unlike previous censuses, institutions in 1926 had to fill out the same household return forms as ordinary homes, making industrial schools, barracks, hospitals and asylums far easier for historians to examine in detail.
The Census also showcases a country caught between two languages and identities. It was the first Irish Census officially printed in both English and Irish, with forms available in either language. While 18.3% of the population reported speaking Irish, Dr White said less than 1% of the forms were actually filled out as Gaeilge.
For many people, though, the real emotional impact of the records comes from the personal stories hidden within them. Dr White said people attending her Ballymun talk shared memories of long-disappeared buildings, old family names and connections to the area that still survive today.
“What it really does is give you an insight into these homes. Who these people are, what they’re doing and the kinds of lives they are living.” she said.
A century later, the newly released Census is allowing modern Ireland to step directly inside the lives of the people who helped shape the country we know today. It provides a snapshot of Dublin at an important time and reveals the importance of cataloguing and pouring over our heritage.
This content is funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme