TRANSPORT ON LONDON BRIDGE ROAD

Transport
In the early 1870’s tram tracks were laid the length of London Bridge Road and Bath Avenue for a horse drawn tram service that connected the Martello Tower on the Strand Road, Sandymount with Nelson’s Pillar in O’Connell Street. The service began on October 1st 1872. The service then began at Gilford Road where stables and garages were built. The journey with a two horse tram would travel down London Bridge Road and along Bath Avenue until the passed beneath the railway bridge where a stable hand would be on duty with two extra horses to pull the tram up onto Northumberland Road and then return to Bath Avenue to await the next tram. On January 14th 1901, the horse was replaced with electricity on William Murphy’s Dublin United Tram Company route. It was one of the few routes served by a single deck tram known as a ‘bogeycar’ due to the low bridge on Bath Avenue.
In those days the routes were not numbered but name plates at the front of the tram indicated its destinations and in order to assist those many who were illiterate at the time in Dublin a green half crescent indicated that it was the tram required for any one travelling the route from Sandymount to the city centre.

The tram service ceased on that route on 31st July 1932. For many years Coras Iompair Eireann, the forerunner of Dublin Bus operated the number 52 bus, a single deck bus that became a one man operation and ran from Lakelands School to Hawkins Street via London Bridge Road and Bath Avenue. The bus stop on London Bridge Road into town was outside Number Seven and on the return it was by the rectory wall opposite Number Three. The number 52 which was then used to service University College Dublin was removed from the route in 1998