The release of the 1926 Census offers a remarkable opportunity to explore Cabra at a formative moment in its development. Then a growing suburb on the north side of Dublin, Cabra embodied many of the social changes shaping the early Irish Free State: new housing schemes, shifting patterns of employment, and the movement of families from inner-city tenements to planned estates.
Join Dr. Caitlin White, Historian-in-residence, to find out more about what Cabra was like in 1926.
This talk will use the 1926 returns for Cabra to examine who lived there, where they had come from, and how they made their living. It will consider the area in the wider context of state-led housing policy and urban expansion, while also highlighting individual households whose census forms reveal the textures of everyday life — from crowded lodgings to newly built corporation homes.
Drawing on newly digitised and fully searchable records, the lecture will show how the 1926 Census allows us to reconstruct Cabra not just as a place on a map, but as a living community at a pivotal moment in Ireland’s history.
