SNIPPET: If you believe your ancestors had a connection to the MOOREs of Drogheda and Dublin, you might wish to obtain a back issue (Nov-Dec 2002) of "Ireland of the Welcomes" at www.irelandofthewelcomes.com. Published was a detailed, reader-friendly, ten-page article concerning the MOORE family, made all the more interesting with many illustrations. The authoress, Fiana GRIFFIN, wished to acknowledge the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin, for the use of their book: "The Family of Moore by the Countess of Drogheda." In 1666, a visitor to Dublin declared that O'CONNELL Street (then called Sackville Mall) exceeded any street in London "for elegance of plan and architecture." In 1799, the artist James MALTON went even further when he described it as the "noblest street in Europe, inhabited by persons of the first rank and opulence." With its exceptional width and distinctive promenade down the centre, O'Connell Street has preserved some of the aura of elegance and privilege it once enjoyed. Still the principal street of the city, it acquired its dimensions and status indirectly as the result of a long-drawn out court case between the Earls of Drogheda and Clanbrassil. The greatest boom in Dublin property development had begun in the 1660s, when peace and stability returned to the country after the Cromwellian wars and the crushing of the Catholic rebellions of the 1640s. The King of England was on his throne and the Viceroy, the Duke of Ormonde, was back in Dublin. At that time the city centre was further east than it is today, centered on the old Custom House, now gone, on the south side of the Liffey. It was a medieval town with dirty, narrow winding streets, houses with fronts that projected unequally into the streets and chronic traffic problems that obliged Dublin Corporation to regulate the number of Hackney coaches to thirty. A number of entrepreneurial landlords, many of them titled and holding public office, acquired tracts of land adjoining the city limits to the north and east where they laid out new, straight, residential streets with uniform frontage. One of these propertied aristocrats was Sir Henry MOORE, 1st Earl of Drogheda, whose Great-Grandfather had come to Ireland in the time of Henry VIII. When Henry VIII seriously began to anglicise Ireland in the early 16th century, one of his first steps was, the Dissolution of the Monasteries. According to this Act, all monastic houses and their estates under crown control were to be appropriated and given or leased to loyal supporters. The first Cistercian Abbey founded in Ireland was at Mellifont, 'sweet waters' in a secluded spot beside a river in Co. Louth, on the borders of the unconquered north. In 1539, the abbot and monks were forced to abandon their home, church and lands, which were then leased to Sir William BRABAZON, Vice-treasurer, and his wife Elizabeth CLIFFORD. When BRABAZON died, she married again. On the death of her second husband she took another, who also died. Undaunted by her record, 28-year-old Edward MOORE from Kent (England) became her fourth husband in 1563, built himself a fortified castle at Mellifont and had two sons by her before she died and he married again. In 1566, Queen Elizabeth I granted Edward MOORE the Abbey and estate of Mellifont, in perpetuity, and later knighted him. Although he became Pivy Councillor and played an important role in the English administration of Ireland, MOORE also cultivated the friendship of native Irish chieftains. He was not afraid to shelter the 19-year-old Red Hugh O'DONNELL when he arrived, exhausted and with frost-bitten feet, at Mellifont in 1592, having escaped from Dublin Castle after four years' imprisonment. MOORE had known O'DONNELL's father well - a fact still important today in dynastic Irish politics. I won't go into any more detail except to say that other individuals mentioned in the article include Henry MOORE, Governor of Meath and Louth, Sir Garrett MOORE, Hugh O'NEILL, Oliver CROMWELL, Henry MOORE, 1st Earl of Drogheda, Charles MOORE and wife Laetitia ROBARTES. Also mentioned are a dramatic author called WYCHERLEY, Alice MOORE, Lord Henry HAMILTON of Clanbrassil, Lionel SACKVILLE, Duke of Dorset/Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Luke GARDINER. There is Gabriel BERANGER's drawing of Mellifont Abbey, Co. Louth, the first Cistercian Abbey to be founded in the country in the 12th century; in 1566, the Abbey was granted to Edward MOORE by ELIZABETH I. There is a marvelous two-page view of Sackville Street, Dublin, with NELSON's Pillar in the centre, a lithographic published by NEWMAN & Co. London around 1845. Another later view of Sackville Street, dates from the mid 1850s, published by William COLLINS & Co. of London, Glasgow and Edinburgh. A HOLBROOK lithograph of Carlisle Bridge and the Custom House (with tall masts of ships in the background) formed part of a larger series of twelve views of Dublin published circa 1826. Other illustrations include St. Mary's Abbey circa 1820 from the Irish School collection of the National Gallery of Ireland; nearby stood Henry MOORE's town house in Dublin. There is a directory map of the new plan of the city in 1804, engraved for WILSON's Dublin Directory and published by W. CORBET of 57 Great Britain Street. An amusing and colorful caricature of "The Terrified Dandies, a Scene on Carlisle Bridge" (referring to a buxom, barefoot Irish wench who tempts them with a kiss!). There is a Charles BROOKING's map of Dublin dating back to 1728; Engraving of Sackville Street by J. C. McRAE, published by Thomas KELLY, New York; a print from the early 1760s showing Luke GARDINER's plan of Dublin, with Sackville Street and Gardiner's Mall; and a watercolour of Luke GARDINER, Viscount Mountjoy, by H. HONE.