The Tenters is an area in Dublin 8 located just 5 minutes walking from Newmarket Square and (what used to be) the Ardee House & Lounge Pub. It extends from O’Curry Avenue and Clarence Mangan Road.

For the no-locals, probably it will just trigger in mind the homonym pub off Mill Street, Dublin 8 owned by Aloft (Marriotts) but that’s not the history.

It all goes to the 1685 when the Huguenots (French protestant) had to escape from France due to religious persecution by Louis XIV‘s laws. Part of them moved to Dublin. They where well-known for they skills in weaving fabric, so they established an industrial centre in this area. During the stretching and drying process of the fabrics they were using tenters hooks (called shortly just “tenters”) to attach them and let dry on the field. We will have to wait till 1814 to see the first stone tenter house (built by Thomas Pleasants, located between Cork Street, Brickfield Lane, Brown Street and Ormond Street. With this new building it was possible to stretch and dry fabrics having them protected from outside raining and bad Irish weather. Still, the first appearance of an housing would have to wait till 1922.

If you walk nowadays around the area you can see a stone placed in Clarence Mangan Road – Dublin 8 that want to remember what it used to be once at the time of the Tenter Hooks.