Dublin’s weekly cattle market was among the largest weekly livestock sales in Europe during its peak in the 1950s.
In the 1950s and early 1960s the market was a prosperous, established institution in the livestock sector.
Likened to the national ‘stock exchange’ as Ireland’s economy heavily relied on agriculture, especially the cattle trade. Trades at the market effectively set prices throughout the rest of the country.
Held every Wednesday, between Phibsboro and the quays, the market attracted buyers from local abattoirs and British livestock traders for farmers and slaughter houses in the north of England.
However by 1973 the Dublin Cattle Market had closed due to revolutionary change in the cattle and sheep trade which undermined the market’s importance.
Now a new book by Declan O’Brien, uses oral evidence and documented interviews about the last years of the Dublin Cattle Market between 1960 and 1973 and the changes that took hold in the Irish farming industry.
Traditional livestock fairs were replaced by the marts, and the live export of cattle to England Scotland.
LSL News.