As many of Paddy Kilmartin’s descendants are living in different parts of the world, it may be useful to include here a description of the part of Dublin in which he was born, lived and died.

Kanes shop was a long established and thriving business, it was founded by Paddy K’s Mother Mary Kilmartin nee Kelly, remarried Kane in 1902.(See Granny Kane). Kanes was a three story double fronted building at numbers 23 and 24 Stoneybatter with shops on the ground floor and living accommodation on the first and second floors. (see photograph below)

It was originally a coaching Inn and Hotel on the main route into Dublin and to the right of the building as you face it was an arched entrance for coach and horse access to the stables.



Latterly the building became unsound and the third floor had to be removed



There is still a flower shop trading as Kanes in a new development on the site of the old building and home to the Kilmartins from the 1880s.

Stoneybatter can be traced back 1700 years and sits on the North side of the River Liffey. In Irish it is Bothar na gCloc which means the “Road of Stones”. The name Stoneybatter came about from the corruption of mixing English and Irish … Stony Bothar. Bothar is the Irish word for ‘road’ and Stony refers to the stones or cobblestones.

Back in those days to qualify as a road, or bothar, the carriageway had to be the width of two cows, one lengthways and one crossways! If it was not “as long and as broad” it was just a lane, or alley and there were plenty of those in the area, Red Cow lane, Beef Lane, Chicken Lane, and Oxmantown Lane

Two hundred years ago Stoneybatter was a very prominent commercial area in Dublin. It was the last area in which Irish as a language was spoken in Dublin City. This was over two hundred years ago when traders and shopkeepers had to be familiar with the Irish language in order to cater for the farmers and their families, who came to trade from the Irish speaking Midlands Gaeltacht.

Stoneybatter as a street was topped by Oxmantown and the Cattle Markets to the North and Smithfield Markets to its South. There was a great deal of commercial and manufacturing activity in the area ranging from a local toffee factory to the surviving Jameson distillery now a museum.

From Aughrim Street and Manor Street into Stoneybatter, past Blackhall Place and down to the ford at the Liffey, was a royal road from Tara to Wicklow on which it is said that St Patrick walked.



The Kilmartin family have had their home and trade there from the 1890s and it can be deemed to be the seat of the family, ever since Mary Kilmartin or ‘Granny Kane’, as she became known in the district, founded the business, established the home, which her son Paddy, and then his Daughter Maureen maintained and built upon.