52 | Dublin Port Yearbook 2021
Sitting on the Dock of Dublin Bay… Dublin Port Company’s Graving Dock project will create a new public realm, a future part of a distributed port museum and a location for the arts within the Port. James Kelleher, Head of Special Projects, and Lar Joye, Heritage Director, explain why the project has become a labour of love. Dublin Port Company has unveiled an ambitious plan to see the area around its two graving docks, including the Victorian-era Pumphouse, reborn as a public space. A graving dock or dry dock is an enclosed basin, into which a ship was taken for cleaning or repair, with graduated sides almost like a Roman amphitheatre. Dublin Port has two of these graving docks, Graving Dock One dating from the Victorian era and its beautiful Pumphouse, as well as Graving Dock Two, a more modern affair which was unveiled in the 1950s. When it was constructed, Graving Dock Two was “possibly the biggest infrastructural project in the country at the time,” according to James Kelleher, Head of Special Projects, Dublin Port Company, and its official opening was
attended by luminaries like Irish President Sean T. O’Kelly and Archbishop Charles McQuaid. It was the largest working dry dock in the country and the last one to officially close, after repairs to the Jeanie Johnston were carried out in 2017. The Graving Dock project comes under the umbrella of the Alexandra Basin Redevelopment (ABR) Project, the first major capital investment project from Dublin Port Company’s Masterplan 2040, which began back in 2015. “The ABR Project will be coming to an end in 2022 with the opening of Terminal Four and the Graving Dock Project is meeting the commitment that we made back in 2015 to An Bord Pleanála,” explains Lar Joye, Heritage
