Ballast Office

My memories of the early post war years in Irish Shipping Limited are still very vivid. As a shore-based employee I recall the daily cycle from Rathmines to the old Ballast Office at the corner of Aston Quay and Westmoreland St., a building which we shared with the Dublin Port and Docks Board.

The Ballast Office clock on the Westmoreland Street side of the building was a very familiar city landmark and was referred to by one of James Joyce's characters as "an item in the catalogue of Dublin's street furniture". Indeed, the Ballast Office clock was one of four well-known city clocks that were connected by cable to Dunsink Observatory and as such were to lose no more than one second per week. The other three clocks were at the General Post Office, Trinity College and the Bank of Ireland at College Green.


Riding a bicycle through the less crowded thoroughfares of Dublin in those days presented navigational problems of an entirely different kind from those posed by the chaotic traffic maelstrom of the modern city. In those far-off days, electric trams played a major role in Dublin's public transport system and the tracks on which they trundled their way from outer suburbia to Nelson's Pillar in the heart of O'Connell Street, created problems for the great mass of city cyclists. Of course the famous Pillar was demolished in March, 1966. The tram tracks wove their way through the streets and offered an open invitation to the narrow bicycle wheels of the less vigilant cyclist. Otherwise, the city provided a comparatively risk-free environment for the young people of that era.

The above picture of the old Ballast Office (Reproduced by kind permission of the National Photographic Archive) shows the upper floors of the building including the second and third floors where the Irish Shipping Limited offices were located. The other floors were occupied by the staff of the Dublin Port and Docks Board, the owner of the premises. The famous Ballast Office clock can be seen on the first floor level.

Our working environment in a building as old as the Ballast Office was naturally somewhat Dickensian and the influx of additional staff in the summer of 1947 meant that desk space was at a premium until the company's new premises on Aston Quay eventually became available. I remember a small waiting room being pressed into service as an office to squeeze in desks for some of the Accounts Department staff in obvious contravention of statutory regulations pertaining to office accommodation. In those days, before the advent of mechanised accounting or computers, hand-written bookkeeping was the labour intensive system in operation. Hence the relatively large staff in the Accounts Department.

It was not until March, 1949, that all staff could be accommodated in those new offices at Aston Quay. In the meantime, the Ballast Office was a hive of industry.