Blessington Street Basin

This guide to Blessington Street Basin in Dublin follows a reservoir dug by Dublin Corporation in the early 1800s, carrying water two miles by iron pipe from a lake in County Westmeath to the city's kitchen taps. It traces what happened once bigger reservoirs elsewhere made the basin obsolete as a water source, and the quieter job it kept doing for two of Dublin's whiskey distilleries into the 1970s. You'll also hear about its neglect and its 1990s restoration, and where James Joyce worked it into Ulysses.