Victorian Grandeur and Hollywood: A Short History of Bray

Bray did not grow up by accident. It was built, on purpose, as a holiday town. In the 1850s the railway engineer William Dargan ran the line down the coast from Dublin and laid out a resort to go with it, consciously modelled on Brighton in England. The 1.5km promenade, the bandstand, the ironwork, and the rows of grand seafront terraces all come from that moment, and they are why locals still call the place the 'Brighton of Ireland', said half-proudly and half with a roll of the eyes.

There was a settlement here long before the trains. On the lower slopes of Bray Head, in Raheen Park, stand the ruins of Raheen-a-Cluig, a small church dating to the twelfth or thirteenth century and now a National Monument, the oldest standing structure in the town. Above it, the white cross on Bray Head dates from the Holy Year of 1950.

The twentieth century brought a long decline as the resort trade fell away, and Bray settled into the 'faded grandeur' it is still half-known for. But it also gained a film pedigree. Ardmore Studios opened on Herbert Road in 1958 and became Ireland's oldest film studio, with productions including Braveheart and My Left Foot shot there. Ardmore is a working studio with no public tours, so it is heritage context rather than a stop on the tourist trail, but it is part of why a small Wicklow seaside town punches well above its weight. The modern chapter, the seafront food scene, is just the latest turn for a town that has always been good at reinventing itself.