Rathmines () is an affluent inner suburb on the Southside of Dublin in Ireland. It lies three kilometres south of the city centre. It begins at the southern side of the Grand Canal and stretches along the Rathmines Road as far as Rathgar to the south, Ranelagh to the east, and Harold's Cross to the west. It is situated in the city's D06 postal district. Rathmines is a commercial and social hub and was well known across Ireland as "flatland"—an area where subdivided large Georgian and Victorian houses provided rented accommodation to newly arrived junior civil servants and third-level students from outside the city from the 1930s. However, in more recent times, Rathmines has diversified its housing stock and many historic houses formerly divided into often tiny flats and bedsits have in a process of gentrifying been re-amalgamated into single-family homes. Rathmines gained a reputation as a "Dublin Belgravia" in the 19th Century. Name Rathmines is an Anglicisation of the Irish , meaning "ringfort of Maonas"/"fort of Maonas". The name Maonas is perhaps derived from Maoghnes or the Norman name de Meones, after the de Meones family who settled in Dublin about 1280; Elrington Ball states that the earlier version of the name was Meonesrath, which supports the theory that it was named after the family. Like many of the surrounding areas, it arose from a fortified structure which would have been the centre of civic and commercial activity from the Norman invasion of Ireland in the 12th century. Rathgar, Baggotrath and Rathfarnham are other areas of Dublin whose placenames derive from a similar root. History Origins Rathmines has a history stretching back to the 14th century. At this time, Rathmines and the surrounding hinterland were part of the ecclesiastical lands called Cuallu or Cuallan, later the vast Parish of Cullenswood, which gave its name to a nearby area. Cuallu is mentioned in local surveys from 1326 as part of the manor of St. Sepulchre (the estate, or rather liberty, of the Archbishop of Dublin, whose seat as a Canon of St. Patrick's Cathedral takes its name from this). There is some evidence of an established settlement around a rath as far back as 1350. Rathmines is part of the Barony of Uppercross, one of the many baronies surrounding the old city of Dublin, bound as it was by walls, some of which are still visible. In more recent times,