Irishtown grew outside of Dublin, about 2 km east of the medieval city walls (see also Ringsend).

The native Gaelic Irish were therefore viewed as an alien force in the city, and suspicion of them was deepened by continual raids on Dublin and its environs by the O'Byrne and O'Toole clans from the nearby Wicklow Mountains.

As a result, the Irish inhabitants of Dublin were expelled from the city proper in about 1454, in line with the Statutes of Kilkenny.

In 1794 Richard Power, judge of the Court of Exchequer, who was facing charges of corruption, drowned himself in the river at Irishtown.

Pembroke was redesignated an urban district in 1899, before being abolished and brought into the jurisdiction of the city in 1930.