Building Dublin’s neighbourhoods on the Internet
Marino Local History Society have put together this charming compilation of memories of the 1970s in Marino.
The Society can be contacted by e-mail at marino-history@hotmail.com
You can see the Society’s video of the “Big Snow” of 2010 here.
You can read more about the history of the area starting here.
Tá Ógras ag eagrú Campa Samhraidh i nGaelscoil Cholmcille sa Chúlóg do phaistí 7 - 11 bliain d’aois. Beidh sé ar siúl ó 11-15 Iúil sa Ghaelscoil ag tosnú ag 10.00 r.n gach maidin agus ag críochú ag 2.30i.n. Is é €55 an costas don tseachtain agus cludaíonn sé sin turas lae - Viking Splash Tour agus Múseam Stair an Dúlra.
Ógras is organising a Summer Camp in Gaelscoil Cholmcille in Coolock for children aged 7 - 11. It will take place from 11-15 July in the Gaelscoil starting at 10.00 a.m. each morning and fininshes at 2.30p.m. The cost for the week is €55 and this includesa day trip to the Viking Splash Tour and the Natural History Museum.
Imeachtaí / Activities
Eagrófar Feis Seantrabh don chéad uair ar an Domhnach 15 Bealtaine 2011 ag 1.00 in. i Lárionad Chomhluadar Seantrabh.
The first Feis Seantrabh will take place on Sunday 15 May at 1.00 pm. in Santry Community Resource Centre.
Fáilte roimh iomaitheoirí ó aois 5-18. Fáilte roimh daoine aonair, grúpaí, clubanna, scoileanna.
Competitors between ages 5-18 are welcome. Individuals, groups, clubs & schools are all welcome.
Comórtaisí: Filíocht, Amhránaíocht aonair, Comhrá, Agallamh Beirte. (Go léir as Ghaeilge)
Aois-ghrúpaí: 5-7, 7-9, 9-11, 11-13, 13-18 bliana d’aois.
Competitions: Poetry recital, Solo singing, Conversation, Dialogue in verse. (All in Irish)
Age groups: 5-7, 7-9, 9-11, 11-13, 13-18 years.
I gcomhair tuilleadh eolais, glaoigh ar 8426537.
For more information, call 8426537.
There will be a special screening of the movie “Country” at the Irish Film Institute on 30 May at 6pm.
This screening will be in tribute to Donal Gilligan. Donal was a talented cinematographer known for his work on ‘Saving Private Ryan’, ‘Love / Hate’, ‘Raw’ and ‘Omagh’. Donal died in September 2010.
Tickets go on sale from April 21 from the Irish Film Institute box office. Phone (01) 6793477 or book online at http://www.ifibooking.ie/
Country, written and directed by Kevin Liddy, was made in 2000 and is set in rural Ireland, where the older people nurse ancient grudges and enmities and the young ones want to leave and go somewhere more exciting, encouraged by a long-lost relative that turns up for a funeral.
Click here for the Facebook event details & to see who else will be there.
Click here to see the movie’s cast & crew.
The following events will take place in Santry in April.
Saturday 2nd April, 2pm - 4pm
Keeping Chickens in Your City Garden. Free Q&A Session with sustainability expert Fiona Dillon. Location: Petmania, Gulliver’s Retail Park, Santry, Dublin 9.
Easter Monday, 25th April, 2pm
National Dog Walk 2011, Dublin Centre. National fundraising event for the Carers Association of Ireland, hosted by Petmania. 5KM Sponsored Dog Walk. €5 Individual / €10 Family Registration Fee. Sponsorship cards for all participating dogs with fabulous prizes for Dublin’s Top Dog. Location: Petmania, Gulliver’s Retail Park, Santry, Dublin 9. Find out more in store or at www.nationaldogwalk.ie
Fairview Therapy Centre Website: http://fairviewtherapycentre.ie
Our skilled Counsellors/Psychotherapists are experienced to help you with:
Fairview Therapy centre is a private therapy practice offering a wide range of services which acknowledge the holistic nature of health. All the therapies available at the centre recognize the need for a balance between the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of life in order to achieve good health and well being.
Our practitioners possess a broad range of experience in the community, business and professional worlds. We have all undertaken extensive training and are committed to ongoing professional development. We all work in accordance with the codes of ethics subscribed to by our various associations and each of us is engaged in professional supervision for our clinical work.
Parking:
After 10am on Fairview Strand. All day on Windsor Avenue, Brian Avenue and Fairview Avenue (3 hour disc parking in operation).
Buses:
20A, 20B, 27B, 29A, 31A, 31B, 42A, 42B, 43, 123, & 130. 104 Clontarf Dart station.
Dart:
We are 10 minutes walk from Clontarf Dart Station.
Ballymun (Irish: Baile Munna) is an area on Dublin’s Northside close to Dublin Airport, Ireland. It is infamous for the Ballymun flats, which became a symbol of poverty, drugs, alienation from the state and social problems in Ireland from the 1970s. Today it is undergoing a multi-billion euro renewal, with a renovated village centre, surrounded by estates of houses and apartments, with several sub-districts such as Sillogue and Poppintree.
Ballymun had a population of 22,109 at the 2006 Census. A hotel in the area was the scene of a million euro diamond heist in 2010.
Amenities
Today Ballymun has a wide range of amenities, from green spaces and the public Silloge Golf Course to a Tesco-owned shopping centre, a range of other shops and pubs and a hotel, to a public sector office development, with many branches of the city government (including a Motor Tax and Driver Licence office) and the Health Service and a very modern but small public leisure centre. There is a church in the old village centre, and a number of schools, including a Gaelscoil (Irish-speaking) primary school.
Transport
Ballymun is served by a number of Dublin Bus routes. The area is also to have an underground stop on the planned Metro North (Dublin city centre to Swords) line of the Dublin Metro. Journey time from Ballymun to the airport is estimated be around three minutes, and to Dublin city centre around twenty-five minutes. Tesco Ireland own Ballymun Shopping Centre. The Ballymun shopping centre is owned by Treasury Holdings, not by Tesco (Ireland).
History and nature
The current town of Ballymun is not in the area historically called Ballymun; instead, it is in several townlands, the most significant of which was Stormanstown. The nearest village was Santry Village, property of the Domville Family.
Due to what were seen to be undesirable associations, some say that the area has shrunk since the completion of the tower blocks. For instance in the early days of Dublin City University, then called NIHE, Dublin, this institution was sometimes referred to as being in Ballymun (part of the “Ballymun Project”), or sometimes in Whitehall, whilst today it is referred to and has a postal address in Glasnevin even though it has not changed location. Indeed much of the present day central Ballymun lies on lands once in the northern reaches of the Albert Agricultural College estate, the forerunner of the present-day Dublin City University.
Streets have also been renamed. For example, Ballymun Avenue was renamed Glasnevin Avenue after a local plebiscite in the 1970s. (Ballymun Avenue was first known as Santry Avenue Extension, then Ballymun Avenue, then Glasnevin Avenue.)
The seven towers in Ballymun were built between 1966 and 1969. In the 1960s planners and architects thought the best way to house many people very quickly was to build high towers with as many flats in them as possible.
In September 2006, Gill & Macmillan published “The Mun”, by Lynn Connolly, is a memoir covering the history of Ballymun from its inception to the final regeneration of the town. The Mun was Lynn’s account of another side of Ballymun, of which she has fond memories. She wrote of a side of Ballymun not written of in the press stories about drug dealing and gangsters; a community that thrived in spite of the squalor. The Mun was Lynn’s way up putting the story straight for the decent people of Ballymun.
In April 2009, Irish publisher Gill & Macmillan published Ballymun resident Rachael Keogh’s account of her life as a heroin addict, “Dying to Survive”. Rachael started taking drugs aged 12 and for the next 15 years was hooked on a variety of substances. In 2006, after repeated attempts to get help, Rachael went to the media to publicise her plight.
Among the opprobrium heaped on Ballymun, the deployment of the flats has been described by the environmental journalist Frank McDonald, in his book “The Construction of Dublin”, as the Irish state’s ‘worst planning disaster’. However, at the time of its construction, Ballymun was a sought after location and prospective tenants had to pass an interview to get housing there. There were three types of flats: seven fifteen-storey towers; nineteen eight-storey blocks; ten four-storey blocks. The flats were built in the 1960s under the authority of Neil Blaney, the then Fianna Fáil Minister for Local Government. They incorporated the best social housing practice of the time. The first tenants moved in between August 1966 and December 1966. By February 1969, when the National Building Agency’s contract for Ballymun ceased and control of Ballymun was handed to Dublin City Council, (Dublin County Council didn’t want it) there was a total of 3,021 dwellings in the new Ballymun, all of which was social housing under the control of the Irish state through Dublin City Council.
The tenants primarily came from the most deprived areas of inner city Dublin, places where the depth of poverty could not be conceived of in modern Ireland. Many tenants were middle class residents whose property was ‘compulsory purchased’ by Dublin City Council. They arrived in Ballymun to some of the finest social housing in Europe, having central heating and other rarities of the day in their homes.
However, there was a profound lack of amenities throughout the area - initially the only shop was a van selling at premium prices, for example - and, combined with a lack of trees, and estates built in cul de sacs, ghettoisation developed. The earliest efforts to improve services began in the 1970s with the establishment of tenants’ associations, particularly in Sillogue. By the recession of the 1980s, Ballymun was infested with social problems, most especially alcohol and other drug abuse. Although the public image of Ballymun has changed somewhat since the beginning of the Ballymun regeneration project in 1997, continuing social problems in Ballymun ensure it remains a remarkably different world to, for example, neighbouring Glasnevin.
The creation of Ballymun Regeneration Limited as a limited company controlled by Dublin City Council initiated the beginning of the demolition of the Ballymun flats and the emergence of a “new town” of Ballymun. As of 2008, six of the seven towers (Pearse, Ceannt, MacDermott, McDonagh, Connolly and Clarke) as well as three eight-storey blocks and seven four-storey blocks have been demolished by DSM, with the residents generally rehoused in new “state of the art” housing in Ballymun. The new housing is a mixture of public, private, voluntary and co-operative housing. The “new Ballymun” is due to be completed by 2013.
The regeneration project, despite well-publicised questions about accountability and democratic participation, has also delivered many other amenities, including reworked park areas, a major City Council office facility, Health Service facilities, a public leisure centre, student accommodation, a new hotel and renewed shopping areas.
As part of the New Ballymun, a major tree-planting project called Amaptocare has been run, with more than 600 people sponsoring around 700 trees, and providing inscription texts which are engraved on plaques near the trees. All of the trees will be identified on a glass panel at Ballymun’s central plaza, which was scheduled to be complete by 2007 but is not due by 2013.
There are plans to create a small Irish speaking community in Ballymun, consisting primarily of 40 homes, centered around the Gaelscoil that is already in the area, as well as an Irish speaking shop in the locality and the local branch of Glór na nGael.
There are a number of local sports groups, including football club Ballymun Kickhams GAA, Ballymun United Football Club and St Pats United / Ard Celtic FC.
Unidare RFC, who came runners-up in the 2007/08 Dublin Metro League, did so with a panel of players drawn heavily from the Ballymun area and young players from Ballymun now play at all youth levels for the club.
(Thanks to Wikipedia for much of this information.)
The Big Snow hit Fairview and Marino as well as everywhere else around Dublin & the rest of Ireland in December 2010. The newly formed Marino Local History Society have put together a lovely slideshow of how the snow hit the neighbourhood.
The Society sounds like a great idea and I’m sure we will hear lots more from them in the future. They can be contacted by e-mail at marino-history@hotmail.com
Local artist Glen McMahon also took some great photos - you can see them on his FaceBook album (FaceBook login required).
You can read more about the history of the area starting here.
Risk of Coastal Flooding in Dublin this weekend – 7th and 8thNovember 2010
Motorists and property owners should be aware that there is a risk of coastal flooding in Dublin this weekend, advises Dublin City Council Local Flood forecasting agency. Dublin City Council has put in place a flood contingency plan to address this risk, in accordance with the City’s Emergency Plan. Car parks on the seafront at Clontarf and Sandymount will be closed from Sunday 7th until the evening of Monday 8th November. Motorists are advised not to leave cars in these areas, as they may be at risk from flooding, due to wave action. Local Road closures may be required and these will be identified closer to the weekend as more reliable weather forecasting is available.
The best available weather forecasts, in conjunction with the City’s tidal surge early warning system, suggest a severe low pressure off the west coast of Ireland in combination with southerly/easterly winds of 70km per hour gusting to 100km per hour over the coming days. This combination of high tides and low pressure increase the possibility of coastal flooding, particularly at high tide around midnight on Sunday 7th November and midday on Monday 8th November.
Normal high tides are predicted from Thursday 4th November to Tuesday 9th November. These high tides will not normally cause a coastal flooding risk unless accompanied by extreme weather.
Dublin City Council will start today to deploy temporary flood defences in potential at risk areas. Alerts will be issued through the radio and other media when more information becomes available.
The following 7 roads will be closed from 1.00 pm on Sunday 7th November until mid afternoon on Monday 8th November at the junction with Strand Road:
It may be necesary to close the following roads at short notice:
Strand Road from Sean Moore Road to Merrion Gates and the Coast Road from Alfie Byrne Road to Watermill Road (diversion via the Howth Road).
The best available weather forecasts, in conjunction with the City’s tidal surge early warning system, suggest a severe low pressure off the west coast of Ireland in combination with southerly/easterly winds of 70km per hour gusting to 100km per hour over the coming days. This combination of high tides and low pressure increase the possibility of coastal flooding, particularly at high tide around midnight on Sunday 7th November and midday on Monday 8th November.
Further reports will issue when more information is available. Advice on local flood protection for householders and businesses can be sourced from OPW at www.flooding.ie .
Many of you are aware of the Fairview Park Restoration Committee (FPRC) and our ongoing concern regarding the safety and current condition of the playground and surrounding area.
A couple of months ago the FPRC suggested to Dublin City Council (DCC) that a community clean-up should be organised prior to the opening of the restored park. However, the restoration will not commence until early 2011. The FPRC remain concerned with the litter in and around both the current playgrounds. Considering this we want to push ahead with a comunity clean-up of these areas in the park.
It has been arranged that DCC will meet those interested in helping out at their Depot in the park at 11am on Saturday 6th November. Gloves and bags will be supplied.
We are asking you, and anyone else who you believe would be interested in being involved, to take park in this essential clean-up of these areas in the park that all our children use most frequently. This is our park. We believe this is a significant moment in Fairview park’s future. Our communities need to join together now and in the future to create a sense of ownership in our communities. The clean-up won’t take long but will mean so much.
Please join us on the 6th of November and forward this information to any organisation or people who you believe would like to get involved.
Please advise Bonnie Brady on (086) 86 21676 if you will be able to attend.
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