An excellent rant. You would do well to find a more soulless place than Stillorgan âVillageâ. What you are saying is that, what was left of the old village was razed to the ground to build a carpark? A place so dominated and designed for the convenience of cars couldnât really be considered a village in any conventional sense.
Lads trying to âsaveâ Dundrum are equally deluded. The old Shopping Centre resembles something from Soviet Russia. At least Dundrum has a Main St though. Unlike itâs neighbor up the Kilmacud Road. Changing Main St Dundrum to a one way road was a step in the right direction. But the place needs a serious face lift.
Considering the cost of a an average Semi D in the vicinity of either place. Youâd imagine that the nearby âvillagesâ wouldnât be such eyesores.
Sandyford Village always seemed tucked away from all the development around it. Has this changed? Its 10 years at least since I was in the Sandyford House. The area all around it was ballooning but there was still a sml village feel to it. And maybe Stepaside too to a latter extent until the high rise apartments got close to it.
It is still nice but my point is more that it changed dramatically in the last 25 years. It had acres of fields around it. You were travelling on country roads beside it.
Pretty much. That demolished two long rows like this for it.
Dundrum Main Street has come on heaps and could get even better if they go on with redeveloping the old shopping centre. The council changing the traffic was great for it too, but there is a campaign to bring back all the roads.
The council did it in Blackrock too and the Main Street has improved a lot.
Weâve long heard how the drink-driving laws have killed rural pubs in Ireland. But what about the housing crisis wiping out city and suburban licensed premises?
Pubs were once such a fundamental pillar of Irish society that we applied them universally as stepping stones when giving people directions.
Weâd use them as markers along the way, telling that enquiring driver how to get to such and such a pub and direct them on from there.
Letâs take an example. If you were telling someone how to get from Milltown to Dundrum in Dublin a decade ago, youâd tell them to head up over the Milltown Bridge and past the Millrace Pub, then straight on, keeping Ryanâs Arbour House on your right, and then past Uncle Tomâs Cabin to Dundrum Village straight ahead of you through the crossroads.
But times have changed. Today, the Millrace Pub is a hostel, having closed its doors to be converted for residential accommodation.
The next pub along, Ryanâs Arbour House, was recently sold and is also closed. It had a guideline price of âŹ1.75m-plus.
It stands on a 0.37 acre site with âneighbourhood centreâ zoning and is likely to be redeveloped accordingly.
On then to Uncle Tomâs Cabin, which is also set for redevelopment after being bought for circa âŹ3m by Galway developer Padraic Rhatigan and financier Stewart Doyle.
The pub was sold by the Collins family, who operated it as a licensed premises since the 1890s.
The site is already zoned for residential development and a planning application is pending.
