"My mum and dad used to cycle out here during the war when Dad was working at the British Military Hospital at Leopardstown. One day, they popped in to see Canon Taylor at St Brigid's and Dad was offered the job of sexton.

"When we came to the village, there were lots of little cottages where people kept chickens and there was a shoe-makers and a bicycle shop on the hill. We cycled to Seapoint in the summer and played in the fields and fished for tadpoles.

"It was quite a countrified cycle to Stepaside where we played on the `sliding rock'. Then Pat Quinn built the shopping centre and that was the start of the change."

Some of the old families were still there when Tommy was a boy - the Davies of Merville and the Darleys who owned the brewery on the corner of Brewery Road.

"The old St Brigid's Church was on the main Bray road in those days and quite busy. We used to jog across to St John of Gods for a swim on hot summer days." Happy memories encouraged Tommy Rath to apply for his father's old job when he became redundant from Dockrells 13 years ago. A bungalow went with it and here Tommy and his wife Ann, who is a nurse, reared their three children.

"I missed out when I was young because I went into St Patrick's when I was seven as a choir boy. I caught the 46A into town practically every morning and went to my Aunt Kate's in Mount Pleasant Square for lunch."

Much has changed since then, including St Brigid's. There is now a pre-school and a primary school, with the old graveyard in the centre lovingly tended by Tommy.

He regrets the passing of the great houses but sees change as inevitable.

"A lot of the big houses have been sold and apartment blocks are going up. Two cranes are working away just outside my window as I speak, in the grounds of Dunstaffrage House. But Stillorgan was a wonderful place to grow up in and still is today."