When the Mooneys bought their redbrick terraced house on St Patrick's Villas in Ringsend from the Corporation for a modest sum, they never imagined it would be worth almost £200,000 two decades later. Period cottages in Ringsend and neighbouring Irishtown now make highly desirable first homes for well-heeled singles, their scarcity sending prices soaring beyond the reach of young buyers in the locality.
The boundaries of Ringsend and Irishtown are almost impossible to define, with one area merging into the other, although local residents have no problem recognising the differences. A strong community spirit links the two communities, which combine on environmental and planning issues. While the main community centre for the combined area is on Thorncastle Street in Ringsend, the local newspaper News Four is produced from the CYMS building on Irishtown Road.
Ringsend encompasses all the streets from the Grand Canal, through the village to just past the Carnegie Library, part of Pigeon House Road and all of York Road as far as the Gut and the toll bridge. Irishtown is a smaller area, taking in Bath, Strand and Pembroke Streets, Stella Gardens, half of Pigeon House Road, one side of Bath Avenue and Londonbridge Road and the three-storey Corporation houses around the football stadium. Both areas have the sought-after Dublin 4 postmark.
The name Ringsend stems from Rinn Abhann, or point of the tide. A great tide in 1670 swept away houses in low-lying parts of the village - now reclaimed land and sea walls protect both areas from the elements.
People queuing up to move into Ringsend and Irishtown are attracted by the closeness to the city and the recreational amenity of Sandymount Strand close by. The beach, which once extended to Ringsend, is habitat for a wide variety of native and migrating seabirds, including gulls, Brent geese and the occasional marauding heron.
One of the two-bedroom St Patrick's Villas houses is on the market with the Bennetts agency, asking £180,000. Across the road on Stella Gardens, the same agent is offering a similar end-terrace house for £190,000. A really charming Stella Gardens cottage which fetched £130,000 back in June 1998 was resold in January this year for £180,000. Local agent P J O'Dwyer achieved £175,000 for another two-bedroom cottage here with a small back yard in December. Eight years ago Gunne Residential sold a similar house on Oliver Plunkett Avenue for just over £52,000. They also handled a cottage on Pigeon House Road which achieved £45,000 in the same year.
People are buying into the kind of close-knit community Bridget and Gerald Mooney represent. The grandchildren of the Mooney, Dunne, Caulfield, Lawlor and Doyle families - most of them seafaring families - are still living around the village. If you threw a stone you'd hit a cousin, says Gerald Mooney. Both he and Bridget have lived all their lives in St Patrick's Villas and Bridget grew up in their present house.
Between South Lotts Road and Barrow Street there is a neighbourhood of tiny one and two-storey period cottages so picturesque that it is constantly in use as a film backdrop. The expected Barrow Street DART station is causing property to literally fly out agents' doors, says Hamilton Osborne King.
HOK is currently closing the sale of a two-bedroom redbrick "in very poor condition" on South Dock Street for well over the £160,000 asking price. Number 41 changed hands last August with the same agent for £150,000. Sherry FitzGerald is selling a two-bedroom end of terrace house in good condition on Gordon Street for £200,000.
Slightly larger houses are found on Pembroke Street, where Lisney is quoting £225,000 for a period three-bedroom terraced house. Tucked behind this is Strasburg Terrace, where the same agency has a modern three-bed house guiding £250,000. Off Bath Avenue, Gunne Residential sold a three-bed house on Margaret's Place last November for £235,000.
The character of the Ringsend and Irishtown area has changed little since the days when local children went fishing for crabs off the quay with the backbone of a ray and the young women worked at the Swastika laundry for twelve and six a week. In place of the sweetie shops run by Granny Fulham, Granny Reilly and Granny Bissett (grannies ran the place in those days), there are dry cleaners, chemists and mini-markets, many with traditional shopfronts intact.
Corporation flats built to house families living in rented rooms around the village were welcomed when first built. Many of their young descendants are now hoping to buy these as a way of gaining a property foothold on their home patch. New flats are planned for Corporation-owned land on Pigeon House Road.
If there was a competition for the most embattled area of Dublin, Ringsend/Irishtown would win hands down. Since Cromwell landed here in 1649 with a 12,000-strong army, Ringsend's location has been viewed as strategic. Over the years, the community has regularly pitted itself against powerful interest groups drawn by the area's proximity to the docks and the city. Older families will remember a successful protest to prevent a road going across the local park and football pitch.
The current row over the Corporation's proposal for a waste incinerator on land behind Irishtown Nature Park has the Combined Residents' Association up in arms. Ringsend was chosen from a shortlist of four preferred sites, which included Cherrywood in Loughlinstown and Robin Hood and Newlands areas, both off the Naas Road.
According to acting Assistant County Manager Nat Twomey, the decision was based on Ringsend's central location. On the question of most of Dublin city and county's waste travelling through the narrow roads of the village en route to the incinerator, Mr Twomey accepts that the existing road network is inadequate.
Apartment blocks, an inevitable part of any city dockside area, are mushrooming. Homes in Fitzwilliam Quay, a popular Cosgrave-built complex on the banks of the Dodder, rarely come on the market. Bennetts is selling a two-bedroom unit in the Waterside complex with river views for £210,000. Relatively good value can be found in the Fisherman's Wharf apartments, where a two-bed unit changed hands recently through Douglas Newman Good for mid/late £150,000s.
The much-hyped Charlotte Quay apartments on Ringsend Road have the benefits of boat mooring facilities and a spanking new gourmet restaurant. Sherry FitzGerald has a two-bedroom apartment for sale here, asking £220,000.
Provided the residents stand firm on unwelcome industrial development - and there is every indication that they are not to be persuaded on that incinerator - Ringsend/Irishtown's image as the most vibrant (and affordable) village in Dublin 4 should remain intact.
