Lament for a dying breed
Ron, Dick and I all live in the country. We like it here. It is nice and peaceful. You can see the stars at night, and listen to the owls hooting. During the day, we keep tally on the badgers, foxes and squirrels. The air is fresh and quiet.
We all live in roughly the same area, which is all back roads and lanes. When I first moved here over 40 years ago, it was an event when a car went past.
Unfortunately, it is within commuting distance of Dublin. But everywhere in Ireland now seems to be within commuting distance of Dublin. So this means that the area is very popular for people to live in.
Now people have to live somewhere, and they are as welcome here as anywhere else.
But I have a major complaint.
This is the countryside. If you want to live here, then please respect that. Stop trying to turn it into suburbia.
Dick lives in a lovely old cottage. It’s around 200 years old. A couple bought the house next door to him [another old cottage] and they are trying to turn it into something that wouldn’t be out of place in Docklands. They want to build a two story extension with a high blank wall along his boundary, that would plunge his garden into darkness from midday on. He is livid. Apparently the couple want about five bedrooms, all en-suite, with games rooms and saunas and God knows what else. If they want that, then why buy in the country? There are plenty of houses like that in suburbia.
Ron had wide open fields around his house. They are starting to build housing estates on them. He is depressed. Where the cattle grazed, there will now be radios blaring in the summer, and burgler alarms blaring for the rest of the year.
I’m not too bad at the moment, but they are threatening to build a housing estate the other side of the road. And we now have street lights and footpaths. And I haven’t seen a fox or a badger in a long time.
I’m not against progress. But let the people who want suburbia live in the suburbs, and let the people who want to live in the country respect it for what it is. Countryside.
If you want to build here, build something that is in keeping with the area. If you want a housing estate, then live nearer the city. If you want a five bedroom house then build it where there are other five bedroom houses. You will feel more at home there.
After all, the people who live in the city sometimes want to go for a drive in the country. At this rate they are going to end up in Connemara before they find it.
So we are a dying breed; Ron, Dick and I. Along with the badgers, the foxes, the deer, the corncrakes, the bats, the squirrels, the field mice and everything else that likes a bit of space.
In keeping with the rural aesthetic …
Nothing irritates me more than the sight of a huge mansion in the middle of nowhere i.e. on the way to Cootehill, that just dominates the countryside. It’s disgusting that people have to show off their wealth like that.
It’s me again – probably flying the work Union Jack!
You make good points there. There are some truly beautiful villages and areas which should be preserved or at least any new buildings should be in character. There are many excellent parts of Wicklow to visit and I’d hate them to turn into suburbia of Dublin.
Precisely what I’m talking about.
In parts of France, you can build if you want to. But it must be built with local materials and more importantly it must be built in the style of the local distinctive architecture.
There are many new buildings in these areas, but it is very hard to tell them apart from the originals. As a result, the area retains it’s identity.
This country has been destroyed by ‘South Fork Mansions’ and ‘bungalow blitz’ monstrosities.
God help the tourists who come here looking for the ‘real’ Ireland with a bit of unspoiled scenery!
How will Wicklow turn into Dublin??
The very fact that a massive geographical barrier called the Dublin Mountains prevent southward expansion mean that Wicklow is safe. If anything, it’s people like us on the main roads who have most to fear by the urban sprawl that is inexorably inching its way towards us. By 2012, Dunshauglin will be part of Dublin.
You heard it here first.
Down the coast Dario. The urban sprawl is spreading as far south as Gorey and beyond.
In Mayo, where we lived until November, the planning board are extremely stringent. Depending on the locale, if you are lucky enough to be allowed to build at all, you have to do it in the old style.
Therein lies one of the problems, Deborah.
The planning in this country in a mess. Mayo may have stringent rules, but unfortunately, due to pressure, the counties within a 50 or more mile radius of Dublin don’t.
For example, in north Wicklow, there are places like Delgany, Greystones, Enniskerry, Kilcoole and Newtownmountkennedy that were all quiet country towns and villages. They are now being put under pressure to build apartment blocks!! West and north Dublin are totally destroyed by sprawling housing estates with no character whatsoever. Towns as far away as Cavan and Gorey are being ruined by over development.
I know people have to live somewhere, but surely there must be a more sensitive way of doing it.
Undergroung bunkers have to be the answer!
How many could you have between the hen house and the pig sty?
Actually, machine-gun emplacements would be more appropriate….
Suburban expansion, unfortunately, does seem to be the way of the future. It has already reached truly ridiculous levels in the UK, around London.
Possibly when energy shortages become more of an issue, cities will start centralising again.
It is truly mad here. I have seen houses in Athlone advertised as being “within easy commuting distance of Galway and Dublin”. People are commuting up to 200 miles a day.
There has to be another answer, but I don’t know what it is.
i couldn’t agree more (i was directed to this website after having watched your little piece on capital D). i live in north kildare, a region already swallowed up by this burgeoning metropolis called dublin. dublin is slowly but surely spreading outwards, and the days when the likes of celbridge, maynooth, leixlip and lucan were considered satellite towns of dublin are now gone. they are fully integrated into a greater dublin sprawl. as for those who flee the suburbs heading for the country yet feel the need to bring a little suburbia with them, are themselves, part of the problem. i believe that anyone who moves to the countryside must respect the countryside for what it is. just driving through the beautiful irish countryside, meandering through the rolling hills and along the winding rivers, there is nothing more annoying than seeing a hideous imposing structure placed in the form of an oversized house placed slap bang in the middle of the countryside without any regard for its visual impact on the surrounding environment. countryside planning laws need to be overhauled, yet no doubt such an argument will be countered by the need to deregulate building in the countryside in order to help rejuvenate dying communities
Welcome to the madhouse, Stoichkov.
We think alike! I remember well as a child being brought for “Sunday drives”. We used to pass through the village of Clondalkin, and then for miles between green fields before coming to Lucan. We really felt like we were ‘out in the country’ then!!