Frank Taaffe, Athy, Co Kildare
Dwelling: Detached house on its own grounds
Here since: On and off since the age of three
I'm not from Athy itself - I was born in Castlecomer, in Co Kilkenny - but we came here when I was three years of age. I was reared here - this is where I made my friendships and where I went to school - and, like any kid who is raised in a place, I have a great affinity with it. I left Athy when I was 18, then spent a few years away. I came back and set up my own business here about 24 years ago. It was while I was out of the place that my interest in the history and the people grew. I started to collate and collect material relating to the town, and I began to unveil aspects of the town's history that no one else had known about, or things people had forgotten generations ago.
I felt it was something I needed to do, because nobody else was doing it. I do a weekly piece in the Kildare Nationalist for the past 14 years or so about Athy's people and past. I think it's terribly important if we're living in an area that we should know what happened there. We should give due recognition to those people, perhaps long forgotten, who did things here. It's almost a foundation of your relationship with a place if you know what has gone on before.
The one thing that strikes you about Athy is that it's a long, narrow street running from one end of the town to the other. It's typical of the Anglo-Norman settlements of the 12th century; it's always regarded as a very good example of a linear-type settlement. This long narrow street has created a lot of traffic problems for the town, however. We have the Grand Canal, which meets the River Barrow here. It's unusual - perhaps the only town in the country where a river and a canal meet and join up. The railway and canal brought the opportunity for great prosperity to Athy in the early part of the 19th century.
It's unlike other towns in the area, which are all sighted on main routes, while we're somewhat off-beam. Some people think that's why we've lost out over the past 10 or 15 years, in comparison with other towns in the area, economically. In the past few years there has been a huge increase in the population, to about 7,500. It used to be about 4,000, a very average provincial town, and it's almost doubled. It has its problems, like any provincial Irish town, but I can look down from my garden into the gorgeous canal, and we have one of the most beautiful town squares on this island, and the 600-year-old White's Castle [see photograph]. Athy has a great future, I think.
In conversation with Davin O'Dwyer