COMMUNITY:Although it's only one of a great many green spaces dotted around Dublin city, JAMES HELMfinds something unique and timeless about Sandymount Green
ON A WARM Sunday afternoon in mid-summer, an old patch of grass not far from the centre of Dublin is crowded with people. A juggler performs, announcements are made, and families enjoy their picnics. A bust of WB Yeats, whitened by the passing gulls, looks on from its perch beside a green canopy erected for the occasion. Parents, children, pensioners, visitors and passers-by are gathered to watch and relax. It is a happy mix of music, races, food and fun.
It is also pretty much a timeless scene: the “family fun day” providing a communal gathering for all ages. Sandymount Green, the hub of this old village-in-the-city, may have seen it all before, but that doesn’t make the event – and particularly its setting – any less special.
This year, some say, is the summer of “staycationers” – those persuaded by tough times to stay closer to home. If that is the case, then the city’s open spaces, free and available, plus its public events and street parties, will all be more important and popular than usual.
As a blow-in to Dublin life, I’ve watched and appreciated the easy rhythms of this little triangle of turf for more than seven years. Much around it has changed: people have moved in or left, businesses have closed and new ones opened, property prices have soared and dropped. Yet Sandymount Green has remained the beating heart of a community.
In my first week in Ireland, starting a new job, I was dropped off in the rain near the Green by a taxi driver who pronounced that “this would be a great country if we could put a roof on it”. Hurrying across the stretch of grass on the hunt for a sandwich, I immediately liked the feel of the place, without knowing why.
A few years on, the reason is clearer. It is the sheer old-fashioned ordinariness of the place, with its lack of swings and swankiness, its versatility and its value for the people who use it, which make it so special.
On the walls of the Gents Barbers, which overlooks the Green, there are old black-and-white views of Sandymount from early in the last century. The trams are long gone, and the outfits worn by weekend promenaders on the nearby strand are a little different now, but what strikes you most are the similarities, especially around this area of grass. Earlier in the summer, I Paul Merton being filmed in the back of a horse-drawn carriage as it circled the Green as part of a BBC documentary. Take away the parked cars and the camera crew and it was a scene from a bygone era.
Next door to the barber’s, in the shoe repair shop, 83-year-old Paddy Ronan is swapping banter with Mona, who works behind the counter. Paddy has lived all his life in the area and, with his dog Bobby snoozing at his feet, he gazes over at the Green. He played there as a child, and now takes Bobby for a walk there.
“It’s very special, always was,” he says. “It’s not changed. People have always said ‘we’ll meet you at the Green’.”
He nods across at the giant green canopies, the horse chestnuts which line the Green’s perimeter: “The trees that are there now are there since Methuselah.”
Whenever we have visitors to stay, we usually take them to the Green and, if the weather allows, we sit and chat. A friend over from Sydney was enthralled by it, and found it hard to believe this little gem of a place, enclosed by its iron railings, was so near the centre of the city. Then we walk on the short distance to Sandymount Strand, that great window on the world, another special urban resource.
Brian Siggins is a local historian and resident who attended Star of the Sea School in Sandymount. Now in his 70s, his deep love of the place, its people and their stories, is obvious from the moment you meet him. At his home, he shows me old maps and photos, and points out the rough shape of the Green on a copy of a map from 1756. Sandymount was known back then as Brickfield Town, he explains, and its little cottages were the homes of brickworkers.
“It was always a space, it was always a place you could play in,” he says fondly of the Green. “In the 1920s, it was quite unkempt, and there was a water fountain in the middle of it. It was rough grass, and it was only occasionally looked after in the old days.”
That must have changed, as the locally born poet and diplomat Valentin Iremonger later wrote of “the Green tidied up by the Municipal council”.
Siggins describes the neighbourhood he remembers from childhood, with its “high-class shops”, plus the narrow cottages which still remain. And what of the place now? “You walk along the street and everyone still seems to know each other. It has not lost that village feeling yet.”
On the Green’s southern side is the imposing form and vivid colours of Sandymount Castle, with its towers and crenellations. Overlooking the grassy space is a mix of older and newer businesses, such as Mira Mira gift shop and Butler’s Pantry. More places to eat have popped up too in recent years. Mario’s restaurant has been joined by Itsa4, Borza’s well-known chipper still remains, and opposite is Brownes restaurant. Dunne and Crescenzi’s restaurant is close by. On the corner, drinkers soak up the sunshine outside Ryan’s bar, O’Reilly’s sits across the road, and Mulligan’s is the most recent addition, a smart new place.
Brownes restaurant, on the western side of the Green, is a popular, busy venue, with tables on the pavement outside. Peter Bark, the chef patron, is well-positioned to watch village life go by, not least because he often has his morning coffee at one of the outdoor tables. He arrived from London 15 years ago, and has run this place for the past five.
Having spent time in some of London’s “villages”, such as Barnes, Islington and Wimbledon, he says: “There is nowhere in London that has this sense of community. The nearest I’ve seen is Limehouse in the East End. It keeps you on your toes as the business is not transient – we’re a village amenity so you have to go that extra yard for your customers.”
All year round, the gates to Sandymount Green are unlocked early and the litter is collected up. People hurry to work, and the crows and magpies hop around. Through the morning, toddlers play, watched by parents who meet to catch up and sip their takeaway coffees. A sunny lunch hour delivers a crowd of office workers who sit in knots of four or five to eat their sandwiches on the grass.
In mid-afternoon, after the school bells have rung, the ball games begin. Jumpers are put down as goalposts, or Yeats’s statue is pressed into use, and boys become their sporting heroes. The roller skates and skateboards come out, and the paths through the grass are packed with children. The benches around the park’s edge fill up. Later, it is staff on their way home and young couples out for a stroll who take their turn to stop and relax.
On Sunday lunchtimes, after Mass, the Green fills up with a dozen or more families. The games begin again, with lads and dads booting balls, and younger children wobbling along on bikes. The grown-ups get to chat with friends. As the seasons change, the city council’s teams come to tend and trim and plant, and their bright flowerbeds complete the scene.
In July and August, the scene changes, as many locals head off on their summer jaunts and the village is quieter, the traffic lighter. Then, as the schools return, the horse chestnuts bear fruit and it is the conker season, as the spiky green cases rain down.
The summer fair is one of the year’s set-piece, communal events. In the depths of winter come two more: first, the lighting of the Christmas tree and the singing of carols, another fine reason for a get-together. And then – the area’s annual highlight – the Wren Boys celebration on St Stephen’s Day. Crowds gather again, and the place springs to life with music and costumes to honour an old tradition.
On a corner beside the Green is Bennetts, the auctioneers, from where Nigel Bennett has surveyed the grassy expanse – and the properties beyond it – since the mid-1990s. Friends thought he was brave back then, opening in the village and off the beaten track, asking him “who would be driving through Sandymount?”
He appreciates the village’s focal point from a personal as well as professional perspective. “You could not get a better outlook,” he says. “It’s almost therapeutic; you just look out and it’s very relaxing. Youd have to go perhaps 15 miles out of Dublin to find a view like this.”
Kay Mulligan, who works in Bennetts and grew up in Sandymount, agrees, and believes that, compared to other parts of the city, “the pace of life seems to be a bit slower here”. Certainly, the centre of Sandymount has been protected from the ravages of traffic in a way some of Dublin’s old villages have not because no busy main road runs through its centre. Instead, the Green has remained as its focal point.
Sandymount may have a smart, affluent reputation – actors, rock stars and sporty types have all been spotted over the years – but what has always struck me is the number of local families who can trace their roots back through generations. While property prices can still make the eyes water, despite the hefty falls, there remains a genuine social mix here.
And despite appearances, this is no Toytown, sheltered from the challenges of the outside world. The plan to build an incinerator nearby raises strong passions in this community and those in neighbouring Irishtown and Ringsend; the active residents association provides updates on the situation on the Green’s noticeboard.
The Green has its flaws – for example, litter, the dog muck, and a squat electricity sub-station, of which Peter Bark asks: “Could they please get the earth to swallow it up?” But for this foreign observer, and for the rest of the local community, it is an important place.
A couple of years back, a canvassing politician who arrived on our doorstep floated an idea about “enhancing amenities” on the Green, perhaps with a playground. I told him it would be a shame, as people seem to enjoy it the way it is.
There is a lot to be said for a space in the centre of a community where people can meet and talk, and where children, minus their PlayStations, can simply run around. And if, as some social commentators suggest, this is a good time to reassess values which may have been neglected for a while, such as community and neighbourliness, then the ordinary rituals of the old Green might not be a bad model to work from.