Down my way

"I'm a mountainy man by breeding. If I look up and don't see a mountain, I've nothing to lean against," says actor Joe Lynch of why he has lived in Dundrum for almost 53 years. Joe is better known as Dinny, the crusty but lovable farmer from RTE's Glenroe. He and his wife, Marie, now divide their time between Ireland, England and their villa in Spain.

During the filming of Glenroe, Joe Lynch lives in an apartment at Drumartin Castle - at the Goatstown end of Dundrum. The Lynch's home when they first married was in Weston Park, behind the shopping centre.

"Dundrum is built-up now but it was all pigs and out-houses then. I rode horses for Dan Corry's yard and the road was so narrow then you needed to watch for the whiz of a car," says Joe. Joe and Marie used to cycle to Enniskerry around the time Stephen Roche bought his first bicycle from Joe Daly's shop on Lower Main Street. "He put all the Dundrum kids on bikes.

"We often met Dev walking up the Ballinteer Road, past Reilly's farm and on to Ticknock. He was a big powerful man and he walked so fast his bodyguard couldn't keep up."

Although Joe Lynch and Stephen Roche are the two people most often associated with Dundrum, others from the village have become well-known, including the late hotelier P.V. Doyle, Foreign Affairs Minister David Andrews, and the Vard sisters. Singer Daniel O'Donnell lived for some years with his mother in a house at Broadford, Dundrum.

"The people are nice here. They have a certain element of courtliness," says Joe. "Some haven't bothered to go into Dublin for years. Everyone knows you when you go down to the supermarket."

There's not much left of the small village the Lynchs first settled in, but Joe is still Dundrum's biggest fan. "The village is changing, but its not too crowded yet. Dubliners are fortunate to have a hinterland like Dundrum - to have the facility of those mountains so near. Its the one place I return to. When I'm in Dundrum, I'm at home."