Down my way

"I was born, bred and buttered in Castleknock, where everyone knew everybody," says local estate agent Mark Quinn, who grew up in Deerpark beside the gates of Phoenix Park. It was an idyllic place to live in the 1970s, he says. "It was quite small, a lot different from what is is now. Young families were moving into the new Laurel Lodge houses and most of my friends were from there. All there was then was old Castleknock where we lived, the village and the new estate."

Then, as now, growing up beside a vast park was a huge bonus for adventurous young boys. "The park and the zoo was a smashing amenity - you could see some of the animals through the railings from outside. We used to hide in the bushes and torment the rhino by shouting and making faces. We were little terrors." Mark went to the local primary school and then to Coolmine Community school, as did most of his friends. His family moved out to Co Meath for a brief period, but missed the life in Castleknock so much they came back, settling in a four-bedroom detached house in Laurel Court.

"I was 18 then and the place to be was The Angler's Rest down in the Strawberry Beds and on to The End disco in the Phoenix Park racecourse. We never had to go into town for a nightclub. It's gone now - that's what Castleknock needs."

Not surprising, therefore, that when Mark Quinn bought his first house, it was in Laurel Lodge, around the corner from where he grew up. "A lot of my friends were buying there. I paid £78,000 back in 1993 for a four-bed semi, which was expensive then but they are nice houses. I recognised long ago Castleknock was a smashing place to live. You don't need to go anywhere else."