There is a real sense of foreboding in Chapelizod these days. Though the historic village on the banks of the Liffey looks pleasant enough, some local people fear it is in real danger of losing its identity, like so many other Dublin villages consumed by relentless urban expansion.
Chapelizod still feels like a village. Laid out informally around a triangular open space, it contains a mix of Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian houses, a pub called The Villager and a few shops, including Kelly's renowned fruit and vegetable store which, unusually, is also a much-patronised off-licence.
The Church of Ireland, with its square tower, stands at the head of a laneway off the main street, just up from the gaunt three-storey house that provided the setting for Sheridan le Fanu's novel, The House by the Churchyard. The fine Catholic church, typically, is at the edge of the village on the road to Dublin.
Up another laneway, below the high boundary wall of the Phoenix Park, there are geese, hens and chickens in the yard of a day-centre run by Stewart's Hospital. The narrow approach road from the Strawberry Beds is lined by simple cottages or fine homes such as Sunnybank, once owned by Lord Northcliffe.
Facing the bridge over the Liffey is Mullingar House, an old coaching stop on the main route to the west. Closed since renovation work destroyed much of its interior, a tourism plaque on the front wall proclaims it as the "Home of all characters and elements in James Joyce's novel, Finnegans Wake".
Little survives of the southern side of the main street, apart from a vacant Georgian house which was once the RIC barracks. Several other old houses here were pulled down in 1982 by Telecom Eireann and replaced by a large and hideous flat-roofed, windowless shed fronted by a concrete brick wall.
Beside it is one of the apartment schemes that are changing the character of Chapelizod. Built in 1995 by Lark Developments, the Mill Race complex consists of 55 duplex units over groundfloor flats with gates giving access to an inner courtyard and underground car park. There is not a single child living here.
Peter Kavanagh, chairman of the Chapelizod Old Village Association (COVA), says most of the 189 apartments built in and around the village over the past 10 years or so are occupied by transient tenants who take very little interest in the community. "Very few of them even drink in the local pubs," he says.
The association calculates there are only nine children in all of the new apartments. "Children are a nuisance; they become teenagers who steal cars and disrupt communities," Mr Kavanagh quoted one of the apartment-owners as saying.
"That sums up the threat we fear from the oversupply of apartments."
His association is appealing a decision by Dublin Corporation to grant permission to Heaslon Properties for another major apartments scheme on a site behind Main Street known as The Island, once occupied by a thriving milling and distillery complex with its own mill race on the Liffey.
COVA, which has requested an oral hearing from An Bord Pleanala, is also fighting another scheme for the former Telecom site, now owned by New Age Services. What it wants to see built there instead are houses to reinstate the street and preserve the setting of this most historic of Dublin's old villages.
Mr Kavanagh points to the twin terraces of two-storey houses on New Row, where he lives. They were built around 1835, complete with a small "kirk", for Scots who came over to work in the distillery. Seven of the families living on this charming little street of 32 houses have been there since 1911.
Yet many of the existing houses in the village are vacant, or nearly so. Fifteen, including all of Mulberry Cottages, are owned by a local family called Ryan, who use them only occasionally. "There is a lot of resentment about that, because you could have families living in those houses," COVA's chairman says.
"People who have gone off to Ballyfermot, Blanchardstown or Clondalkin would love to come back to live in Chapelizod, but there are no houses available. Yet we have these houses in the village which have been lying idle for 30 years and there appears to be nothing that can be done about it," he says.
Chapelizod also has its share of derelict sites which could be developed, as well as at least one fine Georgian terraced house which has pigeons living on the top floor. Further out, towards Knockmaroon Hill on the way to the Strawberry Beds, four new houses with blotchy brick facades are set back from the road.
The appropriately-named Northcliffe apartment complex stands like a fortress above the narrow road, offering a grandstand view of the traffic. Nearly 4,000 cars a day trundle through the village, with long tailbacks during the morning and evening peaks. It is almost as if the Chapelizod by-pass had never been built.
Much of the traffic is originating in Blanchardstown, Clonsilla and Porterstown, areas which are experiencing such rapid development that the West Link bridge can no longer cope with it. Local people are convinced many drivers are simply using Chapelizod as a "rat-run" to avoid the tolls.
Jim Mitchell, a Fine Gael TD, once suggested that the main street should be turned into a cul-de-sac, but such a radical step would be opposed by shopkeepers who depend on the passing trade. Certainly, the sequence of ramps installed by the corporation have not reduced traffic, whatever about its speed. COVA is also campaigning for the northern bank of the Liffey to be opened as a public amenity. It has received a positive response from the corporation to this and other proposals, but the big gap is the absence of an area action plan to chart a sustainable future for the village and surroundings.
The Chapelizod Residents' Association, which represents residents on both banks of the Liffey, and regards COVA as a breakaway group, insists such a plan is about to be commissioned. "The only way we can go forward is as a united community working with the corporation," says its chairman, Mr John Martin.
He sees signs of an increasing recognition at official and political levels of the unique qualities of Chapelizod and points to positive developments such as a plan for 36 social housing units on the Lucan road.
In The Villager pub, too, there is another sign: "Chapelizod - the village that must not die".