FROM THE ARCHIVES:A campaign to stop the building of two houses on the Vico Road in Dalkey, Co Dublin, in the 1950s ended in success, as this report recorded. – JOE JOYCE
THE TWO months’ battle for the preservation of the famous “Bay of Naples” view from the Vico Road, Dalkey, reached the stage of victory for the local people yesterday.
On Monday night the Dún Laoghaire Borough Council decided to acquire by agreement the site of the new house adjacent to the house already constructed on the Vico Road and to preserve the site as a public open space, subject to a £1,500 contribution from the Vico Road Association towards the cost of purchase.
Mr. Harry Webster, chairman of the Vico Road Association which was established last July under the presidency of Senator W. B. Stanford, F.T.C.D., Regius Professor of Greek at Trinity College, Dublin, to fight the issue, told an Irish Times reporter yesterday that the house, Ventnor, which already had been built on the site probably would be demolished soon.
“The cost to the ratepayer (estimated at £5,189 or an extra ½d. in the pound in the rates),” said Mr. Webster, “will be offset to a great degree by the sale of the valuable materials used in the construction of this house and of the various types of building equipment which have not yet even arrived at the site but which are included in the purchase.”
Mr. Webster said he was very pleased that such a happy solution had been arrived at, and that all the parties concerned – particularly the purchasers of the two sites – had conducted themselves in such a gentlemanly fashion. The Vico Road Association intended to call a public meeting to put forward its future policy for the Vico road area. The association intended to remain in existence to resist any threat to the famous view which might arise in the years to come.
A deputation from the association, consisting of Mr. Webster, Senator Stanford, Mr. R. Levey, Councillor J. J. Fitzgerald and Mr. T. E. F. Bennett, waited on the Minister for Local Government, Mr. O’Donnell .
Mr. Webster submitted to the Minister an outline of the history of the Vico road since it was formally opened to the public by the Duke of Clarence in the second half of the 19th century. Since then building had never been considered on the road until about thirty years ago, when public opinion was so outraged that local residents subscribed £2,000 to acquire what is known as the Vico fields.
Mr. Webster pointed out to Mr. O’Donnell that a genuine mistake would seem to have been made in granting permission to build in recent times. The Corporation had now rectified that mistake, and he was very happy that with the co-operation of the Dún Laoghaire Corporation, the owners of the two sites involved, and the Vico Road Association, this solution to the problem had been achieved. The beauty of the famous view from the Vico road would now be preserved for posterity and the many thousands of tourists who visited it annually.
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