Residents celebrate 50 years a-growing

CELEBRATING 50 years of growing a community, residents new and old came out in spades to mark the anniversary of Cappaghmore estate being built, reports Hayden Moore.

Over the last few weeks, residents from the Clondalkin housing estate have been doing their utmost to celebrate the community that has been formed there since construction finished in 1973.

Construction originally started in around 1969 on the estate, with the first lot of houses being ready in 1971 and the final batch of new homeowners moving in two years later.

There was upwards of seven different builders on the project over the few years of its construction life cycle and today, in a tongue-in-cheek way, a lot of residents claim to be the first in the estate.

There are about 172 houses in the estate and interestingly, along the row of houses, there is a patch of grass where some homes were supposed to be.

When builders were on site, a section had been earmarked for numbers 80, 81, 82 and 83 but they were never built, leaving a gap between houses 79 and 84.

The first residents to move in campaigned for extra green space and won, leaving the four houses on nothing more than the blueprints.

A few weeks ago, residents organised a 50th anniversary family day and there was no better place to have than on the green they fought for all those years ago.

A special plaque was unveiled above the Cappaghmore street sign which has a tree as a symbol of the words “growing a community for 50 years”.

“I just love Cappaghmore and doing things to make the estate better,” Marie Currivan says, who is a resident in Cappagh-more since 1981 and a member of the resident’s association,.

“We have a great group of people who work to keep the estate clean, cut the grass,

look after the flowers – it’s

such a lovely community to live in.

“I often say, if I won the Lotto, I wouldn’t move out of Cappaghmore because you can’t buy good neighbours, and everyone is such a good neighbour.”

Capping off the special commemorations, residents gathered in The Waterside Pub last Friday.

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