Willow Park, back in 'day

veryangryman

During an recent conversation with an insomniac, a discussion came up which i thought id share.

There has been alot of well justified criticism of the park after the council bought up some houses around the back and let the floodgates open for every chav in Ireland to move in.

But lets cast our mind back 10 years ago. Willow was THE place in town to be. With all the greenery, the pitch and the college nearby, it was a great community that I spent many a happy year in.

Days spent around the "Coca-Cola River", "Benjys" and playing goal to goal football from one side of the road to another were commonplace. Indeed, most of the former inhabitants are now to be seen gracing Coosan, Monksland and Mount Temple. Its sad to see the community broken up due to the invasion of scum that occurred, but still, some fond memories nonetheless

Anyone have any good memories of the "good old days"?

Eireann

My aunt and uncle had two houses side by side there (later moved to Mount Temple around 2001 ish)

I remember it being such a lovely place. The houses were lovely, well tended gardens, kids cycling on the roads.. the people always seemed so nice.

I went back a few years later and was sorely disappointed. The houses are a mess now, with skangers out drinking on couches pulled outside on the nice days.

I passed the pitch the other day and some guy was pretending to be a dog, and 3 winos drinking cider with two kids sprawled out on the grass.

Saint_Mel

My best mate when I was kid lived there and we used to play Kerbs ... which would eventually turn into a massive game of football, about 20 a side
I always wished we lived there ... at the time!

Last time I was in and around there was when I was learning to drive almost 2 years ago. In the driving instructors words "Turn right at the abandoned car ... left at that trolly ... straight on, past that boarded up house ... and watch out for that knacker child running about."

Having said that though, some great work gone into the pitch etc

IPushButtons

Well I don't think I'm old enough to talk about the "old days", but the park has gone down hill. A friend of mine see a guy running out of willow the other day with a 32" TV in his hands. Oh yeah did I mention it was the middle of the freacken day !!! :eek:

120_Minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ox1Tore9nw

thalia_13

Willow is a bit of a dive now indeed, I remember my aunts old house was bought and yrs later I stayed there with college friends who rented it - v surreal. It was totally trashed from yrs of student parties!!!

Have to say the first thing i thought of when I saw Willow Park was the Coca Cola River, and you know I still dont know why its called that.... going to smelly joes shop when we were stuck, ugh I hated the smell in there and his wife had filthy fingernails, my aunt always got ham there but I would not eat it as I saw the hands that cut it into slices :eek::eek::eek:

I remember staying in my cousins playing 4040 in the dark during the summer, and hiding up on the pitch and putt course during the day and scaring the hell out of the auld lads when we'd jump up from behind a grassy 'lump' while they were playing... god I hated living in the countryside back then Willow really was the place to be for exciting summers and weekends as a kid!!!

veryangryman

thalia_13 wrote: »

Have to say the first thing i thought of when I saw Willow Park was the Coca Cola River, and you know I still dont know why its called that.... going to smelly joes shop when we were stuck, ugh I hated the smell in there and his wife had filthy fingernails, my aunt always got ham there but I would not eat it as I saw the hands that cut it into slices :eek::eek::eek:

Ah yes, Joe. What a crazy character. He used to open even on Christmas day and used to drag the telly into the shop frp, the house when ireland were playing. It used to take him ages to take for my 20 cola bottles and hed have an awful grimace on his face when you interrupted it!

You hit the nail on the head with the student parties ruining the place though. Knackers are knackers but the houses themselves were wrecked many years previous with the students. But i guess the place would never have been built without the college, so its swings and roundabouts.

The park has a Stone engravement on the front. I think that this should be changed to a gravestone saying "Willow Park - Thanks for the memories"

poggy26

willow park was the bomb!its such a shame!..coca cola river..aaah good ol' days!..and penny sweets in meadowbrook stores...remember john and angela!...i think when they left things slowly started to fall apart...kerbs was a great game!

demanufactured

Such a shame, i remember all my old classmates half of them being from willow , now ya wouldnt walk into the place.

veryangryman

Used to make makeshift wooden bridges acrosss the Coca Cola river, then out to the fields (now where An Post is) to play with the "horsies".

Our cairn terrier dog used to roll around in the horse doo-doo and then come back and shake himself at us. Yuk!

Long Gone

It used to be a really decent estate. Far too much tolerance for anti-social knackers completely ruined it and reduced it to the complete dive and almost no go area that it is now.....:(

demanufactured

Heh...its like driving through a tallagh estate these days.

cml387

I lived for some years in Willow Park when I worked in Ericssons, back in '84 and '85.
We had some great times and I was sad to see how it had declined.

Mind you even hen there were a lot of rented houses, and some fairly tatty ones at that. One house I know had been inhabited by ESB lads who had "fixed" the electricity meter. Another had a downstairs loo that was an international health hazard.
That and the houses were flooded by sudden downpours of rain.

veryangryman

Has the place got any better or worse in recent years?

demanufactured

Worse.

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

demanufactured wrote: »

Worse.

Respectfully, I completely disagree. We were only talking about this in work today.

They've really cleaned the back of Willow up, particularly around Meadowbrook bungalows. The ditch that was filled with rubbish and bad railings have been taken out and a small community playground installed. A lot of the houses have been bought up on the cheap, cleaned up and sold on in both Meadowbrook and Thornbury Drive. Seems to be a lot of Polish people buying in the estate from what I've seen.

I think it has definitely improved in the last 12 months.

L.Jenkins

I must have a look around Willow Park one of these days.

demanufactured

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater wrote: »

Respectfully, I completely disagree. We were only talking about this in work today.

They've really cleaned the back of Willow up, particularly around Meadowbrook bungalows. The ditch that was filled with rubbish and bad railings have been taken out and a small community playground installed. A lot of the houses have been bought up on the cheap, cleaned up and sold on in both Meadowbrook and Thornbury Drive. Seems to be a lot of Polish people buying in the estate from what I've seen.

I think it has definitely improved in the last 12 months.

That's sounds promising.
I must take a spin down one of her days

Sunny Dayz

Agreed, it would be great if Willow Park was improved or is at least improving. There's quite a lot of houses in there, it's in a great location near the motorway, walking distance of town but also with public transport links. The economy is at a point now where Willow is about all decent hardworking people can afford and a few decent people creating a community here can make a huge difference.