Pre-Dundrum Town Center?

patrickbrophy18

Just as a matter of interest, what was there before Dundrum Town Center? Was it built on a former housing estate, factory, fields or all three?

YoureATowel

patrickbrophy18 wrote: »

Just as a matter of interest, what was there before Dundrum Town Center? Was it built on a former housing estate, factory, fields or all three?

Check out the OSI mapviewer.

http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,717224,727723,6

Under the Preview Map Series options, the default mapping shows the shopping centre as it is today. Ortho 2005 shows the area as the SC was being built. Ortho 2000 will answer your question. It looks like a factory, some small assorted buildings and green areas.

With Ortho 2005 selected move the Overlay slider to 50% so you can compare then and now.

dogmatix

The large building on the southern site was originally H-Williams / Tesco supermarket. On the North end of the site was the old PYE factory which later became the Dundrum bowl. The green area in between held an abandoned and overgrown mill pond.

There where plans in the late 90's and on to turn the green area and mill pond into a small public park but instead we got the town centre. Personally I think the lessor option won out.

Tails142

Yep as someone has said, the area nearest the church where Hamleys is situated used to be a bowling alley and arcade, before it shut down for good it had been turned into a roller blading rink, the place had flooded and the bowling lanes were ruined.

Behind this where the entrance to the main centre now is, i.e the mcdonalds etc used to be the PYE centre and had a few small shops in it, home decoration things like that. Then at the very back where the tesco and RSA offices are used to be a Super Crazy Prices supermarket, this was a little bit like Lidl where there were few shelves, most things were just rolled out on pallets but they were all the normal brands I think.

There was also a place called Wally Rabbits in the PYE centre which was an adventure centre for kids.

If you head to the toilets near Douglas & Kaldi, I think, it may have been other toilets in the centre, but there are a few posters on the wall with more detailed info on what used to be at the site of the old town centre. They make for good reading while you're waiting for someone.

Also at the fountain outside, there is an original wall still there (buried now about 12 foot down) where there used to be some sort of water feature, it was just an old valve with steps leading up to it years ago but I think they have made it part of the fountain, it may have been a reservoir for the PYE factory, not sure.

dogmatix

Tails142 wrote: »

Also at the fountain outside, there is an original wall still there (buried now about 12 foot down) where there used to be some sort of water feature, it was just an old valve with steps leading up to it years ago but I think they have made it part of the fountain, it may have been a reservoir for the PYE factory, not sure.

I think it was originally the mill pond for the Mill, later used for the big laundry operation situated there in the early 20th century. PYE took over later.

A lot of this is covered in Jim Nolans excellent little book on Dundrum history published back in the 1980's (not sure if it is still in print).

slowburner

......ah the memories.



I used to swim in that pond and go shooting in the fields behind!
The pond (still there but half its original size as I recall) was formed by a beautifully landscaped channel with two or three small weirs. The channel was fed from a stream (we always called it a river) which ran from the hills into Balinteer, straight through Dundrum and eventually joined the Dodder at Milltown. It was called the Slang. The river is gone now, from what I could see today - lost in a series of concrete pipes.
The valve used to control water flow to a mill race which was under the Pye factory and may have provided power originally to the Millhouse (still there) when linen was washed there.
You will have to forgive my geography of the layout of the shopping centre, I only know what used to be there.
I don't think it was an ordinary laundry as such, I think it was involved in a specialised final processing of linen. There was a terrace between the Mill house and the pond where the washed linen was laid out to dry - the grass on this terrace was always a different colour to all the other grass.
From the pond a way back to the original course of the river there was a pitch and putt course. And on the other side of the pond feeder there was a very productive garden with one or two greenhouses, heaps of fruit trees and a full time gardener who lived in a lodge at the back gate to the gardens.

The now absent river was a pretty interesting one. The next site up from the millhouse property was Rockfield house probably roughly where the Tesco filling station is now - it was a fine house with walled gardens and tennis courts - owned, I think, by a Dutchman. He had a hydraulic ram powered from the stream but what its purpose was I can't remember.
Then there was the Millhouse diversion which fed into Pye. The pond once held a stock of large trout - these were fed a different diet every day by an amateur angling theorist who wanted to determine what caused differences in trout flesh. That would have been in about the 1920's - maybe earlier. Rumour had it that the trout lived on in the pond until a barrel of oil was tipped in - in reality it was the increase in the number of houses and sewage which killed life in the stream. When I knew it, there was the odd wild trout plenty of sticklebacks and kingfishers.

I don't know how much of the river Slang can be seen at all these days but further down near the Luas bridge at Taney crossroad is a little church. This is St.Naithís church. The Duke of Wellington's baptismal font is supposed to be there. Naithí himself was a hermit who lived there in a wattle hut on the banks of the stream - a bit before my time, maybe 500 AD! The church is built on the original site.
Upstream of the shopping centre is Balally. This translates as Baile Olaf and is thought to be the site of the Viking Olaf's fort - although this has never been proven.

There you go, my potted history of what lies under and either side of Dundrum Shopping centre.
Just shows you all the same how things change - all through history natural features like rivers determine where civilisations spring up, Dundrum wouldn't have existed it if it weren't for the stream. But here they just obliterate the natural features, retail space is more important.

Do I miss these natural and historic features?
Yes, but who cares?

If anyone is interested, there was an industrial archaeological survey done on the area - I gave my copy to someone years ago - but it should be 'Googleable'

muckish

dogmatix wrote: »

The large building on the southern site was originally H-Williams / Tesco supermarket..

And don't forget the Super Crazy Prices days as well!

slowburner

For a while, that building was a sausage factory - Hafner's, I think. I can't remember what it was before H.Williams :pac::pac:

Carpenter

Where were u living slowburner

slowburner

I used to live just up the road from Dundrum Village, as it was then - I'm in deepest Wicklow now. Oddly enough, a lot of people from Dundrum seem to have moved to Wicklow.

Carpenter

slowburner wrote: »

I used to live just up the road from Dundrum Village, as it was then - I'm in deepest Wicklow now. Oddly enough, a lot of people from Dundrum seem to have moved to Wicklow.

In Taney or beside the cop shop

slowburner

Carpenter wrote: »

In Taney or beside the cop shop

Close to 'the tech' - you've gotta be from there - calling it the "cop shop"

muckish

slowburner wrote: »

For a while, that building was a sausage factory - Hafner's, I think. I can't remember what it was before H.Williams :pac::pac:

Was it not Olhausen sausages?
Some of us from the area have moved further afield than wicklow!

slowburner

muckish wrote: »

Was it not Olhausen sausages?
Some of us from the area have moved further afield than wicklow!

I'm pretty sure Hafner's were there originally, I think Olhausen took over afterwards.
And I'm sure some of us have moved even further than Donegal

Is it still called 'the Village' I wonder.

JupiterKid

That's a fascinating history of the site, Slowburner.

For your information, parts of the Slang still exist intact. I lived in Highfield Court apartments in Windy Arbour a few years back and the stream ran right beside our car park.

Out of interest when was the H Williams supermarket built? The 1970s?

slowburner

From memory, that site was oldish in the '70s. I'm not sure if it was built as a supermarket. I have this vague memory of factory bits scattered around the place outside.
Maybe somebody with a better memory (or older:p) will butt in here.

slowburner

Edit: the house mentioned above was not Rockfield - it was Rockmount.

slowburner

What was under Dundrum shopping centre has become relevant with recent flooding. The crosshairs are centred on the mill pond.
http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,717152,727865,7,8

Coles

The Bowler and Quazar! Ah the memories.

Wild Bill

I came up to these parts in the early 1990s and remember with fondness the old windswept Crazy Prices Store based in some former industrial building.

I used to purchase pampers there on an industrial scale!

No trout in a bucolic stream but it had it's own charm.

I think our positive memories are more a reflection on where we were in life than the physical reality.

So many of today's kids will grow up thinking the new Shopping Centre is the Nirvana of their childhood memories!

slowburner

Wild Bill wrote: »

I came up to these parts in the early 1990s and remember with fondness the old windswept Crazy Prices Store based in some former industrial building.

I used to purchase pampers there on an industrial scale!

No trout in a bucolic stream but it had it's own charm.

I think our positive memories are more a reflection on where we were in life than the physical reality.

So many of today's kids will grow up thinking the new Shopping Centre is the Nirvana of their childhood memories!

What you say is quite true.
Believe it or not, I can remember when there were trout in that stream even though it was not bucolic in my time (60's and 70's).
There was always a sense of greater days gone by around that area.

Carpenter

slowburner wrote: »

Close to 'the tech' - you've gotta be from there - calling it the "cop shop"

Yes sir Taney Park:D:D:D:D:D

slowburner

then you remember 'the loony bin' too?:D

muckish

What about the remote controlled model cars races in the car park of H Williams? Now that was proper desire

Wild Bill

muckish wrote: »

What about the remote controlled model cars races in the car park of H Williams? Now that was proper desire

H Williams?

Was that store H Williams then Quinnsworth then Crazy Prices then Tesco?

I remember them racing remote controlled cars around a car park near the sports complex in Belfield - maybe they still do!

slowburner

muckish wrote: »

What about the remote controlled model cars races in the car park of H Williams? Now that was proper desire

Now there's a forgotten memory dredged up from the depths.

slowburner

Wild Bill wrote: »

H Williams?

Was that store H Williams then Quinnsworth then Crazy Prices then Tesco?

I remember them racing remote controlled cars around a car park near the sports complex in Belfield - maybe they still do!

It was.
Does anyone remember what it was before H.Williams? I'm pretty sure it was a factory of some sort.

CajunOnTour

slowburner wrote: »

It was.
Does anyone remember what it was before H.Williams? I'm pretty sure it was a factory of some sort.

I think it was called the Pye factory. They made radios or something.

dogmatix

No - the Pye factory was much closer to the village - roughly where Hamleys and Harvey Nicks are today. The old H-Williams/Tesco store was located roughly where the current Tesco's / Petrol station are today. The pye factory building became Dundrum bowl and Quazer until about 93-94 when it was badly damaged in a big flood and as far as I can remember it never re-opened.

I think it was H-Williams, then super crazy prices and then Tesco's - which I always thought was strange as there was another Tesco's a short stroll away in the old shopping centre (Lidl's are there now).

greenslider

I remember seeing trout in the slang near Dun Emer in the early 70's. Used to collect 3 spined sticklebacks in a jam jar at the stream. Then there was the bloom thing that lasted for a while and the river ran red/pale blue for a bit. People blamed the mint draining stuff into Gort Mhuire's lake..a drain from the lake used to join the slang at these two strange old farmhouses adjoining the monastery land on Ballinteer road. I had a pint in the DH, in the early nineties, with an old fellow whose house ( now roly's) was beside the old mill pond. He remembered messing about on an old row boat there and stories of trout in the pond. As for the H williams store..there is an identical building to what used to be there in the horan centre in Tralee. This building too, it turns out was a H williams originally. Dunnes are there now, to the best of my knowledge. I remember Hafners sausages on the left hand wing of the old h williams building. Think after they closed down, a chemist too some of the space and another sausage company had it for a bit.

Edit. Think it was H williams, then briefly Quinnsworth, then Crazy prices and then Tescos. Had a summer job there in the mid eighties. Got sent off to collect trollies out of the damn river...behind some flats down the village near Stella chipper. When I got back they found half the trolleys belonged to Superquinn in Ballinteer and wouldnt fit into the Crazy Prices trolleys! Have a funny feeling Tesco had it very briefly when they stuck a tentative toe in to the Irish market in the 70's?

slowburner

It's a small world.
I know just who that old fella you had a pint with, was. I grew up with his children and I use to paddle about in the pond myself.
There were indeed trout in the pond, big ones, but that was probably in the 1930s.
That old fella's father set up the PYE factory and was a keen amateur fisheries biologist.
He carried out experiments on the food of trout to see what differences it made to the colour of the flesh. He even wrote a short book which included the results of these experiments. I think there were very few copies ever printed and I only saw it myself once or twice.

The poor old river Slang.
Most of its problems were from short sighted planning in the past which treated it as an open sewer. That is what caused the blooms.
Domestic waste water killed it but there was a little pollution tolerant fish life in it prior to the development of the shopping centre. There was even one small trout in it, if I remember rightly from I survey I was involved in back then.
Right through the 70s, there were a series of catastrophic pollution events. These were caused by either diesel or heating oil getting into the Slang in quantity. I can remember the smell vividly. These events are probably what caused the weird colours you saw.