Dublin is full of neighbourhoods, each with its own unique history and identity. Nowadays the pace of change is so fast and we often feel disconnected from the streets and areas that form our locality. In some ways it was simpler in the past – our families stayed in the same neighbourhoods and we could learn our history and receive our identity from our elders.

Here at DCTV we’re always willing to explore new ways of connecting with the history of our city and when we were discussing and pursuing the idea as part of The Dublin City Community Forum Work Plan for 2008, the presence of 60 Dublin City Council Sheltered Housing Centres across the city seemed to provide an excellent way of documenting the city’s history as seen through the eyes of its residents..

As part of a pilot project, we visited two Sheltered Housing Complexes in two of the most historic neighbourhoods of Dublin – Inchicore on the south side and Ballybough on the North side. Here we were welcomed with tea and plenty of chat and we heard a wealth of stories about many different facets of life including the shops that used to, and sometimes still, serve the residents of these neighbourhoods, the games and entertainments of long ago, and people’s jobs an the places they used to work. Here the memories were of the momentous events and the great traditions in our neighbourhoods – the floods of 1954, which hit so many homes in Ballybough, the workers streaming into the CIE works through the Khyber pass from Ballyfermot.

Listening to these stories you are struck by how much the residents of this city have to learn from our older neighbours – whether our families have been in Dublin for 5 or 500 years. In order to understand both ourselves and our city, we need to be aware of and understand its history.

DCTV would like to thank both the Community Media Focus Group and the Dublin City Community Forum for funding this project, the Bulfin Court and Ballybough Court Sheltered Housing Centres for hosting us, Dublin City Council for its support and co-operation and, above all, our interviewees, for sharing their memories of our city with us. We hope to extend these programmes to all neighbourhoods across Dublin – please get in touch if you’d like to help out with input / information on your neighbourhood.