Tuesday 5th February saw an interesting gathering take place at Star of the Sea church Hall for the Launch of new DVD ‘Sandymount– a nostalgic look back’. The producer Leo Sheeran of Power Video Production told the people who filled the hall that he had grown up in Sandymount, that his father, Joe, was also from Sandymount, from the Railway Cottages, Gilford Road and drove a tram for a living.

Leo said that the hall we stood in had been his classroom when he was young. Leo Sheeran teamed up with local historian and author Brian Siggins who wrote about the Great International Exhibition at Herbert Park in 1907, ‘The Great White Fair’. Brian Siggins had contributed to some local histories about Pembroke district in ‘The Roads to Ringsend Irishtown and Sandymount’. Together with Albert McGregor, another Sandymount native, who did much of the camera work they have produced a fascinating DVD all about Sandymount and what makes life worthwhile here.

Leo Sheeran told me that he had lived in England for some years and had often travelled to the United States where he had come across ex-pats from Sandymount who had asked for memorabilia and photographs of the village. After getting involved with an amateur video club, he decided to make a movie about Sandymount to satisfy the demand from the US and elsewhere.

The Star of the Sea hall was wall-to-wall with photographs and historical mementoes of the Village down the years and I noted one picture from Roslyn Park Girls’ School where my elder sister went. It was closed down in 1982 and is now Rehab, with training for the disabled.

The DVD begins with view from a helicopter flying over the Village and the Strand and then a history of the locality telling of the brickworks and the tramways. Leo Sheeran talks with Brian Siggins out at the tower and tells about the swimming baths and the pier that used to be there.

Fergus Murray is then recruited for a walk around the Green and a discussion of how things used to be. Fergus was Sacristan at Star of the Sea Church and showed where he planted an oak tree in the front of the church lawn to mark 50 years’ service.

There are visits included to the Christian churches, the Romanesque St. John’s and the Guru Nanak Darbar. When I grew up on Lansdowne Terrace it was the local cinema where we went to see Saturday matinees.
Missed is the Presbyterian Church on the corner of Tritonville road, which was knocked down to make way for apartments and the video footage is up-to-date enough to include Kieran Mulligan’s new buildings and pub.

The DVD has all it needs to remind one of the lives and times of the area and is an interesting social study to be handed down before the developers get going on the reclaimed part of the Strand.

The DVD is available at ‘Books on the Green’ in Sandymount.

Albert McGregor, Leo Sheeran and Brian Siggins are pictured at the launch of the new DVD.