Delgany Fields Forever

John McDonald SAT17SEPT22

iven the rapid rate of change our gallowed turf has been going through of late, it’s easy to keep forgetting what the lay of the land used to be.

New houses, new shops, new roads – all pushing old familiar landscapes forever off the map.

Of course, change has always been part of every growing community, as any lover of the old harbour will gladly stand up and shout about. It’s just the speed of that change that’s sometimes hard to wrap our tiny brains around.

And that’s certainly true of Delgany right now. With 25,000 tonnes of concrete about to cover pretty much every green space available, the ripple effect of this giant leap from a village to a town will leave just the tiny main street core of Delgany unchanged.

Other than the crippling traffic, of course.

With this in mind, we met up with budding historian John McDonald this afternoon to reminisce about those Delgany landmarks that are gone but hard to forget, from the public seats to the football field, from the water pumps to, of course, the very dearly departed Carmelite Church – once the nerve centre of the village.

We were keen not to go over old ground covered before here, given that we had already touched on some of the town’s iconic buildings with the late Noel Belton in December 2016 and with Shay Clear back in January 2017, plus life on Blackberry Lane with sweet mother of Guide, Tess Byrne, back in August 2017.

For John, this ramble chat was all about those cherished childhood places that still loom larger than life…

You can catch our first Delgany ramble chat with John back in November 2021 here.