Keeping Delgany Beautiful. In 1983.

Pump it up

iven its neat size and its strong sense of community, Delgany has always been a tidy town.

And it’s always done well, naturally enough, in the annual National Tidy Towns Competitions.

Searching for some old photos up in Ma Byrne’s place on Blackberry Lane, we came across an old newspaper clipping, dated Friday, September 9th, 1983, pointing out just how proud these, eh, Delganians are about their pretty little village.

Great to see the mighty Jim Brady in there, for years the man behind the counter for Delgany’s one-stop shop, whilst sitting pretty beside him are Molly Toner and Avil Burgess, whilst standing tall are Tom Figgis, Colm Morrissey, Brian Harrison and John Brownlee.

Delgany Tidy Towns 1998 John Gaisford-St Laurence, Tess Hillman, Ann Barton, Lalli De Buitlear and James Brady

Great to see those public seats still there. Why the hell were they ever taken away? And what will it take to bring them back? Spent many a long hour playing Your Car, My Car on those seats…

I feel another GG campaign coming on.

In the meantime, here’s that original article. The black and white shots were taken by the great Dave O’Connor.

Residents of the North Wicklow village of Delgany reckon there are lessons to be learned by other areas from their strong showing in the National Tidy Towns Competition.

The village was ‘highly commended’ by the juges in their report on the competition and scored the fifth highest mark out of 133 villages in the 500 to 1,500 population category in the country.

The victory was being savoured in Delgany this week by members of the local Tidy Towns Group, who have been campaigning to keep the area beautiful for several years.

Heading up Bellevue Hill circa 1958

Committee member Brian Harrison said that the secret of their success was the whole-hearted support of Wicklow County Council and the help of the business community in Bray, Greystones and Delgany.

He said that rather than making it a close-knit affair, the support of friends and neighbours from near and far had been accepted. A spirit of neighbourliness had been a happy by-product of the Tidy Towns campaign.

He spoke of the problems which the group had to face, such as dumpers, theft of plants and shrubs, and the destruction of carefully-planted flower beds.

The group is not resting on its laurels and are currently further improving the area at Barry’s Bridge, Killincarrig and the Glen Of The Downs.

Those involved in the Delgany Tidy Towns Committee were Chairman Jim Brady; Hon. Secretary John Brownlee; Treasurer Colm Morrissey, and Committee members Brian Harrison, Avril Burgess, Mollie Toner, Betty Figgis, Charlie Byrne and Jennifer Davidson.

For Chairman Jim Brady, the success is particularly sweet. For he is the only ‘survivor’ of the original Tidy Towns Committee set up in Delgany many years ago.

Just as a footnote, it was actually Charlie Byrne – later of Charlie’s Fruit & Veg, where the Pear is now – who single-handedly dug out the above antique water pump, having been both walled off and buried in earth. Good stock, that Charlie lad…