Kindlestown Castle Gets 74 New Neighbours

Hurrah!

t’s been in the works for many a year, and now it looks as though Chapel Road will finally get a short bypass that circles round St Laurence’s National School.

As so very often happens when we get a brand spanking new road around here, it comes with the extra-added bonus of a new housing estate or two.

In this case, 74 houses have just been given approval on the land surrounding Kindlestown Castle and the private house, East Hall, situated directly across from St Laurence’s.

The new road will cut right through the new houses, as illustrated above, taking its cue from the sharp bend before East Hall, coming from Delgany.

Given that the property boom is still raging around here – Churchlands, behind St Laurence’s, is coming along nicely, and there are close to 1,000 new houses expected in Delgany over the coming three years – work on this new road is expected to start very, very shortly. If not sooner.

The builder can’t start on those 74 new houses – known as Eastmount – until the road is signed, sealed and delivered.

Just how it’s going to fit with the jigsaw puzzle of old and new that is Chapel Road right now is hard to say, with the stretch from the top of Kenmare Heights over to Applewood Heights and the straight leading up to the new road still firmly living in the 1940s.

Both Fine Gael candidate Alice O’Donnell and Social Democrat councillor Jennifer Whitmore live in the shadow of Kindlestown Castle, in that fancy Dromont estate, and have expressed their concern – along with Councillor Derek Mitchell – at not only the potential damage to the area by the arrival of so many new houses, but also the haphazard approach Wicklow County Council have taken to improving the main Delgany to Blacklion road.

Speaking on the latest developments, Alice O’Donnell commented, “Over 2,500 children attend the four schools along that road. It is unacceptable that they should have a road which varies in width, road surface, width of paths, and lighting, etc. Cycle paths will be provided on the new wider stretches of the road and they will then disappear when the cyclist reaches the older, unimproved sections of road.

“Hundreds of houses have already been built on this road in the last two years and traffic has increased dramatically. The town’s six local councillors have asked for a full design of the road to be done.

“I believe that no more houses should be built on this road until the road has been fully designed and constructed.”

You can check out the planning application for DRES Development Ltd’s 74 new Kindlestown houses here.