Walls Come Tumbling

Bellevue Hill MON10OCT22

nce the diggers start moving in, the changes to a landscape tend to be pretty quick.

Bellevue Hill FRI7OCT22

And they can be pretty severe too.

Take the field on Bellevue Hill that’s part of the Carmelite development for 155 houses granted last November. On Friday, two diggers flattened out the land, and cleared away the long grass.

Today, the price of progress was on display once again, as it was the turn of the old wall that ran along the roadside to get flattened. Thankfully, they are planning to reconstruct it further in, once the new footpath has been finished. We was worried, given that the planning permission here came with a license to crush.

In truth, we’re a little punch-drunk of late, trying to keep up with the housing shenanigans going on in Delgany. The long-running Carmelite battle would be enough to leave most heads spinning, but then you throw in Gorteen Way just up the hill, the fancy-pants houses on the Fairy Trail, the other fancy-pants houses across The Glebe and in the shadow of Christ Church (actually forget the name of that development from Tack Packaging), the pre-validation for another three across the road in the grounds of protected structure Glenbrook House (application 221021 here), the conditional approval for another house at the river on Blackberry Lane (application 2219 here), the relentless hammering on Honeybrook Cottage’s door, the constant circling and re-circling of Style Bawn House, and the incessant and insidious selling of the village’s history brick by brick, the suspicious, industrial-strength clearing of acres on the other side of the Fairy Trail, and clandestine messages reaches GG HQ about the owner of a Chapel Road sprawl getting ready to cash in his acres and run.

And now, in the very field we reminisced with John McDonald recently about a vanishing Delgany, the diggers are in. And if you strain your neck just a little, you can see near-neighbours Littlebrook, Melwood and Eastmount estates on Chapel Road. All soon to be joined by Kindlestown House, most likely, and then Greystones and Delgany’s housing estates can all join hands.

Within the year, Delgany is going to look – and feel – very different.

Here’s hoping it’s still beautiful…