The Dubliner Magazine: Dubliner's Dublin

Not to be confused with Dungarvan, Dunbeacon, Dunroamin’. Google Earth doesn’t yet recognise it, and Bob Geldof has trouble spelling it, but Dun Laoghaire has been a popular retreat since the dawn of the Irish Republic. Back when the English were in charge, it was called Kingstown. Dun Laoghaire proper, in the electoral sense, starts at Monkstown and extends through Sandycove to Dalkey. It’s 11km from Dublin city centre, 25km from the airport, and you can be in Holyhead, Wales in about 100 minutes on the HSS catamaran ferry from Dun Laoghaire port.

History Dun Laoghaire celebrated its 1,500th anniversary in 1998. The name means Laoghaire’s Fort, Laoghaire being a high king back in the time of Saint Patrick, with whom he was allegedly mates. In the 19th Century DL was Ireland’s fourth largest urban centre. The railway line to Dublin opened in 1834 and the harbour and the two piers were built in the late 1840s.

Schools The Saint Nicholas Montessori is housed in a lovely Dutch-style house in Marine Street. At primary level there’s St Joseph’s on Tivoli Road and the Dominican Convent in Convent Road. The judges of the future are playing rugger at Blackrock College secondary school, while the solicitors-in-waiting are at CBC in Monkstown. Sion Hill provides the eye candy for the Blackrock lads and in Dalkey there is the dreamily situated Loreto girls’ school.

Hospitals St Michael’s, which lies between Crofton Road and George’s Street, is the main hospital in Dun Laoghaire. It has no A&E, but still does a busy trade in X-ray and outpatient services. The National Rehabilitation Centre is on Rochestown Avenue.

Restaurants Purple Ocean is near the DART station, and Brasserie na Mara has reopened as Hartley's. Across the road in the Pavilion complex is Mao, Real Gourmet Burger and the impressive new Bodega (ex-Forty Foot), which does some tasty tapas and a busy bar trade, as well as the Gastro Pub Company (pictured) opposite the Pavilion Theatre – try the whole roast chicken and veg sunday lunch carved at your table.

Entertainment Drama types love the Pavilion Theatre, opposite the DART station, and there is also Bloomfield’s multi-screen cinema. The People’s Park has a super food and crafts market every Sunday from 11am-4pm. But the highlight of the year is the Festival of World Cultures on the last weekend in August, which offers diverse acts, international food stalls and a grand excuse to drink cans outside the Kingston all day.

Bars and pubs There’s the Bodega for the trendy young things. Further along there’s the Kingston Hotel, good in summer for its beer garden. In the main street there’s Nemo and Scott’s, both lively and noisy, and some sound old pubs such as Smyth’s and Dunphy’s. McKenna’s, or the Yacht Bar, tucked away in Wellington Street, is one of our favourites. And the Purty Kitchen, on the old Dunleary Road, is reputed to stand on the site of the original Dunleary fishing village.

Transport The DART goes from right by the harbour, which is the home of the HSS ferry service to Wales/England. Buses 46A, 7 and 75 serve the area regularly and there’s a handy bus direct to the airport from the DART station.

Property There’s a bit of everything here, from working-man’s two-up two-downs (about €500,000) to flash penthouses like those in the Pavilion development, which go for a million or more. A three-bed semi costs about €700,000, and apartments start around €400,000 for a one-bed. For houses overlooking the sea, the sky’s the limit.

Green space In the centre, the jewel is the People’s Park, with its Victorian fountain and gardener’s lodge. The golf club in the central inland area is soon to be built over, and the course relocated 12km away to Ballyman Glen. There’s lovely landscaping on the slopes leading down to the DART station at Salthill, which provides a sitting spot or walking track with glorious views out across the bay to Howth, and the striped sentinels of the Pigeon House.

Sporting facilities Crunch Fitness is right by the DART station. There are expensive tennis clubs in De Vesci and Sandycove, and a community tennis centre in Clarinda Park, which runs courses for beginners in the summer. The two major yacht clubs are the George and the Royal Irish, and the motor yacht club is situated just beside the east pier. Windsurfing is popular off Monkstown seafront. Lots of walks along the Dun Laoghaire way: helpful leaflets are available from the local authority, www.dlrcoco.ie.

Politicians Eamon Gilmore of Labour, Education Minister Mary Hanafin and Barry Andrews of FF, Fine Gael’s Sean Barratt and the Green Party’s Ciaran Cuffe all got through the last election. Richard Boyd Barrett of People Before Profit was just pipped at the post, and Eugene Regan and John F Bailey of Fine Gael, Fiona O’Malley of the PDs, Oisin Quinn of Labour and Sinn Fein’s Eoin Ó Broin all missed out.

Best kept secret A little church called the Oratory, tucked away behind a children’s playground on Library Road. It stood in the expansive grounds of the Dominican Convent until they were sold off for the Bloomfields shopping centre development in the early-1990s. It features the paintings of Sister Concepta Lynch, who was asked to decorate the church to celebrate a statue of Christ sent from Flanders to commemorate Dun Laoghaire soldiers killed in the first World War. Make an appointment to see it by calling the council offices on 205 4700 ext 455.

The bottom line Dun Laoghaire is the best of several worlds: effectively a suburb of Dublin (20 mins on the DART) but with its own town identity. To be a real Dun Laoghaire head you should swim daily at the Forty Foot, the bathing place by the Martello tower immortalised by James Joyce in Ulysses. (Incidentally, the name is believed to come from the Fortieth Foot Regiment, which was once stationed in the Battery, the name of a house still standing there.) But if you really want to move to Dun Laoghaire, get in your time machine and head back to the mid-1990s – it mightn’t have been as flash but prices were a lot more affordable, and they hadn’t started throwing up apartment blocks and other impediments to scar the shoreline.