Kilmainham

Hi there,
Have been looking for ages, but really intensively for the last 4 months (have looked a lot in Inchicore, Kilmainham,Crumlin & Drimnagh). Think I have come accross a good one in Rothe Abbey, South Circular Road in Kilmainham (2 bed semi).

Just wondering had anyone any thoughts about Kilmainham as an area - I'm not from Dublin, but have rented in city centre for almost 10 years, so not too familiar with the reputations of areas (although Im not totally naive, and know there is (potentially) good & bad in every area).

In particular I'm interested in your thoughts on crime, safety, amenities (where is the nearest big supermarket, is it crumlin?), likelihood for prices to keep rising, etc

I have heard from friends & colleagues who rent there about a lot of car break-ins in the area, particularily in parking lots of apratment blocks.

Would appreciate any comments or advice.

Thanks a mill.
Kitty

I used to live in Rothe Abbey while renting.

The houses are tiny - you can hear the kettle boling next door. That said, its a nice little estate & there was an active residents association there.

Shopping: Crumlin has Tescos / Dunnes but is due to be redeveloped. Don't know what the situation will be long term. Lidl have just opened a new shop on James' St (through the hospital). Late night groceries are Spar (SCR) & Mace (opposire Rialto gate of James). both have ATMs.

Amenities: Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Kilmainham Gaol, War memorial gardens (underused & gorgeous) & Phoenix park are all within walking distance.

Transport: 123 /19 bus ouside your door. Luas stop would be Rialto / St. James depending on your preference. 2-3 stops to Heuston station, direct line to Conolly station. Easy access to motorway.

Long term: There is a lot of development going on e.g. the Old Chocolate Factory which does not alway sit well with the historic nature of the area. For the transport & amenities outlined above, the area has a lot going for it.

To give you some idea of prices, the original Rothe Abbey houses sold for £54K. When I left, landlord was looking for €180K for 2-bed mid-terrace in 2000.

There was also some flooding to the lane entrance in winter - not sure if its fixed now.

I loved living there, it was a little enclave in the city.
Let me know if you have any other questions, I'll see if I can answer them.

D8L

Hi D8Lady,
Thanks so much for your swift reply. Lots of info there and its great. I should have said earlier that I'm actually not looking at the original (about 12 years old?) redbrick houses in there although I did look at two, and was not too impressed - one was tiny with a poor layout and the other wasnt great either, the stairs cut into the living room too much, right over the fireplace. However, I really liked the look/feel to the whole place, or enclave as you say. It seemed like a bit of an oasis in the city and Im interested in one of approx.16 houses & appartments that have been built on what I imagine was a green area inthe estate there originally (backing on to Suir road).

Re the flooding on the lane, do you mean the road coming into the estate off S. Circular road beside the union building or some other lane? There is pedestrian acces beside where the new buildings are opening out on to suir road (at the s circular end) - is this what you mean?

Any thoughts on crime in the area?

Thanks again.
C

"Re the flooding on the lane, do you mean the road coming into the estate off S. Circular road beside the union building or some other lane?"

That's the one. I think there was a shore that was blocked so heavy rain made a very large persistant puddle. You could asked around to see if its sorted.

Crime - I personally never had any bad experiences in the 4 yrs I lived there. Didn't have a car so that wasn't an issue. It is a city area, not a rural leave-the-door-open place. But nothing to be overly uptight about. Give Kilmainham garda station a call & see if they have anything to say. But if you can get talking to the locals, they'd be best able to talk about it now.

D8L

Thanks for that. Will check out lane & ask around neighbours etc.

We used to live in kilmainham off the old kilmainham road. We were first time buyers and thought it to be a good location, particulary when you see all the parks, rivers etc in the area. in the end we were unhappy living there and were glad to move out. The only thing going for the area is that it is generally quite and there is little trouble on the street at night time.

it can get pretty dirty. bins etc. people from other areas can dump their untagged rubbish on your street or estate.

flooding is also an issue on certain roads and over the past 20 years there has been significant damage and its difficult to establish where these areas are, particularly if you are a prospective buyer. dublin city council will give you an unreliable answer because non of the drainage dept. really know . i have read their confidential flooding reports and i would doubt whether they have implemented any measures that were recommended. the only way to establish this issue is to knock on doors of people who have always lived there to get some local knowledge . we were caught out but luckily suffered no damage

there are shopping centres in the area but these are poor and we ended going to tescos in stonybatter. james street and thomas street are not great places to shop and is inconveinent if you live in kilmainham. the crumlin shopping centre is rubbish and the dunnes stores in it has a rediculous layout and is limited compared to others . there are only a small amount and limited variety of local shops and after a while we found this very inconveinent.

Pubs are limited too.

generally there is no trouble on the street but petty crime exists. My car was stolen and the theives were arrested. they came from the area and one of them was an escaped convict and the other had over 100 charges impending on him . The guards asked me to press charges and be a witness but declined in fear as my address would be read out in court. On another occaision my wifes mobile was snatched from her whilst walking though rialto. About every 2 weeks a police helicopter will fly over and around your house for about an hour.

If somebody is going to be murdered in dublin, whether it is in the pub, or in a house, or their body dumped on the street, there is a good chance it is in the Rialto, Kilmainham, Inchicore area. If people don't believe me, they are in denial.

be aware of over inflated 2nd hand house prices, particularly when there is a vast amount of new houses to be built at the chocolate factory and the old eircom site at the back mount brown. New houses in the area will appreciate better than the generally low quality second hand ones.

Dont be fooled by the LUAS. the service is slow to kilmainham and its quicker and cheaper to get the bus to and from town

there are better places for first time buyers and i would recommend taking off the rose tinted spectacles because once you have bought your house you may regret it, particularly after a year when you come out of denial.

Buying your first house is all about making comprmises. In hindsight we thought kilmainham was too much of a comprimise.

I used to live in Inchicore for 2 years, not a nice area. Kilmainham is close enough for you to consider this.

In the 2 years I was there...
1: 2 fatal shootings in 2 different pubs and 1 other non-fatal shooting in another pub
2: I had a grenade "left" in my back garden, bomb squad came out one saturday morning based on an anonymous call. (I am not joking!). Not a good scenario if that was a family house with kids playing out the back.
3: Threatened with a hammer by a group of 15 year old lads, got away with a kick in the knee.
4: Various fighting on the 51B bus, one incident involving a big kitchen knife, but no one injured by it
5: Many drunken people incidents.....
6: Friend had her car windscreen smashed and 1 car door mirror broken off (it was a NI registered car, that would probably explain as there are a few republican nut cases around there)

I didnt realise there was so much until I wrote it down but all in all Kilmainham is probably ok but it might be too close to Inchicore for comfort!

dont forget that a deadbody was dumped on the side of the road in mountbrown at the begining of last year

Hi Kitty

I have been living in Kilmainham in 3 different properties ofr the past 7 years. I have recently moved into a house in Rothe Abbey and so far it is a great place to live. In our 7 years, we have had no bad experiences with break-ins, or anything else of a dodgy nature.

The Luas is great, there are a few good pubs, one or 2 nice restaurants and I couldn't recommend it highly enough

just wrote a long response and lost it!

In summary.... depends what you're looking for. We lived in Inchicore and loved :

the canal bank walk
the swans
the easy access to town
proximity to phoenix park
proximity to memorial park and liffey
proximioty to IMMA and its grounds
the 123 bus!
close to motorway!

Had problems with on-going yobbos - graffity, breaking windows (not ours) and police inability to do anything about it.
We lived on a particularly bad road but chose to live in Inchicore for easy access to town and to make a killling on the property market (which we did).
After 2 yrs were happy to move on but have excellent memories and well as some 'experiences' too!

p.s. Kilmainhem is much calmer than Inchicore!!

Some interesting comments there, thanks guys. Much appreciated (if a little scary!)
Tis true, much of buying for the first time is about compromise, but I dont think I have rose tinted glasses on - I'm certainly aware of, but thankfully havent been exposed directly to the levels of crime in the city centre. Long may that continue!

I dont think Rothe Abbey itself is subject to much flooding (other than the blocked drains mentioned by D8Lady above), as its seems higher up the hill than most of the rest of Kilmainham, but will check it out more, thanks.

I'm looking at the positives like the short commute to city centre (so true about slowness of Luas - but it wouldnt suit me anyhow as I'm going to Stephens Green not northside for work). I intend to bus it in & then walk back from work for some excercise (in about 50mins?).

Re the crime, I guess nowhere is imune - I regularily have a helicopter hoverring over me where I currently live & its a pet-hate of mine (is there no such thing as silencers for these pesky flying machines?) and I also regularily have drunken people fighting almost outside my door. My biggest fear is the threatening teenagers or yobbos who hang aound corners or shops trying to intimidate people, but I intend to keep the head down. I figure most of the killings etc are ususally among the same community (I hope!).

Would be interested to know Moylan1, where you think is better for FTBs relatively close to city? I had spent a lot of time looking in Crumlin & Drimnagh, but plenty of people had horror (Crime) stories about there too & kinda warned me away. I dont want to have to go too far outside of city.

Also, I have a quick qestion for Babydays - whats so good about the 123 bus? The Frequency?

Thanks again for the input.

The 123 bus - it is so frequent and pretty fast. BUT...to beat the traffic a bike is definitely quickest, cheapest and most satisfying!!

With the mad prices of houses everyone has to compromise. We were very happy with our choice to live in Inchicore (for a couple of years). We got a good sized house that we couldn't possibly have afforded anywhere else and it enabled us to trade up to a really good house in a v. good area after just two years!

I grew up on the South Circular Road, and Kilmainham, Inchicore and Rialto were always considered 'rough' areas. In the past few years, the image of Kilmainham has changed significantly, as has Inchicore, but to a lesser extent. The apartments houses in both areas have been snapped up by young professionals. I wouldn't live in Rialto though, as it has a bad reputation for drugs, but 2-bed artisan cottages are already selling for 300k!

Just saw an asking price of E380,000 for an (ex-Corpo looking) house fronting onto the street in Inchicore in Felicity Fox's window........

kitty

about kilmainham

when we were looking for a ftb house my wife and i didnt know wether to buy inner city of brand new out of town. as we were city slickers we couldn't help the draw of living inthe city suburbs.

to justify living in these areas, we put on our rose tinted spectacles and pretended that the dirt and the roughness was charm and character and just thought about all the lovely parks and the motorway. incidentally, there are no decent restaurants in kilmainham as somebody has suggested. development was happening in kilmainham and we thought that we were in an up and comming area. in the end it wasnt and if anything we noticed that the area appeared to get more grubby.

in hindsight the house we bought was poor quality. as we had our rose tinted spectacles on, and because we were desparate to get anything, we saw this house as an invesment and oppertunity.

we bought our house just after some friends of ours bought a brand new ftb house in carpenterstown. theirs was about 15000 cheaper and biggger than ours. they had the arrow service to get them in and out to work. our house was approx. 750sq.ft. and at the time was about the same price as a brand new apartment in kilmainham, the only difference was that we didnt get the first time buyers grant. (incidently our friends on their house did)

after two years, and after spending 13000 on fixing the house on cosmetic and unforeseen items, we noticed that the apartments that we were looking at in kilmainham had a bigger price tag than our house. Also our friends in carpenterstown had their house valued at it was worth more than what we eventually sold our house for. not only that, they didnt spend 13000 doing it up.

naturally we were upset and decided to move on so we sold, our circumstances had advanced and we now live in a significantly better area.

in hindsight i wouldnt recommend living in the cheap inner city suburbs because it isnt worth it. particularly in light of the fact that you might not get on with your neighbours and their charming habits, such as throwing dirty mattresses, sofas, ovens, rubbish and dishwashers on the street and near your door.

I lived in Kilmainham for 7 years and loved it. Experienced no trouble apart from 3 broken car windows. We knew parking on the road would be risky
so accepted that risk.
It is close to the city and it is different from suburbia. Its louder and more crowded, there is more petty crime. It's not for everyone. If you are not prepared for that, dont bother.
It was the only place we could afford a red bricked terrace house and we
loved our high ceilings and original fireplaces and it went up a lot in value
in the 7 years.

As someone said before, the parks are very good. THe childrens playground in Crumlin is top quality, better than the few I can find in the south sublin suburb I now live in.

I didn't think much of the pubs and restaurants in Kilmainham, but I could be in town in 15 minutes by bus or bike, so it wasn't a big concern.

Crumlin Chopping centre is a bit of dump in my opinion, but Superquinn
is Walkinstown is only a short drive.

PErsonally I think Kilmainham is over priced (even more so than the rest of the city) but the whole area around heuston is to be redeveloped ala IFSC so it could end up a bargain!

I can't stop laughing at the information emerging from this thread! I was born and bred in Old Kilmainham. Gordanus mentions Inchicore houses are now going for 380K and money-g mentions Heuston is to be 're-developed' and I'm in hysterics, a number of people talk about the flooding.

Essentially from The Black Lion at Inchicore down to Dublin Castle there is steep escarpment from the south down to the Liffey and in the 1950's there were a number of tributories of the Liffey which started in the Dublin/Wicklow mountains. These have all disappeared and presumably have been enclosed in storm-sewers. There are quite large housing estates build on that flood-plain - which in the past was boggy fields -now. To give an idea of the change in density since the 50's, on one spot where there were some 400 households over about a square mile clustered around the Camac river at Kilmainham - which is now storm-drained - and a sprinkling of pubs, shops and large old industrial buildings with lots of open land there are now some FOUR THOUSAND NEW DWELLINGS! If you add in the effluent, waste-water etc., from these plus the rain-water which now has nowhere to go when it falls as it falls on 'the concrete jungle' you get a picture of what will occur if even more houses are put in.

As far as amenity goes, further development would bring the new estates right up to the walls of The Royal Hospital along the Military Road and from the sounds of it would include the old Ardleigh Printers site on the north side of the river. So whilst the Phoenix Park is near it would certainly be very different.

Inchicore was always a split entity; that part near Bluebell (which is now developed to death) was working-class (nothing wrong with that; that's my much-valued background) and that part between The Black Lion pub and Kilmainham. In the past 10 years The Black Lion area appears to have become a predominantly African-immigrant community with its individualistic cafes, travel-shops and indigenous food-stuffs. However there is such dense development of badly-designed, poor-quality small 'apartments' - built on what had been the Camac - that the area was beginning - a few years back - to have a run-down and neglected feel.

At the Mount Brown end around St. James' Hospital and down Steeven's Lane to Houston there has been a decade of disruption for installation of the Luas infrastructure. Mount Brown James' Street and Thomas Street have a preponderance of rented apartments and a transient 'young Spar-shopping professional' ambience. Most of the apartment blocks have gated off-road parking.

I have lived in Inchicore for the last year and have had no problems at all there. We've seen no crime, or have been aware of any near us. The village is a little run down and not exactly pretty but is changing for the better all the time. We may be lucky where we live. It's on the Ballyfermot side and is in a little area tucked in off the road. Very quite.

The bus route gets a few dodgy characters from time to time and it seems you're allowed to smoke on the 78A!!!!!but all in all I am delighted with our decision to buy there.

Our neighbours house is on the market for €90,000 more then we paid for ours, granted it is a wee bit bigger, but it's been a wise move investment wise.

I would recommend the area, however I appreciate that others parts of the village may not be so nice.