The Edgelands south of Dublin

Each and everyday my place of work

Over the last two months I have been working in Sandyford, eight miles south of Dublin city centre.

A major part of Sandyford is composed of the Sandyford Industrial Estate (opened 1977)

Apart from a Londis the area has no shops. Apart from one Italian restaurant and two hotels to serve transients comme moi,  there is little else. 

These journeys to Sandyford coincided with my discovery of the Edgelands phenomena: 

The walk back to the hotel 

‘Edgelands’ are those spaces where the veneer of civilisation peels away. They are the debatable spaces where city and countryside fray into each other; those most despised and ignored of landscapes that are part of our common experience’ - Martin Stott writing in The Journal of William Morris Studies. Winter 2011.

Sandyford is exciting and desolate after 6pm. Soon, after several fifteen-minutes-each-way-walks to the office one becomes attracted and attached to this  despondency.  

A drawing etched by  hail stones in my notebook