Ballymount

Ballymount (Irish, "Baile an Arde"), is located on the south side of Dublin, and comes under the areas of Walkinstown, Tallaght and Clondalkin. This area houses one of the largest industrial zones in Ireland. Ballymount also has domestic housing on the roads of Ballymount Road, in Walkinstown and Clondalkin, some roads in the estate of Kingswood in Tallaght also come under the area of Ballymount.

This area is divided by the M50 motorway were the more populated area is on the southside of the divide in Kingswood, and the more industrial side on the northside.Some more well known companies based in Ballymount are Smurfit, TV3, DHL, Johnson Brothers and Exel.

On the southside of Ballymount, there are the ruins of Ballymount castle, alongside the Luas tram tracks. The castle was built in 1622 by Sir William Parsons. The Irish army burnt the house in 1646. The original name give to the area was Bellamount (beautiful mount) in reference to the pre-existing mount (Bronze Age grave). In the early 18th century Ballymount Great was home to Mr John Butler, son of Sir Theobald Butler, Solicitor General in Ireland to James II. It is John Butler who is reputed to have built the folly (sham ruin) for his daughter’s wedding day. It was never a fully built structure but as the name implies a fake ruin. Beranger drew it in 1767, and his painting shows us what it looked like.

At the end of the 18th century the lands of Garranstown and Kingswood merged under the ownership of the Cullen family. The house retained the name Whitehall given to it by Mr Theo White. In William Duncan’s maps of the County of Dublin, the area is shown bearing both names, a practice that is still carried on with maps to this day. In 1865 Andrew Cullen Tynan, father of Katharine Tynan, the poet and writer, inherited the farm from an uncle. Katharine published her first book of poems “Louise De La Valliere”, at the age of 17.

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Soccer:
* [http://connect.southdublin.ie/kingswoodfc/index.php Kingswood F.C. ] is a local soccer club that was founded in 1988, as Kingwood Boys Football Club, by, amongst others, Paddy Baker, John Hickey and Jimmy Gaynor. The club was nearly called 'Albion F.C.', and a proposed link up with Grimsby Town Football Club in England meant the initial strip consisted of dark purple and white vertical stripes. The first u-15 side, managed by John Hickey, wore such a strip with 'Albion FC' on the left side of the chest. The club swiftly moved to black and white stripes and it was decided to adopt a name to reflect the locality. The club initially fielded most of its teams in the Dublin District Schoolboys League, but now is a member of the [http://www.sdflsoccer.com/ South Dublin Football League] . The club caters for players from nursery level to under 18s, and the 'Boys' in the original title was dropped in the mid-90s to reflect the growing participation of girls in the club. Originally, all games were played in Kingswood Green, where the small-sided games now take place, before the older teams decamped to a pitch that is now the lake in Ballymount Park. More senior teams now play elsewhere in Ballymount park, beside the Crematorium.In 1990, the club acquired a controversial changing area, a pre-fabricated former church which was placed beside the tennis courts. Following much local pressure, the portable srtucture was placed beside the architecturally similar community centre, where it languished, unloved and vandalised, until replaced in the early 2000s with a metal container. It is proposed that changing facilities will be placed in the new Community Centre. There are also changing facilities in Ballymount Park