"They were terrorists and it was right they were locked up, " says local community worker Jackie McQuillan.

"People around here didn't believe the IRA was fighting a legitimate war.

"We thought the prisoners should be treated just like ordinary criminals. Why should a special case be made for them and they get to wear their own clothes? They'd inflicted death and destruction on Northern Ireland and now they were choosing to starve themselves."

"They didn't have any reason to take their own lives, " says local farmer John Skelton.

"It was like a holiday camp in there. They were educated and they had plenty of leisure.

Any other prime minister might have done a deal, but not Mrs Thatcher, and we were glad she didn't. We shed no tears for the hunger strikers."

IRA prisoners Coronation Gardens is home to around 250 Protestants. It's so close to Long Kesh you can see into the complex from many of the houses. "We could hear the IRA prisoners cheering when they were playing Gaelic games in the exercise yard, and we could hear the Republican bands practising some nights, " says McQuillan.

During the hunger strike, the residents put up posters of a H-Block. 'The murderers had a choice, their victims had none' was the slogan. Every hour or so, minibuses carrying prisoners' families drove by their homes.

"We'd see the faces of the wives and youngsters through the windows, but we never identified with them in the slightest, " says McQuillan.

"Sometimes, local children would throw stones at the buses and the visitors would give us the fingers.

"Police cars would sit outside our homes to make sure there wasn't any big confrontation between the two sides. A hunger striker was somebody's son and somebody's husband, but you couldn't help wonder what the families were playing at.

"I never understood how mothers and fathers stood by and let their children die. No way would I let my son or daughter do that for any cause.

Maybe you'd let them go a few weeks on hunger strike, but when they were anywhere near death, you'd tell them to catch themselves on and you'd feed them.

"We later heard that the mothers wanted to take their boys off hunger strike but the priests wouldn't let them."

The longest loyalist hunger strike was undertaken by LVF leader Billy Wright and lasted only a few weeks.

"Nobody on our side has ever starved themselves to death. They don't have the commitment for it, but that isn't a bad thing, " says McQuillan. "No cause is worth that.

The hunger strike was a waste of life."

Coronation Gardens' residents had mixed feelings about Long Kesh. "Nobody ever consulted us about it being there.

We woke up one morning and the place was full of prisoners. They'd erected huts to house the internees, " says McQuillan.

"We didn't want hundreds of prisoners on our doorstep.

They brought bad people into the area. Every now and then, Republicans would attempt to march to the jail with their flags and their banners in Irish.

They'd no right to try to invade the place where we were born and reared. The authorities should never have allowed them to leave their own areas.

"The roads were sealed off in countless security alerts. We'd severe problems getting to and from our homes. As the hunger strikers neared death, we worried that Republicans would attack the jail or that the prisoners themselves would do something awful. We remembered what happened when the prisoners set fire to the jail a few years earlier and we heard the prison Alsatian dogs squealing as they burned to death."

John Skelton says: "You were always frightened the prisoners would break out, hide in your house and hijack your car." At times of heightened security like the hunger strike, the residents say they felt like they were under surveillance by the security forces.

"Innocent activities caused all sorts of bother. One farmer was picking carrots in his field and a soldier in a watchtower mistook it for suspicious activity and arrested him and held him for four hours, " says Skelton.

"The constant low-flying aircraft helicopters upset my hens and they stopped laying eggs. I got it raised in the House of Commons but it did no good. The soldiers would go through the fields and cut wire, letting the animals onto the road."

McQuillan says the residents rarely complained: "We thought it was our government so we suffered in silence. We never demanded double glazing or soundproofing for the helicopter noise.

"Many local people were employed in the jail as prison officers, civilian searchers or kitchen staff. Long Kesh put trousers on plenty of backsides around here. We didn't see it as a concentration camp as Republicans did."

One local woman's most enduring memory of the complex is being able to look into the soldiers' quarters from her window. "I'd see the soldiers coming out of the showers with just their towels wrapped around them. They were fine strapping men and I always wished those towels would drop!"

Bobby Sands McQuillan can't recall the day Bobby Sands died but he remembers Coronation Gardens being overrun by media:

"They annoyed the life out of us, wanting to use our toilets and phones. If we'd been cheeky, we could have charged a fiver a time and made a fortune. The journalists had no interest in our community.

They didn't want to know our opinions about the hunger strike at all."

Long Kesh is now empty, but remains structurally intact and is set for redevelopment.

At the visitors' entrance, where the prisoners' families made those agonising journeys, a courting couple are parked.

A discarded shoe, full of dead leaves, lies outside the gate.

Republicans want the Hblocks, and the hospital where the hunger strikers spent their final days, retained. Twentyfive years later, Coronation Gardens residents still see things differently. "The whole lot should be bulldozed, " says McQuillan. "It's part of the past and we want to forget."