Frescati

Frescati house Blackrock. Does it ring a bell? It was where Roches Stores is now. Visit it's homepage now at:
http://www.frescati.homepage.com

Richard,

If only for the health of my optic nerve please remove that background tile.

Content looks interesting but its too hard to read.

[McC]

I'm disappointed to see that the discussion on Archers seems to have dried up (or at least it has disappeared from the list of "most recent active threads"). Perhaps the story of Frescati House reveals that few lessons have been learned since the 1980's.

The Frescati case is very important for the lessons that can be learned from it. After the Wood Quay controversy, it was the biggest conservationist fight in Irish history. Go check out the site...

[McC]

In fact eh!... I did. David W, you seem to be missing my point somewhat. It was after reading and learning of the fate of Frescati house in the light of the recent discussion about Archers that I wondered that no systems had changed in order to prevent something like this happening again. In each of these cases the law i.e. planning permsission protecting these buildings from demolition was simply ignored? And when a building has been demolished its already too late!
You mention Wood Quay, then there's also Hume Street. Neither the law nor public opinion doesn't seem to matter one whit. What lessons do you feel can be / have been learned - big business wins, money talks I suggest.

Great site: Frescati is nice, are there any architectural drawings of it available????

[MG]

good site..... but a white background would be easier to read

There are no known architectural drawings of the building, but there are some interior photographs which are not displayed on the site. They can be found in the Millenium issue of the proceedings of the Blackrock Historical Society.

This is a very informative site.It is good to hi-light the planning discrepancies that have occured and the loss of another aspect of our architectural heritage.Just one thing though as already mentioned the website design looks dreadful;Photoshop on prozac. Could I suggest changing the background to a more muted colour and the typeface/font to maybe Times New Roman(especially the heading 'Frescati'). It would certainly enhance the subject matter, adding an air of solemnity.
Look at the website of the Irish Georgian Society for an example but it does'nt have to be as boring.

[Máire]

I think that it's a great site. For others, if you can't read the text, highlight it. Have you got anymore pictures of the house, Ricahrd?

I remember the Frescati house scandal. I never saw the house before it was a ruin. It didn't appear anything special, in fact, it looked so dilapidated that it was unsafe and beyond repair. I was amazed how well it looked only 12 years earlier though.

Nice site, but get rid of the background tile

[Rory W]

The problem with Frescati was that Dun Laoghaire Corporation (as it was then) basically condemned the house to Death because they zoned the land for a shopping development. Roches Stores could have bankrupted that corporation at the time by not allowing them to build there. But Roches acted disgracefully it pulling the house down, when I lived in Booterstown I refused to shop there, so that was my own little protest...

Rory W

[McC]

Good on you Rory W!
In the light of recently establishing Mr. O'Callaghan's business interest (ref: recent postings in Archers' forum) I'd like to call for a boycott of his hotels.
(Sorry for harping back to the Archers' debacle but it's like history has repeated itself.)

Well not shopping in Roches won't bother them too much if it's just one person. Maybe hanging a big poster of frescati beside all their doors would bother them more...They'd just take them down. As for the Archers Garage, something more has to be done. There's no denying that they were being "sneaky". They knew they wouldn't be allowed knock it down, that's why they didn't seek permission to obstruct the road. He's going to get away with it. We can't just sit back and decide to boycott the hotel, when it's built. Protest, and make sure it's not built until Archers is rebuilt. Archers is handy because not it is reasonably replaceable. Frescati wasn't.
Frescati was a different style, full of detail that wasn't well documented or recorded. It can never be replaced

I think Frescati is a plain but charming house. Roches have a debt to the Irish nation for destroying such an important part of Ireland.
The lesson of Frescati seems to be a lesson not learnt too well. That lesson may have save The St. Helens house Radisson SAS, but countless others such as Archers and Jervis Hospital slip through our fingers. Our we so self absorbed we cannot fight this capitalism?
Do we always have to give the greedy business man the priority? Prevention is better than cure, but cure is good too

[Rory W]

Well it was just my little protest at what they did, I do however organise a lot of seminars in Dublin for the company I work for and try to recommend that we don't use O'Callaghan Hotels for any of them, so I hope that I am making some difference to his profits.

If enough people do a small protest, it can go a long way, and is far more effective than 'direct' protests.

Rory W

That's right, but unless people know what has happened, how will they know to have their little protest?/

[Rory W]

Unfortunately the average response would be 'don't care', because the average Dubliner doesn't care for architecture.

I think that some kind of arts appreciation should be taught in the classroom, but then most of the teachers don't care because they are so underesourced.

But even if people were informed about what happened, how long would the memory last????

[McC]

That's why I'm glad Richard set up his site (and advertised its existance here) because I had never heard anything about it before (only moved to Dublin 12 years ago). Memory seems to last a while, judging from some of the input here, it's impetus that seems to die away. Please not it's happening again - ref: Carton Estate!!

Not everybody has to appreciate good architecture to be annoyed about what Roches did... Just a but of awareness of what they did, (some bad PR) would make them anxious to try and make some kind of repayment.
Unfortunately, Frescati will never be replaced, but I still believe Roches got away with murder, and have a debt to the country

Frescati was a very nice building, how could they destryo such as valuable, unreplaceable piece of Architecture? (not mentioning history)

Frescati was just another old house. What's so bad about being without just another bland old dump? and there were plenty of other place associated with L E F

You're wrong Username.
Frescati wasn't just another house, it had plenty of features that distinguished it from the rest including the theatre, the painted ceiling, it's special historical association with LEF. You don't seem to know much about it.

[Anna]

I thought it was spelled FrAscati