Dundalk

Where is that Castle Roche Paul? Often wondered when reading about it there…

Yes, the granite of the Court House goes all of the way round on both sides. Magnificent!

As for the chimneys – the Victorians may have imitated, but it was the late Georgians who fully developed the intimidating potless chimney – the power stack 🙂

Ah the Imperial – Dundalk’s Liberty Hall. Alas unlike the former, it is an icon of its age for all the wrong reasons.

Seen from miles around, instead of the gothic spires and crenellations of the cathedral romantically gracing the town’s skyline as its sole landmark, one must observe the fight between it and the Imperial’s plant room, disgracefully continuing to be embellished with a host of telecommunications antenae.

It’s going under extensive renovations now – they’ve completely shut down, a la the Shelbourne – albeit in something of a different league 🙂

Yikes – it’s up there, the pictures will do just fine thanks 😀

Yes, all of that 70s stuff littered about should be removed completely.

The trees look very stately and picturesque in front though and should be retained I think.
It’s a pity the railings had to go down – the drama of the building rising out of the ground has been lost 🙁

Great photo Ros – impossible to get a long shot of the building without a wide lense!

I was exceptionally annoyed (still am) that vast sums were lavished on this building’s exterior and interior, yet they failed to reinstate the Victorian sash windows – instead keeping the chunky timber casements put in probably when the building was rebuilt after fire in the 1940s.
They would have made such a difference 🙁

Otherwise it was a job well done, and the entrance columns, which used to be black, look fantastic in that regal red.

It was built as the town’s Corn Exchange in around 1859-64 just at the end of the Italianate craze, but the company went into liquidation inside a few years when it moved into the town’s ownership. A quite grand auditorium was built inside I believe, but it was gutted by fire and replaced with a vaguely Art Deco interior.

23/6/2005

I took these images a few months ago but forgot about them until I came across the same building recently, sadly on the An Taisce Buildings at Risk register:

It’s made up of a charming and unassuming pair of late Georgian houses at the far end of a street just off the town’s main street. There’a a fantastic stock of 19th century domestic classical architecture round here – this one is thankfully one of very few in such poor condition, though it is one of the oldest so is perhaps to be expected.

Another view here showing the remarkably surviving original sash windows and brick chimney; an inappropriate modern one in the middle looks like it was shoved in about 10-15 years ago:

This house is particularly unusual in that it features a carriage arch – very rare for such a modest building in Dundalk, if not nationally. The associated building next to it is as good as derelict 🙁

The quote from An Taisce:

“Rare surviving unaltered early 19th century vernacular buildings. Divided into three sections comprising two cottages with boarded up door and window to ground floor and original 3 over 3 single pane sashes to first floor. Additional bay over carriage arch with sash over. Natural slate roof, brick stacks. An adjoining building to the South, which was part of the same development is ruinous with its rubble stone construction exposed. Vernacular buildings of this type retaining their architectural character are rare, not just in Dundalk but Irish towns generally.”