Re: Re: ‘Dutch Billys’

@GrahamH wrote:

There’s a couple of hours whiled away for ya gunter, allbeit minus the €120k.

I’d only squander it on food and bills anyway.

We’re on much firmer ground here with this house at 31 Aungier Street. This is a Protected Structure and is actually called up as a ‘Hugenot house’ on DCC record of PSs no less.

The flush windows are a clue, but the very high ground floor is initially confusing until we factor in that it probably incorporates a half sunken basement with original front railings and front area having probably been removed when the street went commercial. The back is classic ‘Billy’ with the cut-off upper landing window giving clear evidence that there was another storey and not just a gabled roof.

Initially there’s not much to base a reconstruction on though; are we dealing with a four storey, or even a rare five storey? If a standard four storey, did it have a single window in the attic storey or did it have another pair of windows in another full storey, either in line with those below, or slightly pinched together under three quarter height wall plates?

I’ve ghosted in a simple curvilinear gable with a single window, based on the evidence of a 1950s photograph that shows this house, no. 31, still shorn of it’s top storey, but at a time when the adjoining streetscape was still relatively intact. In this photograph there is a striking resemblence between no. 31 and no. 30 (beyond Aungier Lane) with the same unusually high floor levels and general proportions. There’s enough in that to convince me that these two houses were designed as a pair, or at least were designed to be consistant with each other.

The 1950s photograph of Aungier Street taken from the triangle at the junction with Bishop Street with no. 30 (reduced at the time to a simple triangular gable) in the distance.

In isolation the ‘Dutch Billy’ can look a bit flaky, but in their original context, the rhythm of the gables would have created fantastic streetscapes full of energy and variety.

This is a rough stab at a reconstruction of the gables on these houses. Obviously the rendered elevations and the shop fronts belong to a period after the gables had disappeared, but there’s a limit to what I’m goin’ to do without my €120k.