Re: Re: ‘Dutch Billys’

That’s a nice photograph there cravings

Cork is a bit of a mystery to the rest of us too, no worries there.

Your ‘Paddy’s Market’ appears to be a colloquial name for Corn Market Street, previously Potato Quay and that interesting house was on the south eastern corner with Paul [Paul’s] Street. I’ve outlined the site in red on Rocque’s map of Cork, circa 1760.

The house is gone now and replaced by a three storey structure with a flat roof which I don’t think incorporates any early fabric.

In this aerial view from the 1950s the tall corner house was still there, if apparently held together with steel girders. The house had a double roof structure, but the roof volumes don’t look quite equal and given the comparatively tall floor to ceiling heights, compared to the three-bay Georgian next door [which survives], I’d be more inclined to think of this house as perhaps an early 19th century commercial structure rather than an early 18th century merchant house, but that’s not to say the one may not have evolved out of the other. I’ve dotted in the line of Paul Street in yellow for orientation, The junction of Patrick Street and Grand Parade is on the right.

An extract from Chearnley’s view of Cork from the north-east shows a good sprinkling of ‘Dutch’ gabled houses in this vicinity in the 1740s. The number key on Chearnley’s view identifies St. Paul’s Church, off Paul Street [no. 11], the old Market House on Corn Market St. [no. 12], and the cupola of the Exchange [no. 13] at the junction of North and South Main Street in the distance beyond, all of which can also be picked out on Rocque.