Re: Re: ‘Dutch Billys’

Oooh – intriguing as always gunter 🙂

I must admit to the shame of passing these about twice a week and never having checked them out properly other than acknowledging they were ‘suspicious’, as with much of this terrace. The permanent rank of buses outside eases the conscience somewhat.

Both the location of the houses and particularly the sneaky staircase shot (always helpful) dates this pair as amongst the last gabled houses to be built in the city – the staircase in particular scraping them into the 1740s. The triple gable is most interesting – here’s the roof form today.

The paired returns to the centre as you say gunter are clearly evident.

Brooking shows the terrace as being entirely developed in 1728, but he’s not exactly renowned as Mr Accurate.

We also see yet another example of a gabled house being replaced by a tall early Victorian, to the right at No. 156.

More than likely what happened with No. 19 on Thomas Street too.

@gunter wrote:

The fact that both of the Parnell Street houses were refaced at the same time in the 19th century suggests they remained in single ownership ever since they were built, probably in the typical part-speculative fashion of the builder living in one and leasing the other. And while most pairs of Billies were built as an entity, these pointers still help to reinforce the llklihood that these were triple gabled – built as a grand architectural unit.

They are protected structures.