Re: Re: ‘Dutch Billys’

Part of the attic storey is of course clearly rebuilt in yellow brick.

Taking in the wider context, it would appear that this house was built as a pair with the adjacent rendered house.

The window levels match, as do the positioning of the doors. The smaller windows of the rendered house suggest what the originals were like in the other.

The render was thickly pasted over the original brickwork.

The easily passed over wrought iron date stamp ties in perfectly with immediately post-Rocque.

The exposed sash boxes of these reproduction windows suggest these were very old fashioned houses.

Is it therefore possible that we have encountered the last Dutch Billies built in Dublin? Personally I think that’s stretching matters, bringing gables into the late 1750s on the most fashionable street in the city, and when Henrietta Street with flat parapets was entirely complete by this stage. Though we certainly have evidence of gables being erected on Molesworth Street in the mid 1740s, long after Henrietta Street began setting trends…

What’s the likelihood of these houses being of the transitional type, as gunter has discussed elsewhere?

Here’s the all-important distinctive cruciform shaped roof. The rendered house has been, one suspects, extensively altered from the original form.

The adjoining houses also have suspicious roof forms…