Re: Re: ‘Dutch Billys’

@tommyt wrote:

Sorry ’bout the cockney geezah speak guv. . . .

I can put away my Latin dictionary so! . . . and yes 18 Duke St. is a dead cert, I’ll come back to that, and the M&S ‘Billy’, later.

When we were speculating earlier on the missing top storey of 31 Aungier Street, we only had the 1950s photograph showing a triangular gable fronting some kind of altered roof with a side dormer to go on, but now, there’s a great new book out on Dublin slums, by Chriatiaan Corlett, called ‘Darkest Dublin’ and it has a view looking up Aungier Place showing the rear of no. 30 (the corresponding house on the north side of the laneway) and a bit of the rear of no. 31.

There should be enough in this view to acurately reconfigure the original roof profile which, as we can just see behind the lantern, was standard ‘Dutch Billy’ cruciform shaped, interestingly unlike no. 30 which appeared not to have had a cross profile.

Most of the photographs in the ‘Darkest Dublin’ book come from the Royal Society Of Antiquaries of Ireland collection and I hope they don’t mind it being posted here. The RSAI are a great outfit, they opened up their house on Merrion Square on ‘Culture Night’ last time out and provided coffee and expensive free chocies.

Apparently, far from being an old fuddy duddy society, RSAI membership is open to all, and there’s also a junior membership (for anyone under sixty :))