Re: Re: ‘Dutch Billys’
@gunter wrote:
Yes there is a beam running front to back under the valley on the line of the partition between the two front rooms on the top floor, and it continues over the back room where it beds into the brick arch of the window.
The pitch of the roof is too shallow to match the rest of the construction detail, so yes, like the Paddy Whelan house on Cork St., the roof joists must have been renewed later, but otherwise the builders re-used the original footings, the side wall plates and the defining beam in the centre, and just replaced the roof, like for like, but with hipped profiles behind a flat parapet to the front.
Ok, dissenters can be bombarded with technical detail 😉 – but have you actually seen the reused original footings, beam etc.? Be honest. We are low on evidence that double gables existed on modest two-bay houses. Now if you were to produce an old photograph, or even a print, drawing or engraving, showing one, that would go a long distance to persuading me 🙂 (I’m aware of the three gables on a three-bay building in a print of College Green.)
@gunter wrote:
The twin roof at 25 James St. shows us that the roof pitch would have been somewhere between 48 and 50 degrees, . . . . unless that doesn’t exist either :rolleyes:
The James’s Street example is not directly comparable with 32 Thomas Street as its façade was not altered to any particular style and it has a high parapet in front of the small parallel spans (and the façade is three bays).
@gunter wrote:
@Devin wrote:
On an architectural level, twin gables on a two-bay building wouldn’t have produced much of an effect, would it? …. sorry, just have difficulty bringing myself to envisage this building with twin gables.
”Much of an effect” !!! compared with what?
Compared with this:
@gunter wrote:
@Devin wrote:
Just to illustrate my suggestion.
No Devin, . . . just no!
You do know that this roof & return combination can be seen all over the city? Benburb Street, Bolton Street, Sth. Frederick Street ..
@gunter wrote:
It was this, or something very close to this.
I just don’t think there’s enough hard precedent evidence for it to be the building you want it to be.
@gunter wrote:
Don’t let Bord Pleanála off the hook on this!
The building is of significant architectural heritage value in its current late-Georgian shop-house character, regardless of possible origin.
@gunter wrote:
This house was a ‘Billy’, the floor plans scream that out. However, there’s no way you can put a single ‘Billy’ roof on this house without, either making it 5 storey, which the stairs evidence doesn’t support, or by reducing the present top storey to an attic storey, which the evidence of the beam and the return profile won’t support. Why try to force it to fit into a standard Billy template, when it makes perfect sense as a twin-Billy?
That looks like a standard early 18th century plan to me, not linked any particular roof form. You haven’t actually said why “it makes perfect sense as a twin Billy” or why “the floor plans scream that out”.
