Re: Re: ‘Dutch Billys’
@gunter wrote:
Returns on the chimney side, but without fireplaces, are not Georgian [except in parts of Limerick]. The only way that you can make houses of this type ‘Georgian’ is to take this whole body of the historical building record and put it in the wrong drawer.
It’s you who’s putting them in the wrong drawer – give me a moment. ‘Transitional’ is the best term for these houses – though I don’t like that term much myself as it implies a lack of inherent validity, or of simply moving from one perfect moment to another, which is not the case. But it can be used here to convey buildings which are basically Georgian in style but still utilising earlier construction features.
@gunter wrote:
What kind of insane builder would disregard the layout of the internal walls of the house he’d just built and construct a double roof profile that required an additional structure and twice the lead valley, unless it was for a specific design purpose?
Not at all the case. They were small, light, and probably relatively untroublesome roofs, sitting on top of heavy Georgian walls. I can see how they they were popular for a while. The central valley has three resting points, on the front wall, spine wall and rear wall. It’s no surprise a couple still survive today.
@gunter wrote:
Why is that every time we find one of these double roof structures, the house also has a central corner chimney stack and a rear return on the same side?
Do you not see a pattern here?
Yes, I certainly do – a pattern of buildings from the round about the 1760s which were designed to be “Georgian” in appearance (ie. having the essential cut of a 4-storey building built between 1750 and 1840) but with a construction that had been in use for many decades already, and had that roof. It’s not particularly remarkable that a house of this period should have had an old fashioned style of return or plan. There are examples of corner chimney breast construction right up to 1800. It was a cheaper and easier than the more famailiar Georgian chimney breast construction.
I also note that, like 32 Thomas Street, the Paddy Whelan twin roof building does not appear on Rocque in its current format, indicating that it also belongs to the post-1756 drawer. 27 Bachelors Walk, or a previous building on the same site, appears on Rocque. Either way it is the same general time frame as the former two.
I know that those roofs have nothing to do with twin gable fronts. I would bet my life on it. You’re not going to step down from your position because your ego won’t let you, even if you consider you could be wrong.
@gunter wrote:
…… as this house did until it was swept away by Zoe Developments because everyone presumably accepted that it was an early 19th century low-grade-Georgian, as it appeared in the middle photograph just before demolition in the late 80s.
That’s a rather arrogant assumption. Conservationists, urban historians and others have known the early Georgian house type for decades now and its characteristics and the many clues to its age.
The Arran Quay house looks to be a little earlier than 27 Bachelors Walk or 32 Thomas Street – the Gibbsian doorcase, the higher wall to window ratio in the facade. I’d date it 1740s or ’50s, with original roof. Ah, the endless varieties of Georgian roof form.
