Re: Re: ‘Dutch Billys’

@GrahamH wrote:

Returning to the pair of formerly gabled houses on South Anne Street in Dublin profiled by gunter earlier in the thread, the small building next door to them also appears to be of a similar early date. It’s the stunted third building in from the corner.

Distinctly unremarkable, it exhibits an almost industrial quality typical of those grim remodellings of the first third of the 20th century.

Look a little closer and wowza!, we have an early 18th century door.

What a charmer.

Bless their frugal hearts eh.

The brickwork is tuck pointed underneath all that paint. The moulded string course appears to be granite, which if the case, and original, would make it one of the few to survive anywhere in the city.

The rear of the house features apparent remnants of exposed and flush sash boxes.

The interior seems encouragingly coherent from what can be observed from outside. There may well be early fixtures in there.

I think Graham’s gut instinct may have been right about this little gem at no. 29 South Anne Street . . . . there is certainly more to it than meets the eye.

A high level glimpse over the roof-tops from the 60s indicates that no. 29 originally had an attic storey with one of those generous lunette windows that keep appearing wherever ‘Billys’ are sought out. The roof is still baffling, but certainly there was a perpendicular element to it which, together with the lunette window, strongly suggests that originally there was a gable finish to the front, although other features suggest that this house may have been extended and altered very early on.

For a start, the house has an extraordinary top-lit stairs in the middle of the plan that I would have liked to have taken more pictures of, but an oriental lady was having none of it and gunter’s seen enough Jackie Chan movies to know when it’s the right time to back away.

Crouching Tiger may have won the first round, but there’ll be another day.