Re: Re: ‘Dutch Billys’
@Boooooog wrote:
The alteration of the classic Dutch Billy roof-lines must have begun almost while they were still being built. Judging by Tudor’s view of College Green from 1753.
You’re opening a can of worms there Boooooog,
that Tudor detail of the south side of College Green again
Starting on the left side [fore ground] what I think Tudor is depicting here is the former mansion of Lord Clancarty, probably built in the early 1680s. Clancarty’s mansion is depicted in thumbnail form on a map of College Green dated 1682. It appears to have been constructed on a ‘U’ or ‘H’ plan with two gabled wings fronting the street framing a recessed entrance forecourt in between, a sort of sophistocated town version of Rich Hill. As depicted by Tudor, the first two gabled ‘houses’ have matching heavy string mouldings that the third gabled ‘house’ doesn’t have and this feature would support the notion that this is a single large house and would be consistent with an early date. Tudor also shows a kind of cupola feature over the recessed range which appears to link the two wings, i.e. over the entrance to the former Clancarty mansion.
an extract from a 1682 map of College Green with a thumbnail image of Lord Clancarty’s house shown in elevation
Rocque depicts this recessed forecourt, but he hints that the western wing may have become detached from the rest of the house by that time [1757] which is not surprising given that the Clancartys had been attainted and dispossessed of their property back in 1690.
I’m surprised there haven’t been books or TV series on the Clancartys, they appear to have been an extraordinary family who rose through the peerage achieving Earldom status in 1658 despite apparently retaining their Gaelic roots. The son and heir of the first earl was killed in action in the second Anglo-Dutch war of 1665 – 7 and the title passed to his grandson, who then proceeded to die in infancy. The child’s uncle, the third earl, seems to have been the one who built the mansion we’re talking about in what must have been the beginnings of some halcyon days on College Green for the Clancartys culminating in the summoning of a Catholic dominated parliament at Chichester House directly opposite their front door by James II in 1689. The 3rd Earl’s son and heir, Donough McCarthy, shortly to become the 4th Lord Clancarty, enthusiastically joined the Jacobite cause, only for things to go pear-shaped at the Boyne. Within a short time of succeeding his father to the Earldom, Donough was attainted by the victorious Williamite parliament and his lands and titles forfeited in 1691. Donough himself was captured along with McElligott, the Jacobite governor of Cork, after the successful Williamite siege of the city and incarcerated in the Tower of London, from where he duly escaped in 1694, leaving a note for his gaolers pinned to a dummy in his cell bed. Clancarty was actually one of only a handful of people every to escape from the tower and evade recapture.
But we’re getting side-tracked, coming back to College Green, I suspect that the third gable in the Tudor print is a standard ‘Billy’ built up against the west wing of the Clancarty house in the years after the separation of this wing from the rest of the house, post 1691. The next element in the streetscape is a low infill structure that also appears in the Shaws Directory representation of the south side of College Green in 1850, by which time the Clancarty house and those adjoining it had vanished and new structures including the former General Post Office building had been erected in their place.
the south side of College Green as depicted in Shaw’s Directory of 1850. the flat parapeted house in the Tudor print may be the same structure that is here shown with twin roofs [no. 32]
The house, which you rightly say Tudor depicts with a flat parapet, is shown by Shaw to have had a pair of transverse roofs . . . . and yes this is troubling . . . . . and thank you Booooog for bringing this to peoples’ attention.
