Re: Re: ‘Dutch Billys’

There is a copy of the fantastic ‘Panoramic View of Waterford’, by Willem van der Hagen, dated 1736, in the the ‘Arts’ page of the Irish Times today. It show nearly half of the quay frontage occupied by three and four storey ‘Dutch Billys’. Sorry about the poor quality of the copy, but it’s still worth picking out a few of the bigger houses for comment.

The pink and yellow houses, marked with a red and a blue X respectively are five bay, central door compositions, each crowned by a single gable, with more than a passing resemblence to the Marrowbone lane and Ward’s Hill houses in Dublin, that have tended to be regarded as odd and rare manifestations of the ‘Dutch Billy’ tradition.

Further along the quays to the right, I marked with a green X another five bay mansion with a central door, but this time the composition is crowned by three uniform gables, very similar to Speaker Foster’s House on Molesworth Street, which has also been regarded as a bit of an oddball.

More evidence of how developed and widespread the ‘Dutch Billy’ tradition had become in Ireland by the third decade of the 18th century!