Re: Re: ‘Dutch Billys’

If anything, I think the earlier image is the more convincing as a representation. Where did you find that Wynne drawing? If this is the Rev. Samuel Wynne, his draughtsmanship seems to be pretty accurate even if the late Knight was a bit dismissive of his ‘feathery’ watercolour style.

If you can find it, Sautelle Roberts [son of Waterford’s favourite son; John Roberts] is supposed to have painted a view of Waterford City from the east to go with his dodgy 1795 view of the city from the west. There’s a chance he may have splodged in something to represent the rear of the Lady Lane houses.

We may be homing in on the owner/builder of the Lady Lane house [no. 22, outlined in red on the 1834 town map and 25 inch O.S. map], but it will take a bit more digging to be sure.

the 1834 town map showing Lady Lane with no. 22 closing the vista down St. Francis Lane

the 25 inch O.S map showing Lady Lane again with the parish boundaries marked between St. Michael’s, St. Peter’s, St. Olav’s and Trinity Parish

Alderman Ambrose Congreve is recorded as being resident on the south side of the street in 1732 in a dwelling house three properties from the Presbyterian Meeting house [outlined in blue] in St. Olav’s Parish. Unusually for a relatively small street, the houses on Lady Lane divide into four different parishes with only a handful being in St. Olav’s.

Congreve became mayor of Waterford in 1736 and was also M.P. for both the county and the city in the 1730s. If no. 22 does turn out to have been Congreve’s town house, and if we can confirm that it was originally triple gabled, that would be a particularly good fit as I think it is emerging that the curvilinear gabled tradition here was especially strong in the 1720s and 30s among the members of city and town corporations and among the prosperous merchant classes, two groups that were systemically inter-linked.

In a Waterford context, the Corporation commissioned Van der Hagan painting of 1736, depicting the Corporation’s grant project to extend the Waterford Quays, illustrates the status of the gabled tradition as something of a corporate style at this time.