Re: Re: Grafton Street, Dublin

One of life’s eternal mysteries, Daragh…

Interesting photograph there, Paul. It appears to show the same glazed shopfront with curved glass and granite plinth, but different pilasters and fascia.

And sure enough, when you do a bit of crawling, a nice bit of matching pink granite exposes itself beneath the modern timber pilasters.

Viewed head-on, you can see how the shopfront clearly projects out into the street in a skewed fashion.

The building in late 2011 before the shopfront was mauled.

We mustn’t forget that the Boots building is also one of the oldest on Grafton Street, and was probably gable-fronted originally. Here it is in Shaw’s Pictorial Directory of 1850, showing a squat little attic storey of apparent Regency vintage that almost certainly replaced a gable storey. A projecting closet return remains to the rear, while the chopped-out early 18th century chimneystack and replacement supporting decorative column can still be observed inside the shop, now surrounded by delightful frothy plasterwork.

A wonderful tell tale indicator of the building’s former gable-fronted status is this beautifully ornate hopper that remains stranded, swamped by the stucco of the facade, a considerable distance down from the new parapet valley.

One would like to think of it as original to the construction of the house and hence one of the oldest surviving in the city, but it does appear to be 19th century cast-iron, complete with lettering of some kind. A niave little face also adorns the collar.

The figure at first floor level, presumably Hygieia wth serpent, can just about be made out in Paul’s earlier picture.