Re: Re: How We Built Britain: Dublin

Henrietta Street may have been embarrassing but it’s a fact. The street’s a marvel and it’s shameful that it’s still in such an appalling state, not to mention the atrocity that’s just been completed on its lower half.

But it’s not just this street. With the exception of North Great George’s St, the whole of the northside Georgian core is a wreck. Mountjoy Square is still crumbling along with the west side of Parnell Square, the last fragment of Beresford Place, Blessington St, Eccles St. and Capel St. Day by day these treasures are being denuded of architectural detail.

The problem is not a lack of money, it’s the lack of a proper conservation culture. In the UK (and Italy and Holland and Spain…), these streets would be rigorously protected. PVC windows and dereliction simply wouldn’t be issues. A building as important as the Ambassador cinema wouldn’t be ravaged by cheap plastic signage. An intervention as brutal as the (I’m made of glass therefore I’m invisible) extension onto the masterpiece that is Charlemont House wouldn’t even be contemplated.

We need to stop flogging this ‘Georgian Dublin’ crap to tourists and actually preserve the buildings.