Beresford Place

I just found this on a banner ad

http://www.beresfordhall.net/english/html/index.htm

A fantastic restoration and the way the mini – conference room facing onto Store St is done is a perfect execution of a relevant use being combined with the best practice conservation principles. 😉

Passed this way recently and was shocked by the accelerated deterioration of No. 4 Beresford Place it really is starting to look like the elements can get at the interior of this once fine townhouse.

Next door No.5 has acquired some new signage ‘Tutti Fruitee’ which has the most garish colours the exposed aluminium roller shutter also detracts seriously from this protected structure and all this within 30 metres of the Custom House Railings.

It is very true that lower Gardiner Street has seen quite a few of its seedier establishments go upmarket with sensitive refurbs in recent times.

However if these expensive refurbs are to have any impact on the streetscape then signage must be regulated and signs such as Tutti Fruitti will have to go. Has anyone made a comaplaint on this additional undermining of the architectural quality of what is left of Beresford Place?

That’s extraordinary ConK – surely the first city stock brick townhouses ever to be cleaned?!
Obviously many south Dublin ‘residences’ have been treated, but no inner city townhouses come to mind – incredible to see these as Gardiner first observed over 200 years ago!

What of the conservation implications though – the dark chocolate brown facades are after all part of Dublin now, and pretty rare at that, with most stock buildings in the inner city dating from a brief window around 1790.
And of course these two houses now stand out like sore thumbs in an otherwise sober environment.
Also, cleaning all of Gardiner Street would almost transform the place from grimy Dublin to the butter stone look of Georgian Bath! Is that something we want? It is after all what these buildings are…
Just a shame to see the dark elegant brown disappear, having developed over so many years.

It certainly goes to show how well brick ages in contrast to cut stone – really a great material.

The stock brick 🙂 – sandy coloured brick that’s loosely called ‘stock’, presumably after ‘London stock’ from which that whole city and indeed much of Georgian Britain is built. Here it is in the middle:

In spite of being completely dominant in London, it was rarely used in Dublin in the 18th century (though used a lot in side elevations and basic construction), with red being the favoured material right up until 1820, at which point things swung completely in the opposite direction with barely a single red brick being used in the city until 1850, with stock becoming completely dominant for these 30 years. This explains why most of the south inner suburbs dating from the 1830s are of brown stock – Lower Rathmines Rd, along the canal, Mountpleasant Square, Richmond area etc etc.

This is why streets like Gardiner St and Baggot St stand out as early examples of stock brick houses from about 1790-1820 or so, and even more so as they feature full-scale townhouses rather than the more modest houses of Belvedere Place etc. To see your buildings above cleaned from the dark brown to sandy stock is nothing short of a revelation in the inner city – can’t think of anywhere else that this has been done to a terrace. Is this the start of a new trend? All they need now is some grey sashes to blend the old craze with the new one 😉
Pity they forgot the chimneys…

@PVC King wrote:

Any progress 12 months on?

There was a tender awarded recently for the public realm/urban design, I presume based on the fact they want to pedestrianise Custom House Quay. If i find out more I will post it up your plasticness.