Frescati

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    • #704807
      Anonymous
      Participant

      Frescati house Blackrock. Does it ring a bell? It was where Roches Stores is now. Visit it’s homepage now at:
      http://www.frescati.homepage.com

    • #714331
      Anonymous
      Participant

      Richard,

      If only for the health of my optic nerve please remove that background tile.

      Content looks interesting but its too hard to read.

    • #714332
      McC
      Participant

      I’m disappointed to see that the discussion on Archers seems to have dried up (or at least it has disappeared from the list of “most recent active threads”). Perhaps the story of Frescati House reveals that few lessons have been learned since the 1980’s.

    • #714333
      Anonymous
      Participant

      The Frescati case is very important for the lessons that can be learned from it. After the Wood Quay controversy, it was the biggest conservationist fight in Irish history. Go check out the site…

    • #714334
      McC
      Participant

      In fact eh!… I did. David W, you seem to be missing my point somewhat. It was after reading and learning of the fate of Frescati house in the light of the recent discussion about Archers that I wondered that no systems had changed in order to prevent something like this happening again. In each of these cases the law i.e. planning permsission protecting these buildings from demolition was simply ignored? And when a building has been demolished its already too late!
      You mention Wood Quay, then there’s also Hume Street. Neither the law nor public opinion doesn’t seem to matter one whit. What lessons do you feel can be / have been learned – big business wins, money talks I suggest.

    • #714335
      Anonymous
      Participant

      Great site: Frescati is nice, are there any architectural drawings of it available????

    • #714336
      MG
      Participant

      good site….. but a white background would be easier to read

    • #714337
      Anonymous
      Participant

      There are no known architectural drawings of the building, but there are some interior photographs which are not displayed on the site. They can be found in the Millenium issue of the proceedings of the Blackrock Historical Society.

    • #714338
      Anonymous
      Participant

      This is a very informative site.It is good to hi-light the planning discrepancies that have occured and the loss of another aspect of our architectural heritage.Just one thing though as already mentioned the website design looks dreadful;Photoshop on prozac. Could I suggest changing the background to a more muted colour and the typeface/font to maybe Times New Roman(especially the heading ‘Frescati’). It would certainly enhance the subject matter, adding an air of solemnity.
      Look at the website of the Irish Georgian Society for an example but it does’nt have to be as boring.

    • #714339
      MAire
      Participant

      I think that it’s a great site. For others, if you can’t read the text, highlight it. Have you got anymore pictures of the house, Ricahrd?

    • #714340
      Anonymous
      Participant

      I remember the Frescati house scandal. I never saw the house before it was a ruin. It didn’t appear anything special, in fact, it looked so dilapidated that it was unsafe and beyond repair. I was amazed how well it looked only 12 years earlier though.

    • #714341
      Anonymous
      Participant

      Nice site, but get rid of the background tile

    • #714342
      Rory W
      Participant

      The problem with Frescati was that Dun Laoghaire Corporation (as it was then) basically condemned the house to Death because they zoned the land for a shopping development. Roches Stores could have bankrupted that corporation at the time by not allowing them to build there. But Roches acted disgracefully it pulling the house down, when I lived in Booterstown I refused to shop there, so that was my own little protest…

      Rory W

    • #714343
      McC
      Participant

      Good on you Rory W!
      In the light of recently establishing Mr. O’Callaghan’s business interest (ref: recent postings in Archers’ forum) I’d like to call for a boycott of his hotels.
      (Sorry for harping back to the Archers’ debacle but it’s like history has repeated itself.)

    • #714344
      Anonymous
      Participant

      Well not shopping in Roches won’t bother them too much if it’s just one person. Maybe hanging a big poster of frescati beside all their doors would bother them more…They’d just take them down. As for the Archers Garage, something more has to be done. There’s no denying that they were being “sneaky”. They knew they wouldn’t be allowed knock it down, that’s why they didn’t seek permission to obstruct the road. He’s going to get away with it. We can’t just sit back and decide to boycott the hotel, when it’s built. Protest, and make sure it’s not built until Archers is rebuilt. Archers is handy because not it is reasonably replaceable. Frescati wasn’t.
      Frescati was a different style, full of detail that wasn’t well documented or recorded. It can never be replaced

    • #714345
      Anonymous
      Participant

      I think Frescati is a plain but charming house. Roches have a debt to the Irish nation for destroying such an important part of Ireland.
      The lesson of Frescati seems to be a lesson not learnt too well. That lesson may have save The St. Helens house Radisson SAS, but countless others such as Archers and Jervis Hospital slip through our fingers. Our we so self absorbed we cannot fight this capitalism?
      Do we always have to give the greedy business man the priority? Prevention is better than cure, but cure is good too

    • #714346
      Rory W
      Participant

      Well it was just my little protest at what they did, I do however organise a lot of seminars in Dublin for the company I work for and try to recommend that we don’t use O’Callaghan Hotels for any of them, so I hope that I am making some difference to his profits.

      If enough people do a small protest, it can go a long way, and is far more effective than ‘direct’ protests.

      Rory W

    • #714347
      Anonymous
      Participant

      That’s right, but unless people know what has happened, how will they know to have their little protest?/

    • #714348
      Rory W
      Participant

      Unfortunately the average response would be ‘don’t care’, because the average Dubliner doesn’t care for architecture.

      I think that some kind of arts appreciation should be taught in the classroom, but then most of the teachers don’t care because they are so underesourced.

      But even if people were informed about what happened, how long would the memory last????

    • #714349
      McC
      Participant

      That’s why I’m glad Richard set up his site (and advertised its existance here) because I had never heard anything about it before (only moved to Dublin 12 years ago). Memory seems to last a while, judging from some of the input here, it’s impetus that seems to die away. Please not it’s happening again – ref: Carton Estate!!

    • #714350
      Anonymous
      Participant

      Not everybody has to appreciate good architecture to be annoyed about what Roches did… Just a but of awareness of what they did, (some bad PR) would make them anxious to try and make some kind of repayment.
      Unfortunately, Frescati will never be replaced, but I still believe Roches got away with murder, and have a debt to the country

    • #714351
      Anonymous
      Participant

      Frescati was a very nice building, how could they destryo such as valuable, unreplaceable piece of Architecture? (not mentioning history)

    • #714352
      Anonymous
      Participant

      Frescati was just another old house. What’s so bad about being without just another bland old dump? and there were plenty of other place associated with L E F

    • #714353
      Anonymous
      Participant

      You’re wrong Username.
      Frescati wasn’t just another house, it had plenty of features that distinguished it from the rest including the theatre, the painted ceiling, it’s special historical association with LEF. You don’t seem to know much about it.

    • #714354
      Anna
      Participant

      I thought it was spelled FrAscati

    • #714355
      McC
      Participant

      I think Richard clarifies where the Frascati spelling comes from on his site http://www.frescati.homepage.com

    • #714356
      john white
      Participant

      Blimey! You still haven’t got rid of THAT background?

    • #714357
      Anna
      Participant

      Leave the background alone-it’s a matter of opinion.

    • #714358
      McC
      Participant

      Are you serious Anna?
      My main problem with the background is that it distracts one – not just from reading the content of the site but from the REAL debate in this forum. So I mention the background again with trepidation and only to implore:
      Please Richard, just change it – it does nothing for nobody!

    • #714359
      john white
      Participant

      Opinion?!?

      All you have to do is LOOK at it.
      I like like gaudy kitsch more than well, anybody… but I just can’t force myself to read the text.

      God, why am I picking on such a trivial thing? Richard’s done a great job as it is just making the site.

      John
      [ps: change it]

    • #714360
      Rory W
      Participant

      John,
      Welcome back. Its been a long time without your exasperated comments.

      Rory W

    • #714361
      Anonymous
      Participant

      Yes, I believe the last post on the “Nation Building” forum holds the key to the absence (distraction)!! Congratulations,John!

    • #714362
      Anonymous
      Participant

      Thanks very much chaps! It’s very nice to be back.

      John

    • #714363
      Anonymous
      Participant

      It’s just a background tile, I don’t know why it’s causing such a fuss.
      But, since you’re all getting so annoyed over it, I may as well change it
      I didn’t want the site to look professional, that’s why I have the plasma text, the background tile, and the 3D buttons.

    • #714364
      Anonymous
      Participant

      Would it ever be possible to rebuild Frescati, and if it would, would it be classified as anywhere near as important as the original?

    • #714365
      Anonymous
      Participant

      Yes it probably would, but it cost a hand and leg, and it’d take ages to find copies or records

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