glass windows in Ireland

Garrett,

There is truth to window tax which also related to doors hence the half door so that light could enter the house without glass. I suggest that you visit The National Museum of Agriculture and Rural Life at Johnstown Castle Co Wexford for further information.

I have a book at home called Irish Glass and it deals with the evolution of both table wear and window glass; there was a very large glass factory in Abbey St Dublin in the late 18th and early 19th century before the City officials had it moved to Ringsend. Cork and Waterford also had extensive capacity in the 18th Century

Garett,

You may wishto look up the Window tax. It replaced the Hearth tax under William III in 1696 and taxed houses on the number of their windows. The tax varied from time to time and on the basis of the number and size of windows. It was abolished in 1851 and replaced by a House tax. The window tax gave rise to the English expression “daylight robbery”.

There was a book published 5 or so years ago called ‘Legacy of Light’ written by Nessa Roche (published by Wordwell) which should have some of the information you require. It looks at windows from an architectural-historical perspective (though as Thomond Park pointed out a while ago in a different thread, it stops short of dealing with the 20th century). If it’s not in your college library, it is definitely in the UCD architecture library at Richview. It would be easy to obtain on inter-library loan.
Best of luck.

Yes, it’s an important point to make that there was a threshold of about 6-8 windows in a property in the 1800s anyway, only above which the tax was imposed.
So in fact it wasn’t window tax that caused humble cottages to have such small windows, or for them to have so few, but rather the price of the glass itself which was the real cost. The fact that so many cottages only have two windows to the front and one or two to the rear, well below the limit, serves to demonstrate this.

Glass was made in Ireland Garrett, but it seems the majority of it was imported from Britain – presumably economies of scale kicking in.
Glass was always a prized commodity until about the 1770s when the large Georgian window became as common as muck really – seems to have lost its top-drawer appeal by then what with every Tom Dick and Harry having fashionably large windows installed 🙂
It seems to have been the first time that glass technology really changed architecture, in urban areas at least, and not the 1850s with plate glass as you’d tend to immediately assume.

Though you would have to ask, why did such large crowns only come on stream in the 1770s? Why not much earlier considering that the same method (seems) to have been used for all that time? Did blowers just become more skilled and refine their practices?

@Graham Hickey wrote:

when the large Georgian window became as common as muck really – seems to have lost its top-drawer appeal by then what with every Tom Dick and Harry having fashionably large windows installed 🙂

🙂
Botanic Gardens, Dublin. Don’t know the date, I’m afraid, but I’ve always loved this building for its comically large window. Anyone know the reason for it, or was it just display?

Also, apologies for the quality (again with the quality! 😮 ).

How ridiculous 😀

Strange how it covers two floors too – completely throws the scale of the building, almost like a bit of theme park eye-trickery!
There must be a stairwell there – or maybe there is still a floor division at the base of the fanlight, like those in the White House? 🙂

Yup- it’s hilarious, isn’t it?
I think there was a net curtain in the window when I took the picture, so I couldn’t see through. My initial thought was that there must be a double-height room behind; some kind of hall or reception area. The fact that it’s in the Botanic Gardens made me wonder if it wasn’t in some way connected to the Gardens’ functions – as a lecture room, say, requiring light for exhibits or for slide shows – though the date of the house and the date of the Gardens would give the lie to that idea, methinks. Either of your suggestions, Graham, could be possibilities.
It’s certainly an odd building overall, and fairly obviously of more than one period. the mish-mash of windows says as much to me. Perhaps the large window is a later insert? In fact, looking again, it’s possible the fanlight is blind?
So many questions… 🙂

PS I had a feeling it would get a reply from you, the windows man, though I’m surprised you didn’t already know of it. 😉 (Turn right when you go in through the main gates, if I remember correctly.)

Was only on the Botanics years ago – still haven’t been since the restorations 😮
It’s just too damn awkward to get to, must make the effort some day soon…

As for windows – ha! Most of what little I know is ‘self-taught’ if that’s the term from trudging the streets, i.e. to be taken with a quarry-load of salt and a cynical outlook on life 😉

I checked the original print again last night, and it seems you’re right- a section of banister is just visible in the first segment of the fanlight on the left, running from lower right to upper left, so it must be a stairwell as you say (not visible in my inferior quality submission above).
The Botanics are well worth a visit since the restorations. The curvilinear range is fantastic- a glass-lover’s paradise!
And don’t be too hard on yourself about the windows 🙂 – looking and looking again is the best training one could have. There’s no substitute for the artefact itself. And I’ve never known you to be too far off in your assessments, so you must be doing something right. 😎

Roche says that the Window Tax wasn’t introduced in Ireland until 1799, so there was no legislative restrictions at least on the amount of windows one could have in Ireland. By contrast the window tax introduced in Britain sometime in the 1690s seems to have had a major impact on buildings there – you often see Queen Anne-period buildings with windows bricked up, especially gable wall windows which naturally would be the first to be ‘extinguished’ in favour of principal facades.

I remember there was a lot of scoffing at the mock-bricked up windows on Prince Charles’ Poundbury housing scheme when first launched – an indication perhaps of just how widespread a practice it was in the early 18th century.

In Ireland, the introduction of the tax in 1799 seems to have had little to no impact at all which is interesting. I can think of the very odd bricked up gable window in some Georgian townhouses in Dublin, but these could be as much down to the re-arrangement of interior accommodation as the impact of the tax….
I presume 1799 is also when excise duty on glass was introduced to Ireland: us having been saved the imposition of the same in the UK in the 1740s.

It’s difficult to assess the impact of either of these measures as so much of development in the capital at least almost came to a halt at exactly the same time. Also architecture was changing, favouring smaller two-bay houses instead of three-bay so again the changes in window use are hard to measure.

Something I would love is to know a building where such bricked up windows can still be seen. I understand that they are commonly found in Glasgow where similar taxes were imposed; does anybody know of one in Dublin?

Yes. In one of Dublins most obvious and famous buildings.The old parliament building, now the bank of Ireland College Green.

http://www.irish-architecture.com/buildings_ireland/dublin/southcity/college_green/bankofireland_curvedwall_lge.html

Those niches would have been an architectural consideration, not necessitated by the tax, although they do give that impression alright.
They’re partly used to tie in with Gandon’s ‘niched’ Lords block, but primarily because there’s nothing behind those screen walls – no need for windows!

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