Henrietta Street
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I had a read through it there a few days ago.
There’s a lot of duplication throughout the doc (cut & pasting of whole sections) and it seems to be more of a wishlist rather than a plan of action. Having said that though, at least it recognises the importance of the street and will hopefully make any more DCC inaction difficult to justify.
I think the plan to leave the lampposts painted black is crazy, as would be the rebuilding of No 15 / 16 ???
Meanwhile, the brick soldier course of No 3 has started to disintegrate (ground floor front right) and it looks rather perilous.
I’ve got some pics taken over the last few days. I’ll try and attach em later.
Over on another thread the PVC King tells me that the DCC Legal Department are “reasonably Pro-active” when dealing with Housing Matters.
It is now over 30 years since I first began inhabiting Bolton Street`s motor engineering departments and using the Hen St as a short cut (!!) Through the Kings Inns.
In all of that period successive Corporations and now Councils have sat and watched as a piece of REAL old Dublin collapses …..
Probably waiting for JC Decaux to offer a multi screen adframe outside the benchers before they take any real action.
@hutton wrote:
Has anybody else had a look thru the DCC ‘plan’?
I keep hearing that cash is being earmarked for the st – and yet I see no mention of it in the doc :confused:
A plan without a budget iis not a plan – at best it ia an inventory. 🙁
Is this plan available on-line? If not, do you know how I would get a copy of it?
Thanks,
Phil
Thanks for that DJM,
Will do so in the next day or so.
In light of the above, the link below should be of interest. It outlines what a Conservation Plan actually is!
http://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/consplans/conserve.htm
My folks received this christmas card this year (it was the King’s Inns card, don’tcha know:cool: ), and I thought it might be worth posting it here. Maybe some of you have seen it before, but I hadn’t.
It’s by Stephen Conlin, and comes from a book called Dublin One Thousand Years, published by the O’Brien Press, so Copyright all of the above.
@alonso wrote:
Wednesday 13th December 2006: The Henrietta Street Conservation Plan will be launched today by Lord Mayor Councillor Vincent Jackson and the Dublin City Manager, John Tierney at the King’s Inns, Henrietta Street at 6pm. The Conservation plan re-affirms Henrietta Street as one of the principal architectural and urban ensembles of this country.
“This conservation plan is essential in highlighting the architectural vulnerabilities on Henrietta Street and will help to re-affirm its significance through the implementation of appropriate policiesâ€, said the Lord Mayor.
Don’t look now, it’s the latest Conservation plan at work. Just think how much easier it will be to ‘highlight architectural vulnerabilities’ on Henrietta Street with this imported white granite! I’m getting out my higlighter now…
Not that we needed a closeup:
And finally:
If this is how they treat one of the ‘principal architectural and urban ensembles of this country,’ it doesn’t bode well for the rest. Not that any of this is news. Still, the evidence is pretty appalling. Oh, and don’t forget to wave hello to our friend in timber cladding on the right.
It is an absolute disgrace! I completely echo the scepticism that Archiseek and contributors express about the Conservation Plan. Fine words but thats about it. The fact is the street has been in bits for years without any attention from DCC. Now when they do feel spurred to get invloved this is what happens! I notice the Plan also calls for more sympathetic street furniture….that’ll be stainless steel bollards then. What a scandal!
Thank you for posting those pictures manifesta. They say all that needs to be said about the council’s policy on the city’s old granite pavements, and indeed the situation on the ground with regard to the new Henrietta Street Conservation Plan.
And I challenge anyone to try and find out who in the council is actually responsible for a given job on the city’s pavements. I tried when this job was being done last month. There was some contractor from the sticks doing it:
“Who are you coordinating with in the council?”
“Who is overseeing and checking the work?”
“Who is ensuring consistency of the new pavement with the old?”The only piece of information I got was that there’s no more old granite to be had – “you can’t get it anymore”.
What did they do with all the old granite kerbing running down both sides of O’Connell Street before the repaving? the much old granite taken up for Luas? for the Talbot Street improvement scheme a few years ago? Where is it all?
Something doesn’t add up.Absolutely – there’s tons of this lying about somewhere, even from very recent works. What’s particularly ludicrous about this job is that the city-wide method of retaining just the kerbstones for continuity hasn’t even been adhered to, and yet kerbstones are the most widely available form of antique granite. There’s bucketloads of the stuff recently extracted from countless streets, with Upper O’Connell Street alone capable of lining Henrietta Street twice over. Indeed what was on this site beforehand? Are the paving works the completion of the reconstruction following from the collapse of the roadway into some of the basements? Where’s the granite gone that was here before?
To put this travesty in context, note the discrepancy between the public face of the Conservation Plan as highlighted in the below RT
I can’t find it using Google or the site search function but there was an article on Henrietta Street in the Sunday Times, yesterday. Among all the lofty aspirational statements from the council, there wasn’t a single mention of the irreparable damage done to the steet and it’s context by the appartment block on the corner. If I hadn’t seen the state of the street recently with my own eyes and through the photos on this page, the article would have given me hope as it’s all very positive. The council are very well coached for dealing with the media, I must say.
The funny thing is that there was no mention at all of the work on the footpath but obviously neither the reporter nor the council spokesperson had the neck to simply not mention it at all. So in the middle of the article, with no context or prior mention, there’s a sentence to the effect that the work on the footpath is “temporary” as they are trying to source old granite. I reckon this is pure spin; I imagine that it was only after the contractors left the site that, even with their myopia, they realised what a horrible mistake they’d made and now they’re trying to wriggle out of accepting responsibility for it. I mean come on! You don’t use granite – even cheap stuff – for temporary footpath surfacing. :rolleyes:
Sorry to be vague but there was also mention that the next thing on their agenda was the bollards. Having seen what they did to the footpath, this gives me a sinking feeling – how about some nice shiney polished stainless steel bollards to match that new granite? 😀 Out with the angle grinders, lads, there’s a few square holes to be cut out the old curbstones and bring a bucket of cement to secure the new bollards.
Interestingly, their midas touch with heritage is mirrored in their legal department. They are being sued by the previous owners of two of the buildings that the council CPOed a couple of years ago because of some dodgy sale they tried to arrange. Again, it smacks of headless chicken stuff with no long term plan for what they were going to do once the CPO was done.
Since the cellar collapses of No 7 the pavement & road above had been tarmacked over. As far as I can tell, the kerb was just cast insitu concrete.
A friend of mine was on the roof of the apartments during their construction and took it. Gives a great overview of the street alright 🙂
@DJM wrote:
Since the cellar collapses of No 7 the pavement & road above had been tarmacked over. As far as I can tell, the kerb was just cast insitu concrete.
Nice Pic DJM?
Unfortunately they’ve made the road look like the sole of that boot Charlie Chaplin eats in “The Gold Rushâ€. Surely there is another way to prevent parking than messing up the street with bollards!
I think that the new section of cobbles ties in very well with the rest of the roadway. That said, the workmanship of the 1990s cobbles is pretty woeful.
As far as I’m concerned the bollards look awful and should be removed. Is it not the case that many of the cellars that they’re supposedly protecting from heavy traffic have been filled in with concrete – and therefore strong enough to carry heavy loads?
The street should be pedestrianised and the bollards removed either way. Provision for parking could easily be made elsewhere.
Nice snap there DJM 🙂
On foot of the city council’s report, is there any news on whether theres a budget or schedule? :confused:
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