O’ Connell Street, Dublin

I thought the hot butter was a means of preservation rather than to create a delicacy of sorts. Perhaps the preservation gives them a different quality? Apparently it was very common in Ireland (according to the tour guide in the ESB townhouse anyway. I presume his facts are more genuine than the house).

It’s bizarre nowadays to think of hens not laying in the cold months. Here’s one process:

J. B., Strathnairn said,”I take a tub of any size and put a layer of common salt about an inch deep in the bottom; then grease the eggs with butter (of course salted butter), and place them in the salt with the small end down, so that they will not touch the wood of the tub near each other; then fill the vacancies with salt, and cover them again about an inch deep as before; then place another layer of eggs as before; then salt alternately till the tub is filled; then cover the top’ with salt, and put them where they will not freeze. I have kept eggs in this manner from September until April as. good as fresh. The grease on the Shell keeps the Salt from penetrating, thereby keeping the eggs fresh, while the saving qualities, of the salt keep them from becoming putrid. This recipe is both cheap and good, as the salt can be fed to cattle afterward.”

I’m sure the cattle couldn’t wait for that treat.

A timely article 😉

Good to see the review is upcoming at last. The simple reality is that this SPAC was never enforced on any level other than when planning applications came in and cursory reference was made to the area’s designation. Otherwise forget it.

Walk anywhere along any of the streets in the area and you will be hard pressed to pass more than three units in sucession where at least one if not violating the controls. The greatest farce is without question Supermacs on O’Connell Street, where posters are tacked across every available inch of glass and a loudspeaker is mounted to the exterior of the building, blasting music out so loudly it can be heard at the other side of the street. It simply beggars belief, contravening a number of SPAC provisions, not to mention being but a few doors down from the GPO. And of course because they got away with it here, they simply copied and pasted the same practices, to the letter, in their Westmoreland Street branch where they’re also getting away with it.

What is most frustrating about all of this is not so much the tangible results of these practices across the entire area, but the fact that this planning tool, as brought in under the 2000 Act as a legal instrument, is effectively being proven not to work. Whether that is down to inaction on the part of authorities or the unenforceable nature of the legislation in some cases is a matter of debate, but it would appear overwhelmingly to be the former. This is supposed to be the flagship SPAC and ACA in Ireland. If it is not enforceable by the largest local authority in the land, what hopes can we hold for the rest of the country?

Ah it has its other meaning too, if admittedly a loaded word.

Two notable developments on the Upper street of late:

As already mentioned, Hammam Buildings and associated structures in Horace O’Rourke’s terrace are currently being cleaned and in most cases the windows being replaced by more appropriate ‘bronzed’ frames. One granite elevation has already been shorn of its scaffold and the transformation is surprisingly remarkable. It looks exactly like those crisp images of the newly completed sparkling terraces you see in 1920s photographs of the street. Very peculiar seeing it in real life; it gives a vivid sense of what large parts of the street looked like post-1916 and 1922. The Portland dressings particularly stand out. Sadly the hideous mirrored windows have not been replaced in that particular case and arguably stand out even more now.

Secondly, National Irish Bank have shut their Upper O’Connell Street premises, absorbing the branch into their College Green operation, as part of a wider restructuring of the bank.

(2006)

This is a signifcant development for the street, freeing up one of its largest retail floorplates while (presumably) releasing onto the market one of its finest buildings – a premises that has stagnated for a number of years with its inactive pavement frontage and rather tattered – bordering on sleazy – appearance.

So what of a future use? Significantly with banks, the entire premises is usually in single ownership.

The shopfront in this case is probably not original, but nonetheless makes a brave attempt to support that hefty pile of pretension perched atop. Designed by Scottish architect David Bryce, it was built in 1868 as the Dublin headquarters of Standard Life Assurance. It could make the most elegant of small hotels with a smart restaurant at ground floor level, but there’s no fuel in the hotel market at the minute. The latter business isn’t much better.

Whoever moves in here must set a new standard for uses/retailing on O’Connell Street – a major opportunity that cannot be allowed to be wasted. One positive of the Carlton development is that this will signifcantly ease the perceived risk for any high profile or so-called ‘higher order’ use that might otherwise have reservations about moving in here. Though Metro may put paid to that…

Yip. Though in the case of the 1920s terrace, it’s just the State-interest sections getting treatment – i.e. the southern 40 per cent or so.

A view from December 2005, shortly after the trees came down.