Shopfront race to the bottom
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Late ’90s pic.
TodayI think this terrace is worth a few more words … nowhere else to talk about them really. All protected structures. Built 1820s.
They’re looking a lot better now than they used to. As can be seen in the late ’90s pic, they were fairly rough. Seemed touch and go whether they’d be kept. Another similar terrace on Winetavern Street beside Christchurch was demolished in the ’60s, so I think it was good that these were kept.
The three on the left, Nos. 82, 83 & 84, were restored circa 2000. The timber Doric shopfronts and Wyatt sash windows had been either inappropriately replaced, altered or were in poor condition, so all were remade (some small elements of original shopfront fabric may remain). Arguably more surviving original joinery fabric could have been retained.
The facades got a type of flush pointing in lime mortar, which was the DCC Conservation Office-approved pointing at the time. That might seem a bit crude to us now with all this fine tuck pointing going on to period buildings around the city, but it was a big step forward to get people to stop cement pointing.
This was the early days of the P&D Act 2000 so it was a major achievement to get buildings like these in a more marginal area restored to a decent standard. As far as I know the DCC Conservation Officer at the time, Nicci Mathews, did a lot of work on this and helped owners receive available PS grants for the work.
If you read the planning permission conditions for Nos. 83 & 84 (Ref. 2039/00), there’s a sense of being dragged kicking and screaming into the age of the new conservation legislation. Eg. Condition 4:
(I) Refurbishment works to the roof shall allow for the retention of the profile of the original roof. Replacement slates shall be of natural slate to match the existing. (ii)The existing facades and rear walls of the building shall be retained and restored and shall allow for the rebedding of the original parapet level and the reinstatement of the third floor window opes and arches. The method and materials for the cleaning, re- pointing or replacement of brickwork /masonry shall be the subject of written agreement with the Planning Authority following the submission of details. (iii) A detailed statement of the method for the retention, repair and where appropriate replacement of the windows in both buildings shall be submitted for written agreement prior to incorporation into the proposed development. (iv) All existing internal architectural features of note including the architraves, skirting, picture rails etc. shall be retained, protected and made good. Reason: To ensure the protection of the architectural character of these Protected StructuresAn applicant today would have to submit a detailed schedule for all of that repair work to a PS themselves before an application would even be validated.
So the restoration of this building in the terrace a year or two ago maybe gives a better idea of de present state of knowledge in conservation.
As gunter said, it would probably be nice someday to restore the two at the end, Nos. 78 & 79, whose window opes were changed, to the original Wyatt window and Doric shopfront design, and also infill the gaps to each side of the terrace thanks to DIT Bolton Street’s car park. As seen in this drawing from Shaw’s Directory of 1850, the shopfronts of the two at the end had already been knocked into one by 1850, but the Wyatt sashes were still in situ upstairs.
The plans of the building at each extremity of the terrace taper away to nothing at the back, which I suppose tells you that the terrace itself was an infill, & was dictated existing buildings. Adds to their peculiarity.
Seen better on Live Maps actually: Capel St.
@Devin wrote:
And in early ’09.
I see that somebody’s seen the light, or sign as it were – and signs on, the neon sign of “Salon Urody Solarium” and illuminated plastic box have gone.
Devin must be a happy bunny 😀
Yeah somebody must have complained.
But if you read back, hutton, the consensus was that it had its charms.
Nice to see them restored. It reminds me of calling the fire brigade to report that one of them had caught fire late at night about 10 years ago. From the “late 90s” photos, it looks like it must have been number 84. It was a dramatic situation; the upstairs was rented out as a flat or flats and a woman was screaming on the street that some-one called Jimmy – presumably her son or boyfriend – was still in it. As it turns out, the building was empty. The drama was heightened by the fact that it seemed there was a store of fireworks in the burning flat.
Ah Capel Street eh?!
I must admit I find this (otherwise charming) terrace a complete mess. The brickwork’s all over the place, the windows for the most part a disaster, and most properties exhibit a lack of basic maintenance. Even with the most recent, and by all accounts most accomplished, restoration, a red mortar and colourwash was used on what is yellow stock brick in a yellow stock brick terrace! I mean, is it just me?
This isn’t purist diatribe, this is basic stuff. We live in a city where the fundamental building blocks are Georgian brick barns. If we cannot even tackle the most basic of issues affecting these, then what hope can we hold for the wider city? Botched detailing on these simple buildings is always so painfully evident.
Otherwise, a charmer of a terrace with some admirable efforts interspersed along its length.
@gunter wrote:
a yellow brick is just a failed red brick, in my book.
Okay, so a debate for another day, but there’s no way that remark is being allowed slip through the net!
@GrahamH wrote:
Even with the most recent, and by all accounts most accomplished, restoration, a red mortar and colourwash was used on what is yellow stock brick in a yellow stock brick terrace! I mean, is it just me?
I have a feeling that, in many cases, red mortar was use in the original pointing with the lime putty tuck detail, is this not true? Presumably it was used to remove the shame of the yellow stock brick!
I think it works superbly.
. . . yellow brick; . . . two words; . . . . half-baked 🙂
:rolleyes: 🙂
A traditional technique it may be, but going by Devin’s 1990s photograph, that building had never been colourwashed! Even if it had, logic would dictate the simple removal of whatever fragments remained rather than compromising the wider terrace. As far as I’m concerned, such practices are akin to the hideous Victorian obsession with smearing render over facades as a quick fix solution to fleeting whims of fashion.
Further observations on the merits or otherwise of brick colouring would perhaps be better left to a brick thread (oh the prospect), but I shall leave you in the capable hands of architect, Isaac Ware, quoted in the Department of Environment’s Guide to the Repair of Historic Brickwork, launched only last night in the Custom House.
In his Complete Body of Architecture from 1756, Ware ‘describes the mid-century change in taste in England from ‘hot’ to ‘cool’ colours, red bring considered ‘too fiery and disagreeable to the eye’.
Someone get this man a brandy!
You definitely do see examples around town of very old stained red facades which are are now worn and revealing a different original brick colour.
The job on the Capel Street building is very much in the ‘faded Dublin redbrick’ tradition. Ok perhaps there is an argument that he/she who did it was maverick and should have kept the yellow brick of the others. But I don’t think it has compromised the terrace. It more highlights that the other brick facades need some tlc. In regard to the 3 mentioned earlier which were restored in 2000, it would probably best to repoint them along the lines of the tuck-pointed one (whatever about staining). That flush pointing they received is more suitable for back elevations; not really presentabe for a front elev.
Job just done on North Great George’s Street, below, in a deeper Georgian red (possibly by the same firm who did the Capel facade, as pointing & lack of plaster in reveals as seen in Malton prints etc. is same).
Btw Graham, what do you mean by the windows of the Capel Street terrace “are for the most part a disaster”? Four out of the five Wyatt buildings have accurate replica sashes, which is pretty good for a group of buildings in Dublin.
@Devin wrote:
I think this terrace is worth a few more words …
Fantastic comparison with the pics Devin. Very interesting.
Oh, for the simple cool plainness of yellow, mellow brick as a relief from all that fiery red – I feel atouch of the vapours!
Here, brick was not used at all as a building material until well into the 19thC and the coming of cheap imports from England by rail. Traditionally harled rubble would have been used until the more widespread use of sandstone ashlar in the great tenement building booms in the mid 19thC; as it happens, red sandstone is always considered superior to ‘blond’ (yellow), which was the first to be used widely in the city. I don’t agree, but red did keep its colour better through soot (until the great – and sometimes disastrous – stone-cleaning binge of the 1980s) and was associated with more up-market areas.
I’ve always liked London stock brick and it’s worthwhile remarking that old red brick in, say, Amsterdam is often painted over in very dark colours. On the other hand, red brick in all the countries around the Baltic has a charm that it’s hard to beat.GrahamH/Devin, have you seen the remodelled EBS branch on Baggot Street, opposite Toner’s. Some of what’s exposed is worthwhile but I think some of the touches are ill advised, particular the signage (if that’s the permanent choice, it was put up after the pic was taken). All said, it’s a hell of a lot better than the red and white tack that was there before
That’s the original (sic.) front of what used to be a pork butcher’s next door to what was a branch of The Monument Creamery. All those Baggot Street memories. We walked from Upper Mount Street to The Green most afternoons to fish for pinkeens (but we also got money for the jam jars from the ragman in Herbert Lane to buy sweets in Moyter’s so they weren’t all used for the little fishies). Tesco (let me puke) is where H. William’s was, the first ‘supermarket’ in Dublin, and further up in Merrion Row was The Venetian Café. That was only very sometimes but the mammy always lifted us up to see through the railings of the Huguenot Cemetery, which she called Limbo, where we were going to go when we died because the neighbour children always taunted us for not being baptised.
The poor old Huguenots, I bet they had no idea they were going to end up in Limbo!
Marcel, sis eez not ev-en
@Devin wrote:
Ok perhaps there is an argument that he/she who did it was maverick and should have kept the yellow brick of the others. But I don’t think it has compromised the terrace. It more highlights that the other brick facades need some tlc.
I could not disagree more! What has happened in respect of the red wash is ridiculous, and typical of the slapdash approach taken to brick conservation in Dublin, where any work is deemed acceptable as long as it is undertaken by a professional using an historic technique. For some reason, the standards we apply to plasterwork, joinery, window repair and ironwork – generally repaired according to textbook models, standards and accepted best practice – is rarely applied to brickwork here. It’s as if the repair and conservation of brickwork is deemed to beyond the expertise of the planner or architect, and is regularly left to the whims – however professional the quality of their work may be – of the bricklayer, to whom is often left to advise on the technique and mortars used, in spite of this being critical to the entire project.
There is absolutely no way that any building in a perfectly intact uniform terrace should be dyed an alternate colour to that of adjacent buildings. Not only does this impair the appearance of the entire terrace, it also does an injustice to the intelligence of our forebears to suggest they would be so aesthetically and socially stupid to think nobody would notice a narrow sliver of a property in a uniform terrace built of cheap brick being dyed to appear more regular or expensive. With substantial houses on the squares, yes – on a beanpole of a secondary commercial terrace, most certainly not. I appreciate a photograph shall now miraculously appear from nowhere to dispute this, but that would not be typical!
To apply the above case to elsewhere in the city, we would have smatterings of red-washed houses popping up along the length of Gardiner Street, or half of Heytesbury Street transformed overnight into a tribute to the wine gum. We often give out on this site about modern property owners compromising unified compositions through render application, paint colours and window replacement. This is the conservation version of this, and very simply should not have been permitted by planners. The correct course of action was to execute the same high quality job using a yellow mortar (and arguably wigged).
Regarding the windows, from what I’ve made out from passing, the various groupings of reproduction sashes differ slightly from each other, some quite drastically. Coupled with the mismatched brickwork, there’s a lot of clutter up there.
Just for the record, I think the red-washed building is an outstanding job, including the pointing, with the best choice of colour and standard of application I have yet encountered in Dublin. Likewise about the windows. Just a shame it’s the wrong building. Agreed the North Great George’s Street job is excellent. The plum is fruity but it works. The buff tuck is beautiful.
Arrgh there really is another thread in this! I would barely consider the Capel Street building to be “redbrick” (now) – that’s why I gave the George’s St. example. The Capel St. one is not strong enough to contrast adversely with the others IMO. And yes you defo do see different colour brick facades in important streetscapes around the city. The north side of Merrion Square is a right mish mash.
@gunter wrote:
whoever did the restoration of that building (two – three years ago) deserved a medal, imo.
restoration gunter? surely a word that does not apply in this instance, a simple dislike of yellow brick cannot justify such a significant alteration, particularly in the context of a reasonably coherent terrace 😮
@GrahamH wrote:
There is absolutely no way that any building in a perfectly intact uniform terrace should be dyed an alternate colour to that of adjacent buildings. Not only does this impair the appearance of the entire terrace, it also does an injustice to the intelligence of our forebears to suggest they would be so aesthetically and socially stupid to think nobody would notice a narrow sliver of a property in a uniform terrace built of cheap brick being dyed to appear more regular or expensive. With substantial houses on the squares, yes – on a beanpole of a secondary commercial terrace, most certainly not. I appreciate a photograph shall now miraculously appear from nowhere to dispute this, but that would not be typical!
To apply the above case to elsewhere in the city, we would have smatterings of red-washed houses popping up along the length of Gardiner Street, or half of Heytesbury Street transformed overnight into a tribute to the wine gum. We often give out on this site about modern property owners compromising unified compositions through render application, paint colours and window replacement. This is the conservation version of this, and very simply should not have been permitted by planners. The correct course of action was to execute the same high quality job using a yellow mortar (and arguably wigged).
+1 !!!
@Peter Fitz wrote:
restoration gunter? surely a word that does not apply in this instance, a simple dislike of yellow brick cannot justify such a significant alteration, particularly in the context of a reasonably coherent terrace 😮
Restoration: ”Representation of original form, or appearance”
Peter, I think this term is perfectly applicable in this case. As far as I know, it was standard practice in the 19th century for facades constructed in yellow stock brick to be pointed up in red dyed mortar, presumably in a very reasonable attempt to match the appearance of the predominant brick finish in the adjoining streetscape.
Without having examined the Capel Street building in detail, and leaving aside my own entirely justified dislike of inferior, second rate, buff coloured brickwork, I took it that the architect in this instance had done his research, found that this was indeed the case, and courageously specified and oversaw a magnificent piece of conservation/restoration.
I know this sounds a bit like ‘everyone’s out of step but my Johnny’, but I thinks that this is actually the case here. To properly restore the unity of the terrace, it’s the other buildings that need to get their act together, this guy has shown the way.
This is the only example of original red mortar in use on yellow stock brick that I have to hand, and it comes from a bit later in the 19th century, but I’ll keep an eye open for better examples if we’re heading into a full blown disagreement on this.
@gunter wrote:
The poor old Huguenots, I bet they had no idea they were going to end up in Limbo!
Marcel, sis eez not ev-en
Alas, poor old Limbo! Either it never existed, or is empty, but certainly is no more. Pulled down by the last Pope; probably not compliant with the original PP.
K.Ok before we start going on expeditions for photos in support of points, this thread needs to stay OT.
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In 2006, Gorta put up what can only be described as an obnoxious shop fascia on their Capel Street building.
It forms the south piece of a rather sophisticated group of unified buildings at Nos. 133-137, all protected structures.
A complaint was duly lodged (yeah yeah, death to the poor). Incredibly, the reply from DCC Planning Enforcement was that “no enforcement action is warranted in relation to this sign as it is similar to others on this street”. I would love to scan and put the reply letter up here to illustrate it in black & white, but planning enforcement documentation is not public unlike planning apps.
And now, in their report to accompany the recent ACA proposal for the street, DCC cite Gorta as a bad example of a Capel Street shopfront! See thumbnail.
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