Thomas Street & James Street, Dublin!

In an encouraging move, the hideous additional shopfront to the former Cash Converters at the corner of Meath Street and Thomas Street was dismantled yesterday, apparently in favour of re-using the original, robustly detailed, Victorian facia above. After this branch of Cash Converters folded last year, a planning application went in for change of use to a bookies, which isn’t maybe the ideal use, but at least if it comes with a restoration of the shopfront, we’ll get something out of it.

the old shopfront getting a lick of paint this morning

If the Corpo twist their arm a bit more, they might get them to clean the peeling paint off the upper floors and restore the fine brick facades to this prominent corner that were, with the shopfront restoration, a civic improvement target in the recent Dublin Civic Trust report on Thomas Street.

Civic Trust photo-montage of the corner cleaned up

Thank God the yellow is gone. I had a very robust exchange with a planning enforcement officer, who despite being directed to the relevant references to garish colours in ACAs and Conservation Areas in the Development Plan was refusing to enforce the Plan.

Group mounts 90-day rescue for Thomas Street
One-third of street derelict, vacant or demolished

Olivia Kelly

One of Dublin most historic streets is in danger of sliding into irrevocable decline, due to “State-sponsored dereliction”, a city business organisation has said.

More than one-third of the buildings on Thomas Street in the southwest inner city are derelict, vacant or have been demolished, and this figure will grow if urgent action is not taken, the Thomas Street Business Association has said.

Businesses and organisations including the Guinness Storehouse, the National College of Art and Design and the Digital Hub Development Agency have come together to produce a 90-day plan to “save” the street. The plan aims to improve both the appearance and the perception of the street over a three-month period, to encourage shoppers and tourists to use the street and to show how it can again be an attractive and viable destination for enterprise.

Damaged image
“Although almost 1,000 people per day walk the street to visit the Guinness Storehouse, few find it a welcoming place. Vagrancy, dirt, litter, vacancy, dereliction, poorly maintained footpaths, lanes and buildings suggest the area is unsafe, a pocket of crime – a place to hurry through and not dwell,” association spokesman Killian O’Higgins said.

“In fact An Garda Síochána report no significant difference in issues affecting visitors to Thomas Street compared to other areas in the city. But perception is reality,” he said.

Over the course of the 90 days, local businesses will be improving their appearance by repainting shopfronts, and removing redundant signs, wiring and external shutters.

The NCAD will host a series of events including a Visual Artists Ireland conference, and graduates and students will be exhibiting work in shops along the street.

A “business and visitor hub” will be opened to market and promote the street. There will be a number of cultural and entertainment events, including the Liberties Festival, and Dublin City Council will undertake “public realm” improvements to clean and fix paths and roads.

Nama buildings
Pressure will also be brought to bear on the National Asset Management Agency to clean up buildings within its control and make them available for temporary uses.

“State-sponsored dereliction is responsible for so many of the problems of the street. The State entered into agreement with developers, and large sites were amalgamated but then never developed.

“Now we also have increasing numbers of buildings in the control of Nama that are also being left vacant and are falling into dereliction. This dereliction of duty is resulting in the dereliction of the street,” Mr O’Higgins said.

The association’s plan follows a report by the Dublin Civic Trust for the city council one year ago which found that “site assembly”, where groups of buildings were bought up for large-scale development, was spreading dilapidation throughout the street as intact buildings next to unsightly wasteground became abandoned.

Fading heritage
The report also warned that rare early 18th-century buildings, some hidden behind later Georgian facades, were in danger of being lost entirely. The 90-day campaign gets under way this evening with a “townhall-style” meeting open to the public at 6.30pm in the NCAD.

http://www.irishtimes.com/group-mounts-90-day-rescue-for-thomas-street-1.1376936

Does this old lane – Marshalsea Lane off Thomas Street – still exist?:

Seen in the bottom left-hand corner here:

On the 1847 map:

It appears to still exist here on Bing Maps Birdseye:

It would come out here between these two old shopfronts:

Archiseek Vanished Buildings post on the Marshalsea prison complex itself – https://archiseek.com/2012/1775-the-marshalsea-dublin/#.Udi5-jusiSo

The only thing that appears to be still standing from the Marshalsea is the calp stone ball court walls at the northern, bottom end of the site. Quite an atmospheric remnant they are too.

Certainly a site that needs some attention though, including maintaining old lanes, if some sensible regeneration is ever going ahead.

The lane is still hanging on in there – it’s still more or less the same as the last picture above, but is obviously closed off at both ends. It should certainly be incorporated into any future development on the site (as should Conways shopfront and whatever surprises the interior of Lynchs pub have for us too)

Further up the street (at Mount Brown) is this building. Anyone know anything about it?

@Morlan wrote:

A curious little lane. You can still see the auld bolard in your first picture on StreetView here: http://goo.gl/maps/BRWhe

Thanks. Amazing that bollard survives!

@Morlan wrote:

Marshalsea Lane, Thomas Street. Site of Robert Emmet’s principal depot in 1803. These depots were used to manufacture and store war material. Taken from “Footprints of Emmet” published in 1903.

I presume this is taken at the crossroads of the lane, looking west, as the Windmill tower which is in the adjoining site can be seen in the background.

This image appears to be taken at the same spot looking in the opposite direction – ie. out to Bridgefoot Street.

Aaah great to see. Detailing is lovely. Colour really enhances the brick.

What has been going on at no. 37 Thomas Street has absolutely nothing to do with any Thomas Street Regeneration Project.

There have been low-grade works on-going in that unfortunate house for a long time now and long before there was any campaign to regenerate Thomas Street. This is in spite the fact that no. 37 is a ‘Protected Structure’, any works to which, as a Protected Structure, require planning permission. Those appalling windows have just put the illegal icing on the unauthorized cake.

In its heyday, in the 1730s and ’40s, no. 37 was the merchant house of Charles Willcocks, a prominent Dublin tallow chandler and supplier of candles to, amongst other clients, the light-ship that guarded the entrance to the Liffey in the years preceding the construction of the Poolbeg Lighthouse.

Charles was born in Mount Melick the son of Stephen Willcocks, merchant and member of the Quaker community there. These Willcocks were cousins of Joshua Willcocks and his sons, Issachar and John, who were successively partners with fellow Quaker, and Joshua’s brother-in-law, Joseph Fade, in his banking enterprise next door to Charles Willcock’s house at no. 36 Thomas Street, lately the left-hand half of the Frawleys premises.

Joseph Fade and Joshua Willcocks were partners in business by 1717, the year that Joshua’s will is dated, but the date by which the Fade-Willcocks bank had established its premises at 36 Thomas Street may not be that early. After Joshua’s death, it appears that Joseph Fade ran the business alone until about 1728 at which point he took in Issacher and John Willcocks as partners in the bank. Early deeds relating to no. 36 are proving difficult to find, but lease records, that I think we can identify as relating to no. 35, indicate that up to mid-1728, it was various members of the extended Willcocks family, including Mr. Willcocks, the chandler, who held no. 36 and there is actually no mention of Fade as an adjoining holder until after that date.

In the circumstances, there is the distinct possibility that part of what the Willcocks brothers brought to the party in becoming partners with Joseph Fade in his ‘bank on the Glib’ was the property on Thomas Street which the newly formed partnership may have immediately set about redeveloping as the five-bay mansion/banking house that substantially survives at no. 36 today.

It also wasn’t until after 1728 that Joseph Fade moved on from being just a financier and property speculator to become an active developer in Dublin with the development of properties he had acquired on Georges Lane, setting out of Fade Street and Joseph’s Lane in the process. Fade was to go on to to acquire, in 1729, an out-of-town, 50 acre, estate in Clontarf/Coolock and subsequently build a second mansion there, called Furry Park House, in the 1740s, a house which also substantially survives, following a lengthy conservation battle, and which is remarkably similar in scale and layout to no. 36 Thomas Street.

For reasons that are incomprehensible to me, no. 36 Thomas Street has still not been entered on the City Council’s Register of Protected Structures despite all the submissions that were made about the house during the planning application that sought its demolition some years ago.

As for the recent Frawleys paint job, Punchbowl, which I understand you are correct to attribute to the Thomas Street Regeneration Project, personally I think this is as tasteful as anything of the kind I’ve seen in Dublin in living memory. Again this is just a personal observation, but I think it may be more beneficial to direct your ire at the people who are letting down Thomas Street, rather than the handful who are finally trying to do something positive for the street.

I can tell you that it took 6 months of banging on NAMA and receivers door, and a media campaign that made much of ‘State-sponsored dereliction’ to get even the basic work done on the former Frawleys terrace. Even at that, the superficial paint job..and thats all it could possibly ever be was almost scuppered by the DCC Conservation Office becoming interested in the work taking place and seeking to have something more substantial done. Quite within her rights and welcome in many ways, but it begged the question as to why the Council werent more proactive above the building going into ruin in the first place.Otherwise the City Council were of little help in delivering this improvement.

The paint job is temporary. It cleans up the terrace and removed the eyesore that it had become. Realising the Fade Mansion is another days work.

Elsewhere, building owners for the most part didnt take part in the cleanup. St Catherine’s Church and a number of shops were repainted. There are more plans in the pipeline. Progress was slower than hoped. Everything from tailored guidance leaflets to planning assistance from DCC to colour charts and a consultant were made available, but ultimately people do their own thing.

Some measures like the street art and flower planting are just temporary measures to brightening the street up. Street art can be painted over….its the more serious damage like pulling out sash windows that is harder to undo.

No. 37 has been flagged repeatedly to DCC Enforcement, albeit by others. The now-Ladbrokes corner at Meath Street has also been flagged. The shopfront is non-compliant and the works to the upper floors (likely to have been completed now) fell well short of what was hoped for – ie to clean back to the brick.

Ladbrokes paid for the painting to be done to the section above their premises. Myself and other pushed for a more ambitious scheme to remove the paint and restore the brick and tried to encourage the parties to invest a little more money. However the owner of the upper floors, John Gaynor Solicitor has other ideas and just wanted the building painted. And Ladbrokes weren’t stumping up for a restoration.

It looks as if DCC Enforcement will do nothing about either the Ladbrokes Shopfront, Gaynors unauthorised signage or the repaint.

The group on Thomas Street engaged with a number of high profile sites, some came forward to help and others weren’t interested, happy to sit on their dilapidated properties.

Work to regenerate the public realm was promised from July but nothing further has been heard of it since May. The works to refurbish the QBC were to take 9 months and include pavement renewal, new Scotch standard streetlights (more likely the cheaper things found on the quays) and no doubt lots of lovely bollards.

Eircom are proposing to double up the number of telecom cabinets on the street. DCC is powerless to stop them.

Some positive things are happening. A refurbishment of Nos. 138-140 Thomas Street should start this month. A planning application is being prepared for a new Student Accommodation building in the Digital Hub. A couple of the smaller properties will be more extensively refurbed over the next few months.

The sash windows seen there had been hidden behind boards over the windows for the last number of years.