Thomas Street & James Street, Dublin!

Alltech’s Irish distillery goes Gothic with restoration of Anglican church

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/02/03/3066440/alltechs-irish-distillery-goes.html#storylink=cpy

Yes, it’s been very interesting recently Punchbowl.

What you saw from your bus are the foundations of mostly 18th century buildings at James’ Gate, before the Wide Street Commissioners got their hands on it. You can see the buildings we have found recently marked in red on the Rocque map extract attached (1756 date).

The walls you saw are actually a mismash of multiple phases of buildings built over each other. The Rocque-phase of c. 18th century buildings are probably the middle phase, demolished c. 1850s. Later on c. 1900 there was a smithy here and we found some of the remains of that. We also found some earlier stuff – in particular one large and deep masonry wall, made of large limestone blocks, without any obvious function, below those buildings. It was quite deep (it was not visible from the bus) so I couldn’t get a handle on it, but I’ve interpreted it as a potential early-post-medieval structural remain possibly associated with St. James’ Gate and we preserved it fully below the ground after surveying it.

We also found a large brick culvert running under the buildings, frequently altered during the 18th and 19th century. I think it’s odd that this runs under buildings, however the 1848 5-foot OS map does show a watercourse running under buildings near here (albeit further east down the block). Our piece of the culvert was very interesting because it had features such as massive brick piers 1m thick, rounded to assist with water-flow, with areas for sluice gates and other control features. Perhaps part of a mill-race complex, common around here with all the distilleries.

I think it carried a branch of a watercourse that ran down here, across St. James’ Gate and down Watling Street. This might be called the ‘Glib Water’, but I don’t think it exists anymore. You can see bits of it on Speed’s map of 1610, brooking’s map of 1728 (where it defines the boundary of the City of Dublin to the south and west) on Rocque and on the 5-foot 1840s OS map.

Further south from all that stuff beside the bank – under the actual road – we also found part of the watercourse. But this took the form of a very big ditch running E-W along James’ Street, so possibly representing the watercourse when it was uncovered. The ditch was backfilled in the c. 13th century and the backfill is packed (literally) with a very dense concentration of medieval artefacts, including large pieces of french jugs, floor tiles, and lovely decorated roof tiles that might be from a (demolished?) local religious building. After the ditch was backfilled (presumably they had rerouted this medieval watercourse first) they packed the soggy top of it with a tick layer of gravel, that sunk in slightly, and seems to have formed the sub-surface of a widened late medieval James’ Street similar in width to the current road. This ditch has been fully preserved under the ground and the path of the fibre-optic cable currently being laid here has been raised a little bit so that it does not touch the medieval feature.

Pim Street, a funny little street behind Guinnesses. Just looking on Google Street View, I see that the first two buildings on the left in this late ’90s picture:

… are now a cleared site:

It’s a pity to be getting rid of buildings like this because although they are small they are part of the particular character of the street.

Yeah Graham – we have a detailed 1:20 plan of all the walls. I have a scanned copy in the office – I’ll post up a reduced scan of it later on for you today if I get a chance.

I carried out a few archaeological excavations along Pim Street a few years ago, and if I recall excavated some late medieval or early post-medieval features that looked like part of a tenter-field or textile-processing workshop.

@gunter wrote:

A ‘mishmash’ of walls doesn’t sound very encouraging.

It might not sound like much, but actually it is very encouraging because it demonstrates that the various phases of building, rebuilding, road widening, service installation and roadworks over the last two hundred years have not destroyed earlier phases of activity too much. For me, the mishmash is about as exciting as it could get!

I attach a plan of the walls, along with some maps showing the location of the modern pavement in orange and the excavation area (approx) in blue.

[attachment=2:2vwc7zde]Plan Wattling-James’Gate final.jpg[/attachment:2vwc7zde]

[attachment=1:2vwc7zde]1848.jpg[/attachment:2vwc7zde]

[attachment=0:2vwc7zde]Rocque.jpg[/attachment:2vwc7zde]

@gunter wrote:

One of the things we’d like to know is whether there is a correlation in date between the structures surrounding the church gate and the church building itself. In other words, was this an integrated development, as appears to have been the case with the Liffey Street chapel.

This is very interesting Gunter. Unfortunately we don’t have enough information to answer it at the moment. Further works are planned to the east of the excavation area near the former church entrance so we’ll keep an eye out for anything that might indicate an overall plan for this area.

We can demonstrate an planned terrace/development over multiple plots through archaeology, for example I found evidence for this in excavation at Westmoreland Street under the pavement last year, and at the new residential buildings at the Timberyard, Cork Street/Coombe. In this case I’m not seeing the same sort of regularity to the foundation plan, or any specific clues that multiple plots were constructed as a single unit, but we are excavating in such a constrained area that this is not surprising.

We are working on the south side of the street today and have exposed the old facade wall of the buildings that predate the current victorian Georgian blocks, at a slightly different angle to to the existing buildings, and a series of coal cellars or covered areas in front of them. We are preserving everything in situ.

Where precisely was the gate do we know? I assume it was rebuilt or repaired at various points, but presumably we never had a Henry Aaron Bakeresque Derry-like concoction straddling the road?

Thanks Antoine for all of the posted information. That sharp angle does seem to be the footing of one of the Rocque buildings alright.

@Punchbowl wrote:

Anyone know what’s going on here? This slab has been flying solo for a long time, marooned in a sea of concrete but obviously carefully retained throughout the many interventions that have occurred

The slab covers a coalhole leading into an intact coal cellar under the pavement that was associated with a phase of building earlier than the current Victorian offices. It’s the only coalhole we identified along this stretch but many more of the cellars survive (they’ve been reinforced c. 1900 with those metal strips you can see in your photo). The slab is not in its original location and was probably placed here in c. 1900 to provide a more solid support over the underlying cavity. The original coal-hole cover is of course gone.

We will be replacing the granite slab in exactly the same position as before, directly over the coalhole, and it will be set with lime-based mortar as we are doing with all the rest of the historic paving.

Thanks Antoine, very interesting (and exciting) – there’s another lonely granite slab further down on Thomas st, near the intersection with Meath st, that I presume is the same?

Btw, where are the traders going to be relocated when work begins down that end? (so that I can plan my ‘giant box of washing powder’ purchases in advance)

Thanks again Antoine, I will mention it if I’m passing – I wonder why that particular coal hole and cellar were preserved in situ back in 1900 – does it have some historical significance or was it being used for some other purpose by the newer buildings along that stretch?

Also, wanted to ask if the subways beneath the street (to and from both sides of the Guinness brewery) are being in any way impacted by the current works?

An application for an extension of time of the planning permission for the demolition of 61 – 62 Thomas Street was lodged earlier this month [Reg. no. 4775/08/x1] The extension of time process seems to be a, make it up as you go along, procedure, as administered by Dublin City Council. Third parties have apparently no right to comment on an application for a five year extension to a planning permission that one might have been counting down the days until it had died. Essentially, a developer just fills in a form as his planning permission is about to expire and requests another five years to build the scheme that he submitted usually about six years ago. The theory is that, if nothing has changed, and the scheme was obviously sound enough to have been given planning permission the first time round, why would it not be permitted now?

And that is the key point . . . nothing has changed!
One would have thought that everything has changed, but no, nothing has changed.

61/62 Thomas Street will be a particularly interesting test case, because the argument that ‘nothing has changed’ will be difficult to sustain here. The original permission was granted a few months before ‘Thomas Street and Environs’ were designated an Architectural Conservation Area.

Many people believe that ACAs are about as useful as a chocolate teapot, but even if that is so, how do you argue that the ACA is so meaningless that it hasn’t even changed the planning perameters of the street that it brought in to protect?

The other site-specific thing that has changed in the interim is that we now know a little bit more about the early development of Thomas Street than we did five years ago.

In their final submission of additional information, back in 2009, the architects, who were then becoming increasingly exasperated with the Planning Dept.’s apparent lack of enthusiasm for their office block, supplied what they supposed was the appearance of this part of the Thomas Street streetscape in the late 18th century. In this process, the architects clearly drew their inspiration from the likes of Baggot Street and Pembroke Street, which are around the corner from their D2 offices.

The purpose of this drawing appears to have been to persuade the planners that their proposed office block would echo the massing of the presumed earlier Georgian block-like houses. That the thing should read like a ‘block’ was evidently important to the design vision and, to that end, the façade of that part of the office block sitting on the site corresponding with no. 62 was recessed so that you got the full, three-dimensional, impact of the part of the block sitting on the site of no. 61. I’ve used the word recess here where I should have said ‘fold’. The office block is ‘folded’ at this point, not recessed, obviously.

That we still can only ever see our built-heritage through a pristine Georgian prism, tells us everything we need to know about why we just cannot get our heads around streets like Thomas Street.

In fact, there is compelling evidence that both no. 61 and no. 62 belong to the second half of the 17th century and there is every possibility that fabric from this phase of development may be concealed behind the altered 18th and 19th century facades of these two houses. Irrespective of the protection that the ACA may or may not bestow of these houses, they should have automatic pre-1700 national monument protection, at least until they have been thoroughly examined and reported on by some conservation architect other than David [there’s nothing here] Slattery.

Lease records establish that both houses were substantial inns in the latter years of the 17th century and both would have been among the more prominent buildings along a streetscape that then still retained many low, two to two-and-a-half storey, cage-work houses.

One early 18th century lease recites that Francis Mathews acquired the property [now no. 61] from a Thomas Brown in 1686, paying, what was for then, the very substantial annual rent of £35 for the ‘house, brew house, malt house, mill house, stables, backsides and yards in St. Thomas Street, Dublin, called the Golden Last’ The ‘Golden Last’ was common inn sign at the time, though presumably its origins were in the shoemaking trade. Examples survive in Scarborough and Benidorm, both of which, apparently, are very popular with Glasgow Rangers supporters, a fact which suggests that their lager and chips pass the Anglo-Saxon cultural challenge.

No. 62, though narrower than 61, was also an inn from at least the early 1690s until well into the 1770s, at which point its new leaseholder, one Airy Jessop, appears to have converted it into a ribbon and garter shop. The landlord, Sir James Quaile Somerville described the property in 1779 as ‘the large and extensive concerns in Thomas Street . . nearly opposite the market house commonly called and known by the name of the Blue Boar’.

These houses, even in their semi-demolished state, are a key part of the surviving early streetscape of Thomas Street. Instead of trying to demolish everything on site and resuscitate plans for a pre-property-crash office block that itself belongs to a different era, the owners need to come up with a new plan that acknowledges the value of the existing structures and the new ACA context of Thomas Street. The potential is there to re-imagine these two venerable houses in a way that connects with their long and valuable commercial heritage and still develop the back areas with a reasonable amount of new square footage.

The first order of business is for the Planning Office to politely decline the present application, before anyone gets the idea that the Corpo are slipping back into business as usual mode.