Devin

@GregF wrote:

Saw on the paper that Eyre Square is to finally reopen tomorrow after the long debacle.

Great! Been putting off a trip to Galway for ages.

I suppose somebody will have pictures of the finished job sooner or later. So as a prelude, here’s a few pictures of the square in 1997:

The dwarf wall – a 1960s landscaping classic!!

@Graham Hickey wrote:

The broad characteristics of crown glass and later glass such as cylinder and plate are very well explained, however the precise methods used in manufacture and more importantly the quality of output is not fully entered into. I’m no expert, but have come across countless examples of glass that cannot be neatly slotted into the categories as set out in the book, glass that looks like poor quality crown or high quality cylinder, glass that has both swirls and dimples, glass that has a highly dimpled surface, and glass that is much less blemished – all in a host of 19th century buildings of many ages.

Yes, I was being quite blunt in my categories – there is of course a lot of variation in all types of glass. I don’t read much on it. I really just pick up what I know from observation.

@Graham Hickey wrote:

I find it hard to think that Trinity would replace what even it recognises as one of the great treasures in the city with poor reproductions.

Shocking as it is, that seems to be exactly what’s happening. I was just looking at that magnificent Venetian facing College Street earlier today, and there isn’t, I believe, a single pane of actual old glass left in it. Most of it now is modern glass, with a few panes of, I’m sure, fake-old glass.

It’s quite incredible how this could have happened. The refurbishment of the windows is about one-third complete now, possibly a bit more. All of the College Street fa

On the subject of old glass (which just came up on the Pearse Street thread), Trinity College are refurbishing all of the sash windows in the Front Square of the college at the moment. That’s fine, but a lot of old glass is being lost during the work. And, worse, I believe they’re using fake-old glass in place of destroyed actual-old glass. The whole of the northern block of the square has been completed so far.

Almost all of the windows in Front Square are the original 1760s ones (apart from a few in the centre of the College Green block, which had been replaced with plate-glass sashes 100 years or more ago, then replaced back to multi-pane sashes again in the 1960s) and they contain a lot of old glass.

Here are a couple of panes of incredibly old crown glass (in the top left of the sash) in Front Square. The circular pattern indicates that they were cut from a disc. This type of glass stopped being made in the middle of the 19th century, so these panes are at least 150 years old.

Then this is the more commonly-seen old glass, called cylinder glass, made from the mid-19th up to roughly the mid-20th century (when it became possible to make perfect, blemish-less glass). It is ripple-y and often contains pock-marks.

This is one of the sash windows that has already been refurbished in the north block of the square. There are no panes of old glass left except for the one on the left in the middle, which I believe to be fake-old, as it has a different appearance; it’s really just a normal pane of glass with deliberate ripples.

I’m going to try and speak to the Conservation Officer about this, because it is not really acceptable that irreplaceable historic hand-made glass is being destroyed and possibly replaced with pretend-old glass in a key historic institution of the city like this. Trinity’s original sash windows & old glass are famous – they appear on the front of a book on the history of Irish windows and glass by Nessa Roche.

Yeah, they are quite an early terrace – early to mid-18th cen. afaik. The other giveway is the near-flushness of the sashes on the top two floors.

It’s also amusing the way the early-20th cen. Post Office building has been joined on, partly covering one of the gable windows!

That’s a wonderful little portico, isn’t it? This description of it is from a 1997 Dublin Civic Trust ‘Buildings at Risk’ list:

This Doric-porticoed church front is one of the most distinguished examples of Greek revival in Ireland. It was built for a Presbyterian congregation to the design of a Scottish architect, circa 1830, with a small but monumentally-proportioned, four-columned Doric granite portico with extremely correct use of Grecian motifs. The portico is flanked by wings with severe tapering stone doorcases.

The status of the church (at the time) is given as:

The church had become redundant at the beginning of the 20th century, and was used for a number of years as a grain store. It became vacant in the 1980s and was gutted by fire, resulting in the loss of the original roof and the subsequent demolition of the main body of the church behind the entrance wall and portico. Failure to provide new flashings and cappings on the front wall and around the porico is resulting in serious water saturation affecting the stonework.

@paddyinthehouse wrote:

@Graham Hickey wrote:

Interesting that they’ve also seen fit to replace what seem to have been c.1920s plate sashes upstairs with Georgian reproductions, bringing the whole building in line with these Regencyesque heritage commercial premises you see in places like Bath and certain parts of London.

The whole building before alterations can be seen below.

Yes, I don’t see why the plate-glass 1st-floor sashes had to be replaced either. They were old in themselves and told a story of the building. Good conservation practice is about respecting later alterations as well.

I sincerely hope the very old – probably late-18th century – sashes on the 2nd & 3rd floors have been retained and not just replicated along with the first floor. Unnecessary loss of historic fabric really annoys me!
.

hmm, desperate for an answer public realm ….

Well if you are what you say you are you’re obviously carrying a gripe to be speaking of An Taisce in the tone you do.
… and yes your post still contains numerous inaccuracies

Your pronouncements on An Taisce on this thread will never have any credibility as you only made them because you didn’t like what I had to say about Paraic Fallon on the Henrietta Street thread.

My last word on the subject 🙂

Gardai on every street corner! Now THERE is a society worth aiming for!!

:rolleyes: