Devin

Arrgh hutton, will you read the post!! It said that DCC refused it, and the refusal has now been appealed (by the applicant). The refusal is linked, so you can read why they refused it. Hope this spells everything out clearly …….!!

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.

Following DCC’S refusal of the above (<a href="http://www.dublincity.ie/swiftlg/apas/run/WPHAPPDETAIL.DisplayUrl?theApnID=1942/06&theTabNo=2&backURL=Search%20Criteria%20>%201942/06), as seen at the start of the thread, they came back with a mansard roof instead, below, which was refused again by DCC (3036/08), then appealed to An Bord. Decision due in about a week – http://www.pleanala.ie/casenum/230550.htm

If I had to pick, the masard roof is preferable. Architects get wet over floor-to-ceiling glazing (oh the thought of a feature in a glossy journal!!), but there’s major legibility issues with putting a glazed box on top of a historic building. Still, a mansard here involves demolition of the building’s historic pitched roof, and it is an important & highly visible building, so maybe the applicant just has to accept that building above the protected structure is not a runner in this instance …
(Note also that the mansard windows don’t even relate to the main elevation windows.)

Late ’90s pic.

Today

I 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:

An 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.

Some more quirky shops on Capel Street. Lot of Asian shops now.

… as Ireland goes back to local shops operating on small margins.

But since this is a shopfronts thread:

A protected structure on Capel Street in early ’08.

And in early ’09.