Benburb Street Fire

MadsL

Pictures of a pair of early eighteenth-century houses on Benburb Street in Dublin 7 that were gutted by fire on St. Patrick’s Day.

http://www.dublincivictrust.ie/news-entry.php?title=pair-of-early-18th-century-houses-destroyed-by-fire&post=1332287117

I despair of Dublin ever copping on to the value of this incredible built heritage and actually using and protecting buildings like this. Dutch Billys are a uniquely irish 18th Century architectural form. Why is this still happening?

harry Bailey esq

that's the museum rest pub.what a shame.i had my first bartab in there :-(

FreudianSlippers

Unfortunately there is no stomach in Dublin for urban renewal and renovation/restoration of these beautiful buildings to functional and modern standards. There is literally no reason that these cannot be preserved and protected but modernised. Much easier to build office blocks and semi-detached homes out in the 'burbs though innit? :mad:

MadsL

Did you see that only one of this pair of Dutch Billys was on the RPS?

Have to wonder at the state of the RPS, complete mess at times. Facade retentions and inconsistances.

FreudianSlippers

MadsL wrote: »

Did you see that only one of this pair of Dutch Billys was on the RPS?

Have to wonder at the state of the RPS, complete mess at times. Facade retentions and inconsistances.

I didn't. Can hardly express surprise at this info though

MadsL

There are times when I can hardly believe that once there were enough people prepared to march on Dublin Corporation in protest at the lack of Heritage protection.

How did we get here???

Degsy

MadsL wrote: »

Pictures of a pair of early eighteenth-century houses on Benburb Street in Dublin 7 that were gutted by fire on St. Patrick’s Day.

http://www.dublincivictrust.ie/news-entry.php?title=pair-of-early-18th-century-houses-destroyed-by-fire&post=1332287117

I despair of Dublin ever copping on to the value of this incredible built heritage and actually using and protecting buildings like this. Dutch Billys are a uniquely irish 18th Century architectural form. Why is this still happening?

Because dirty,good-for-nothing scumbags will burn down any building they're allowed to break into and hang out in.

I remeber the boarded-up lodge of St Helena's house in finglas,despite the prescence of shutters on the windows,people were breaking in and having piss-ups in it..one night it burned to the ground and nobody seemed to give a damn.

Teh same can be said of many of the Georgian buildings along the quays where blocks of apartments now stand,they were being used as shooting galleries by junkies and one by one they burned down with montonous regularity.

Of course the more cynical observer might suggest that these acts of arson arent accidents at all but a sinister conspiracy to remove expensive "protected" structures from prime development land.

harry Bailey esq

yeah i remember st Helenas too always a gang hanging around day and night,and before everybody had mobiles it was one of the busiest hash dealing patch in the city,you'd see hundreds walking up there to score,right under the noses of the police

MadsL

Degsy wrote: »

Of course the more cynical observer might suggest that these acts of arson arent accidents at all but a sinister conspiracy to remove expensive "protected" structures from prime development land.

Thomas Street being a prime example. Made all the more shocking by The Digital Hub Development Agency being a landlord.

A Disgrace

MadsL wrote: »

Thomas Street being a prime example. Made all the more shocking by The Digital Hub Development Agency being a landlord.

Thomas St was very lucky to survive the Tiger years, some of the plans were shocking. Now, we still have a largely intact historic Dublin street, with plenty of commercial acitvity that should (and hopefully will) be protected.

As much as the loss of these two Dutch Billys is tragic, it should wake us up to protect the ones we have left - and a good few of them are in the Thomas St/James St area.

MadsL

For the curious, here is the famous Dutch Billy thread on Archiseek. A fantastic piece of internet detective work uncovering Ireland's unique architectural style.

http://www.archiseek.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=6813

Kicks off with a question...

I was intrigued the first time I became aware that this architecture style (with its distinctive high front gables) had been so prevalent in Dublin - previously I had only associated such structures with the Netherlands. I have also seen pictures of some of the structures which existed - mainly in the Liberties. This style seemed to be the vernacular style of that area for a large part of its history until the early part of the 20th century when most were cleared.

In that area itself I am now only aware of one such building (on Kevin St.) which seems to have maintained its original architectural style and Dutch Billy gable. In the rest of the city I am only aware of one more such building, on Leeson St.

I'm curious - are there any more of these left?

MadsL

Large fire damages derelict building on Dublin’s Camden Street

Am I seeing a pattern? Or is this one of those Bank Holiday weekend co-incidences?

A Disgrace

MadsL wrote: »

Large fire damages derelict building on Dublin’s Camden Street

Am I seeing a pattern? Or is this one of those Bank Holiday weekend co-incidences?

There's a bit of a run of these fires at the moment, just like the bad old days. And as per usual, on a bank holiday weekend

harry Bailey esq

there's a fair few buildings being squatted in too in town,a mate in the corpo has the unenviable task of cleaning up afterwards.and according to him its not pretty.lots of candles everywere,and a lot of the squatters,im not saying all of them,would be injecting drug users.and any visitor to town would know the zombified state those unfortunate souls do be in.does anybody think falling asleep with candles burning everywhere might have something to do with this?i personally know the the building next door to the museum rest was squatted,not to say they were responsible for the blaze

Roguery

A Disgrace wrote: »

There's a bit of a run of these fires at the moment, just like the bad old days. And as per usual, on a bank holiday weekend

There have been at least five serious fires in, or just off, Camden St. in the past year and a bit. These are not "derelict" buildings - one of them was above Eddie Rocket's - though most were empty. IIRC, there was a similar rash in and around Aungier St.