Survey Data
Reg No
50010372
Original Use
Shop/retail outlet
In Use As
Shop/retail outlet
Date
1870 - 1890
Coordinates
315695, 234364
Date Recorded
06/12/2011
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Corner-sited attached two-bay two-storey retail building, built c.1880, fronting onto Liffey Street with four-bay return to Great Strand Street. Now in use as entertainment shop. Flat roof hidden behind low parapet wall. Granite coping to parapet and brick chimney shared on party wall with No.38 Great Strand Street to west. Red brick walls laid in Flemish bond, having replacement brick to ground floor and parapet. Street sign to first floor of north elevation. Gauged brick camber-headed window openings to first floor having six-over-six pane timber-framed casement windows to east elevation, exposed reveals, and granite sills. Three bays of same camber-headed windows to north elevation, and lower half-height gauged-brick camber-headed single-pane timber sliding sash window to west of north elevation protected by plain cast iron railings. Square-headed window openings with replacement uPVC windows to ground floor of east elevation. Blocked up window opening to north elevation having granite sill, obscured by billboard advertising. Modern uPVC fascia to ground floor of east elevation surmounting square-headed door opening with modern timber-framed glazed door. Two square-headed door openings to north elevation, surmounted by rusticated granite lintel, one with modern metal fire escape door and other having opening blocked with cement breeze blocks and having camber arch over lintel indicating probable insert in former window opening.
Appraisal
No.31 Liffey Street Lower maintains attractive red brick east and north elevations, with the natural patina of age shown in the subtle tones of the red brick complementing the overall restraint of the building design. Despite having its doors and window openings replaced, it undoubtedly contributes to the historic character of the street but modern signage, billboards and air conditioning units to its north elevation are unsympathetic to the character of the building. Liffey Street Lower is identified on Rocque’s map of 1756 and formed the easternmost part of the Jervis Estate. Humphrey Jervis, Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1681-3, laid out the area around Saint Mary’s Abbey after buying much of this estate in 1674. Jervis developed a network of streets arranged in a nine-square grid, including Jervis Street, Stafford Street (now Wolfe Tone Street), and Capel Street, as well as building Essex Bridge. Liffey Street Lower was occupied mainly by furniture brokers in the mid-nineteenth century, and today it remains focused on retail, having many three-storey eighteenth-century houses converted into shops. An early eighteenth-century street, it was mostly rebuilt in the last decades of the 19th century.