Survey Data

Reg No

50011002


Rating

Regional


Categories of Special Interest

Architectural, Artistic


Original Use

House


Historical Use

School


In Use As

Office


Date

1780 - 1790


Coordinates

315806, 235228


Date Recorded

12/09/2011


Date Updated

--/--/--


Description

Terraced three-bay four-storey house over basement, built c.1785, with bowed two-storey and three-storey extensions to rear. Now in use as offices. Pitched slate roof behind rebuilt parapet wall with moulded granite coping, concealed gutter, shared red brick and rendered chimneystacks with clay pots. Flemish bond red brick walls with moulded granite ashlar plinth course, rendered wall to basement. Third floor rebuilt at later date in English garden wall bond. Diminishing square-headed window openings with gauged red brick voussoirs, patent rendered reveals and painted granite sills. Timber sliding sash windows throughout, six-over-six pane to basement, ground and first floors, nine-over-nine pane to first floor, and three-over-three pane to top floor. First floor window openings lengthened or dropped to create appearance of piano nobile. Round-headed door opening within pedimented painted stone doorcase comprising engaged Tuscan columns on plinth blocks surmounted by stepped lintel with cornice and entablatures forming support to open-bed pediment housing spoked fanlight with cast-iron tracery. Replacement timber panelled door opening to granite platform with stepped approach bridging basement area. Approach flanked by moulded granite plinth with wrought-iron railings with cast-iron finials enclosing basement area. Wrought-iron gate gives access to basement area via recent cement rendered steps with cast-iron handrail. Yard to rear enclosed by random rubble stone boundary wall.

Appraisal

North Great George’s Street was laid out by the Archdall family, in response to the expansion of the Gardiner Estate. Unlike other Dublin terraces, there was no formalized building code for this street, and yet it naturally took on a mid-Georgian uniformity. No. 7 served as a boarding and day school in the mid-nineteenth century. Its nine-over-nine pane first floor windows, a later replacement of the period nine-over-six, are bigger than the first floor frames of the surrounding houses, and mark this building out from others on the street and a previous lime wash has also left a bright red appearance to the brick, visually separating the building further from the rest of the terrace. The building has retained its historic aspect, with a fine pedimented doorcase and well-preserved granite-work and ironmongery to the entrance and basement area to make it an integral component of the surrounding historic streetscape.