Survey Data
Reg No
50011047
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic
Original Use
House
In Use As
Office
Date
1810 - 1820
Coordinates
316137, 235502
Date Recorded
16/11/2011
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Terraced two-bay four-storey house over exposed basement, built c.1815, as one of six houses. Now in commercial office use. Double-pile slate roof, pitched to front with two hipped rear projections. Roof hidden behind parapet wall with granite coping and decorative lead hopper and lead downpipe with embossed lead brackets, breaking through to south end. Stepped brick chimneystacks with clay pots to both party walls. Red brick walls laid in Flemish bond, rebuilt to top two floors, with iron tie-plates. Chamfered granite plinth course above painted ruled-and-lined rendered basement walls. Cement rendered walls to rear elevation. Gauged brick flat-arched window openings with patent rendered reveals, painted granite sills and replacement timber sliding sash windows, six-over-six pane to ground to top floors and recent replacement single-pane window to basement. Decorative bowed wrought-iron balconettes to first floor. Gauged brick round-headed door opening with moulded stucco surround and painted stone Ionic doorcase. Replacement timber panelled door flanked by plain rendered jambs and Ionic columns on plinth bases supporting lintel cornice and replacement fanlight. Door opens onto granite platform and four granite steps bridging basement. Platform and basement enclosed by original wrought-iron railings with integrated bootscraper to platform railing and replacement cast-iron corner posts set on moulded granite plinth wall to street. Rear elevation abutted by narrow full-height return to north and corrugated-iron clad two-storey addition. Modern profile metal-clad industrial building and further full-width single-storey roughcast rendered building forming rear boundary to Charles Lane.
Appraisal
Mountjoy Square was built on lands formerly belonging to St. Mary’s Abbey, laid out in 1790 by Luke Gardiner II and complete by 1818. No. 23 is well maintained and one of a group of six similar houses, the last to be completed on Mountjoy Square and built by Charles Thorpe, stuccodore, alderman and one-time Lord Mayor of Dublin. The houses all have identical doorcases, in a simplified Ionic order, with freestanding columns and no sidelights. Now in commercial use the building forms an important component of the square with its subtle variations contributing to the architectural interest on this most uniform of Georgian squares. The retention of timber sash windows contributes to the architectural heritage quality of the building and the stonework and ironmongery of the entrance and basement area provides an appropriate and typical setting for this Georgian townhouse.