Survey Data

Reg No

50060415


Rating

Regional


Categories of Special Interest

Architectural, Artistic, Cultural


Original Use

House


In Use As

Apartment/flat (converted)


Date

1810 - 1830


Coordinates

316553, 235655


Date Recorded

02/09/2014


Date Updated

--/--/--


Description

End-of-terrace two-bay three-storey former house over basement, built c.1820, with single-storey return to rear. Now in use as flats. M-profile hipped roof, hidden by parapet with rendered chimneystacks with clay chimneypots to north gable and cast-iron rainwater goods. Brick facade, laid in Flemish bond, with granite coping to parapet and granite string course to basement level. Smooth render to front basement level and to north gable elevation. Brick to rear elevation. Square-headed window openings with rendered reveals, painted granite sills and replacement aluminium windows. Round-headed stair window openings to rear elevation with timber sliding sash windows. Segmental-headed brick arch door opening to facade with rendered reveals, containing doorcase with flat-panelled pilasters, oversize fluted console brackets supporting hood with fluted frieze, four-panelled timber door and spoked timber fanlight. Door opens granite platform, which spans basement well, and steps. Wrought-iron railings with cast-iron newel post having urn finial on painted granite plinth wall surrounding basement well. Granite flagstone with cast-iron coal hole cover to pavement. Coal hold cover reads 'Tonge & Taggart Limited South City Foundry Windmill Lane Dublin'.

Appraisal

Number 12 is the final house of the eastern terrace of North Richmond Street. Built as part of a street developed during the 1820s with opposing identical terraces of houses for the professional classes, many of the houses on the street went into decline in the later nineteenth century and subsequently became tenement dwellings. It is identical in style and treatment to neighbouring houses and contributes to the uniformity of the group, characterised by the proportions and restrained detailing typical of the period. This is one of the most intact houses on the terrace and retains its original neoclassical doorcase with spoked fanlight and wrought-iron basement railings. The survival of these features provides a notable architectural character and makes the property stand out from neighbouring houses. In addition to its architectural interest, the house is of cultural importance due to its appearance in works by the writer James Joyce. In Araby, a short story in Dubliners, Joyce’s protagonist lives at Number 12 North Richmond Street. Reference to the iron railings to the front of the house is made in the story by the author. The house also appears in Joyce’s Ulysses, published in 1922. It is identified as a place where Stephen Dedalus' mother had once kindled a fire for him.