Survey Data

Reg No

50100293


Rating

Regional


Categories of Special Interest

Architectural, Artistic


Original Use

House


In Use As

Apartment/flat (converted)


Date

1780 - 1800


Coordinates

316349, 233356


Date Recorded

30/07/2016


Date Updated

--/--/--


Description

Attached three-bay four-storey former house over basement, built c. 1790 as unequal pair with No. 20, with three-bay gabled rear elevation. Now in use as apartments. Slate roof, pitched to front and rear, with hipped east end to latter, behind rebuilt brick parapet with masonry coping. Shouldered rendered chimneystacks with clay pots to party walls and with shared cast-iron rainwater goods to north end, and with projecting triangular-plan chimneystack to rear. Flemish bond red brick walls over granite plinth course, above painted rendered walls to basement. Square-headed window openings, diminishing in height to upper floors, with raised rendered reveals and granite sills. Three-over-three pane timber sliding sash windows to top floor, replacement one-over-one pane to ground floor, and replacement timber casements with overlights to middle floors. Wrought-iron balconettes to first floor. Round-headed door opening with fluted frieze and cornice on plain pilasters, leaded petal fanlight with coved surround, oval-and-bar sidelights and ten-panel timber door with replacement chrome furniture. Granite platform with cast-iron boot-scrape, and two granite steps, flanked by cast-iron railings on granite plinth enclosing shallow basement area. Cast-iron coal-hole covers set in granite flags to footpath.

Appraisal

No. 21 forms a pair with No. 20 and is part of a terrace (Nos. 19-22) built by Charles Thorp in the late eighteenth century. Although parapet heights and proportions are largely carried through the group, individuality is present in the design of doorcases, ironwork and interior decorative schemes. The decorative doorcase to No. 21, complete with petal fanlight and sidelights, provides an architectural focal point in the otherwise restrained façade. This building, along with the wider group, contributes strongly to the late eighteenth-century character of Ely Place and enriches the historic architectural fabric of south Dublin. Ely Place was laid out, along with neighbouring Hume Street, on lands leased by Gustavus Hume from the Blue Coat School in 1768. Development began on the east side of the street with the construction of Ely House and the street is now characterized by the late Georgian architecture typical of this part of the city.