Survey Data

Reg No

50920173


Rating

Regional


Categories of Special Interest

Architectural, Artistic, Historical


Original Use

House


In Use As

Hotel


Date

1735 - 1740


Coordinates

315978, 233205


Date Recorded

09/09/2015


Date Updated

--/--/--


Description

Attached three-bay four-storey former townhouse over basement, built 1736, as a pair with No. 82 (5092174), with bowed rear (south) elevation. Altered in late-eighteenth century. Now in use as hotel. Flat roof with three rendered chimneystacks with yellow clay pots; to rear elevation and to east and west party walls (east running parallel with street), concealed behind rebuilt red brick parapet with granite coping. Concealed gutters with replacement uPVC hoppers and downpipes breaking through to east-end. Red brick walls laid to Flemish bond, refaced with machine made brick on third floor, plinth course over rendered basement walls. Platbands over ground and first floor levels. Square-headed window openings with projecting granite sills, brick voussoirs and patent reveals, diminishing in height to upper floors; segmental-headed openings to basement with rendered box-sash and without sills. Six-over-six timber sliding sash windows, four-over-four to third floor having ogee horns, pair of recent bottom-hung faux-sash casements to west-bay of upper floors. Window openings to rear elevation (central and eastern bays) set in shallow bow, flanking central chimneystack. Round-headed door opening rendered reveals, engaged Doric columns on plinth stops supporting moulded cornice over filleted frieze, with ornate fanlight having fleur-de-lis detailing, framed by filleted surround. Eleven-panelled timber door with brass furniture. Granite entrance platform accessed via four granite steps to street. Timber-sheeted door beneath platform plainly detailed with tripartite overlight. Basement well to east enclosed by cast-iron railings over granite plinth, granite steps topped by mild-steel handrail to basement level.

Appraisal

Built by John Cooke. Dublin Civic Trust's "Survey of Gable-Fronted Houses and Other Early Buildings of Dublin" (2012) states "No. 83 is one of three similar houses of mid eighteenth-century date and now interconnected and in use as a hotel. Despite the later modifications and removal of the original roof, this house exhibits some rare features of a formerly gable-fronted building including the stone platbands between floors and the substantial central chimneystack. Together with its neighbours on the south side of the Green, it forms a rare surviving example of the domestic building typology that characterised this high status residential square in its earlier years". Casey (2005) notes the retention of some original detailing to the interior including; a corner chimneypiece and fielded wainscoting to the front parlour, as well as thin applied moulding to the joinery and neo-Classical plaster ornament, c. 1800. Lady Ann Pearce, widow of Sir Edward Lovett Pearce, a principal exponent of Irish Neo-Classical architecture, lived here from 1737 until her death.