house

Terraced two-pile three-storey former house over raised basement, built 1792 as one of twenty-five, having three-bay ground floor and two-bay upper floors, with two-storey return to east end of rear. Now in use as apartments. M-profile pitched artificial slate roof, hipped to rear pile, having rendered chimneystacks with clay pots to west end, hidden behind rendered parapet with moulded render cornice, and eaves course, and with hipped roof to return. Ruled-and-lined rendered walls on cut granite plinth course over rendered walls to basement. Square-headed window openings with masonry sills, render surrounds and replacement uPVC windows, and with round-headed stairs window to rear. Round-headed doorway with carved timber doorcase comprising panelled pilasters supporting frieze and replacement fanlight with moulded render surrounds and fluted corbels, and timber panelled door, approached by one nosed granite step and concrete platform with wrought-iron handrail. Garden to front, bounded to footpath by decorative cast-iron single-leaf gate and matching railings on carved limestone plinth wall, and garden to rear.

This house is part of a significant architectural set-piece, Marino Crescent, one of the few Georgian crescents in the city. The façade is enlivened by the addition of render detailing to the window and door openings. Skilled artisanship is evident in the railings which survive to the front on the house and elsewhere on the crescent. The crescent comprises houses of similar parapet heights and fenestration patterns, having larger houses to the centre and west end. The houses were built in the last decade of the eighteenth century to take advantage of the sea views, prior to land reclamation projects associated with the enlargement of Dublin Port. The house were built by Charles ffolliot, reputedly to spite Lord Charlemont, blocking the vista from Marino House, and were locally known as Spite Crescent as a result.