House — 17th century in Unknown Townland

A 1793 print of the west end of St Patrick’s Cathedral (DU018-020269-) by James Malton shows a terrace of Dutch Billy houses (Dutch Gable-Fronted Houses) on the E side of Patrick Street to the north of the Cathedral which have been levelled (NGI 2620). Today there no surface remains visible of this terrace of 17th-century houses which may have been shops built by Huguenots who took up residence in this area in the late 17th-century. In 1665 a chapel inside St Patrick’s Cathedral was assigned to the Huguenot community in Dublin (Curtis 2013).  The Malton print of 1793 shows five gable fronted houses with their long axis aligned E-W, tall lateral brick-chimney stacks are visible rising high above the steeply pitched roofline of the houses. The houses appear to be two storeys high with triangular and curvilinear-shaped gable fronted attics lit by double windows.  The triangular-shaped gable fronted houses  have two tall vertical sash windows at first floor level with a single tall window at attic level.  A horizontal string-course moulding is depicted above the windows at first floor level marking the attic floor level.  Beneath the string course the first floor was lit by two long vertical sash windows.  The façade of the ground floor was covered by an open-fronted timber lean-to structure projecting outwards from the building.  The lean-to timber planked structure fronting onto Patrick Street was supported by vertical timber posts.  These Dutch Billy’s appear to have been shops at ground floor level with residential accommodation on the upper floor.  Possible cuts of meat/animal carcasses/sacks are visible in the print hanging down between the vertical posts from the roof-line of the lean-to structure.  A lean-to is a type of simple structure originally added to an existing building with the rafters "leaning" against another wall. These Dutch Billy Houses may be the same buildings numbered ‘1’, ‘6’ and ‘5’ on a map drawn in 1890 by the Cathedral Architect, Thomas Drew (Drew 1891). This map was based on an earlier map drawn in 1750, known as Kendrick’s map. According to this map house No. 1 was the property of ‘Michael Kearney’, house No. 6 was the property of Rotton or Rollon, house No. 5 belonged to ‘Hy. Hunt’ which on the map are recorded as ‘Removed 1824’.  House plot No. 5 measured 42 from long facing onto Patrick Street by 54 feet deep and the backside or west end measured 30 feet 6 inches wide.  House plot No. 6 measured 38 feet long facing onto Patrick Street by 56 feet deep and the backside or west end measured 24 feet wide. Plot No. 1 belonging to Michael Kearney measured 50 feet long facing onto Patrick Street by 220 feet deep running parallel to Walker’s Alley. These properties belonged to the Oeconomy of St Patrick’s Cathedral. Dublin’s Dutch Billy’s were reputedly named after William of Orange, and their arrival in Dublin is generally attributed to an influx of French Huguenots after 1685 and to Dutch and Flemish Protestants fleeing persecution after 1690 (Craig 1980, 86-7). Excavations in Dublin including Smithfield by Franc Myles and at Newmarket by William Frazer revealed that this Anglo-Dutch building style was prevalent In Dublin as early as the 1660s.  The distinctive features of these ‘Dutch Billy ‘houses was that the roof-ridge ran at right angles to the street with the front gables, in the most characteristic examples, being masked by quadrants sweeping up to very flat curved or triangular pediments. These houses were built of brick, normally on stone foundations, and designed to stand in continuous terraces. Very often economy was achieved by the use of corner fireplaces so that two houses might share a single huge chimney-stack. The returns generally contained a small closet on each floor, and the roof-pitch was steeper than became usual later in the century (ibid.). Compiled by:  Caimin O'Brien