surgery/clinic

Detached L-plan four-bay two-storey former dispensary, built c. 1890, with flat-roofed addition to northeast. Now in use as house. Hipped sprocketed tiled roof, having red brick chimneystacks, clay ridge tiles and timber bargeboards. Some cast-iron rainwater goods. Roughcast render to walls. Square-headed window openings with rendered reveals, masonry sills, and some timber casement windows. Set in own grounds behind coursed limestone, granite and red brick boundary wall having tooled limestone quoins.

This Arts and Crafts-influenced building displays features that typify the style, including the irregular form of the roof and the use of unprepossessing materials. The creation of St Patrick's Park altered the layout of this area, removing earlier structures on this site, although there is a reference to money being left to the Bride Street Dispensary in a will dated 1844, so it is possible that this building is one in a series of early dispensaries in this area. Such facilities offered medical advice and provided pharmaceutical services, but did not have in-patients. Irish dispensaries began to emerge in the eighteenth century, with the first recorded site opening in SS Thomas's and Mary's parish, Dublin in 1782. An act of parliament of 1805 provided for their establishment throughout Ireland, and they were expanded under the Medical Charities Act of 1851, continuing to be an important social service well into the twentieth century.