Temple Bar House of Horrors

Attached two-bay four-storey former house over basement, built c.1740, having shopfront to front (east) elevation. Shopfront inserted c.1890. Now in use as shop. Flat roof hidden behind rebuilt brick parapet with masonry coping, rendered chimneystack and projecting chimneystack to west elevation. Brown brick walls, laid in Flemish bond. Square-headed window openings having granite sills and one-over-one pane timber sliding sash or timber casement windows to upper floors. Shopfront comprising fluted render pilasters on panelled bases supporting pulvinated frieze and dentillated cornice, surrounding square-headed display window with timber mullions and transom lights on rendered stall riser. Square-headed door opening to recessed porch having half-glazed timber panelled door with plain overlight and nosed limestone steps. Situated to north end and west side of Anglesea Street.

This building, along with those adjoining it to the north and south, is among the oldest remaining buildings in Temple Bar. Anglesea Street was largely developed by the mid-eighteenth century and appears on John Rocque’s 1756 map of Dublin. The projecting chimneystack suggests the house may date from the mid-eighteenth century and its scale and proportions is similar to the small collection of eighteenth-century buildings in Temple Bar, which chart the early architectural development and history of the area. It is recorded as a house and small yard in Griffith’s Primary Valuation and as offices in the 1901 and 1911 census. The original ground floor treatment has been replaced by a well-executed late nineteenth-century shopfront, which adds decorative interest.