Brick

@gunter wrote:

whoever did the restoration of that building [No. 80 Capel Street] deserved a medal ………. imagine if the whole terrace was restored to this standard, shopfronts and all, including the two houses that have lost their Wyatt windows, what a head turner that would be!

I agree with gunter!!

AND, leaving aside what might be done with the terrace in the future, the real problem at the moment is the 3 on the left which were refurbished circa 2000 with wide-jointed, ‘rear elevation’ flush pointing when we were still on a learning curve with the new conservation legislation. They are much more visually upsetting than the “red” one. They dominate the terrace. If you cover over them in the picture with your hand, the different hues of the others barely merit comment.

@Devin wrote:

I agree with gunter!!

I’ve always thought of you as very fair and balanced:)

. . . . now let’s go out and trash some yellow brick buildings.

!!!

You see, this debate encapsulates the problem with brick conservation – for some reason its repair is riddled with conflicting opinion, when it should be a straighforward issue, with accepted standards and practices.

I don’t dispute that the quality of the ‘red job’ is excellent, nor the improving impact such works would have across the entire terrace. That goes without saying. The central issue is the colouring of the yellow brick red. Quite frankly I find it of concern that there is a barely a question arising with most people about the blatant incongruity and incorrectness of what has been conducted here.

– This terrace was built when yellow brick was highly fashionable.

– It was built as a unified composition.

– It was never anything other than yellow brick. It had never been colourwashed.

Therefore there was absolutely no rationale for colour-washing this building red. By contrast, if this had been a red brick terrace, there would be uproar at the prospect of colouring it yellow! There is brick discrimination at play here! If the origins and traditional uses of all brick types are not respected, then undesirable double-standards are in play.

This is categorically not an issue about the building looking better now, or it being a subtle red, or the windows being accurate. It is a conservation principle about colourwashing facades, a practice which has the potential to radically transform the appearance of buildings and entire streets. If we cannot agree that something as patently wrong as the above is just that – incorrect – then at least it explains why there are so many ill-informed conservation works being conducted across the city.

I better chuck in some softening smilies 🙂 😀 :p

Close up here of the facade of 80 Capel Street showing that it’s red mortar with the yellow brick, as with the example posted above, which gives the muted reddish appearance from a distance.

“I love my breeek”!

Yip. I hauled a couple of these gems out of a skip in Dame Court a few weeks ago. Luckily I had a brown paper bag with me that I could pretend was covering an abnormally large block of butter.

Lovely Dolphins Barn brick of c. 1900, in pristine condition. It came from an internal wall. Probably amongst the last to be made too as the brickworks there closed in the following decades.

Devin’s above Capel Street picture makes matters worse – the brick wasn’t even colour-washed! Even more pointless. It’s the equivalent of using limestone for ashlar granite splicing repairs.

@Devin wrote:

Close up here of the facade of 80 Capel Street showing that it’s red mortar with the yellow brick, as with the example posted above, which gives the muted reddish appearance from a distance.

I think they were doing a very bad job of Tuck Finish chancer’s

@GrahamH wrote:

It was absolutely not standard practice for a building to be built of yellow brick and immediately dyed red . . .

Still feel confident about this?

sounds like you have evidence to blow it out of the water gunter, disclose !! 😉

Tsk – less of that pesky selective quoting please.

@GrahamH wrote:

– common yes, standard, most certainly not.

Nonetheless, I’d be interested to see what nugget has been sifted from the pan.

These are some examples from within a short section of streetscape on both Lower Baggot St. and around the corner on Fitzwilliam Street (dating from about 1810 -1820). They are are all houses built of the same mottled yellow brick! The difference in appearance where the original red mortar (used in an Irish tuck-pointing detail) has survived, is startling.

Where the red mortar hasn’t survived, the brickwork (in some cases we’re looking at the same brick appearing on both sides of a property division) gives little clue that the yellow stock brick wasn’t the intended finish.

If there was ‘a change of fashion’ around this time involving the choice to express facades in yellow brickwork, what’s going on here?

I hope you’re not suggesting that the good people of the Fitzwilliam Estate were not keeping up with fashion 🙂

The very thought!

I’m not quite sure if I’m understanding your arguement correctly – perhaps you could expand a little?

All of the above pictures suggest a later application to me, rather than an original, intended finish. The purity of the still-white tucks (which tended to be more subtle earlier on, and thus more worn today also), coupled with in one instance plate glass sashes, suggests to me the 1860s colour-washing of yellow brick in line with the emerging smart terraces of machine-made red brick in suburbia. The colour-washing and crisp repointing of a fusty, antiquated yellow Georgian in the city centre worked wonders for one’s credibility in clinging on to fashionability in an otherwise thoroughly out-dated inner city of the mid-19th century. At a time when most stone buildings were despairingly irreparably as black as coal, the colour-washing of brick must have been an extremely useful tool and a welcome solution to one of the problems of Victorian urban living. Indeed it’s quite likely a number of these houses were touched up for commercial purposes as business premises, rather than as private residences.

Furthermore, the trends of the last gasp of the Fitzwilliam estate in the early 19th century very much veered towards London, with a well-travelled merchant class tired of the plain and reticent barns of the previous century. They wanted substantial ‘designed’ houses that finally looked like houses, with robust rusticated ground floors, sturdy railings, consciously detailed steps, plinths, doorcases and parapet cornices, and of course a sophisticated yellow brick facade as the critical element in the package. It is difficult to believe that where colourwash exists today, that it was applied over a yellow brick facade in an otherwise yellow brick terrace when the house was built. It doesn’t make sense. These were wealthy people who could afford the advancement and decreased cost of construction of the early 19th century, and who – if they so desired – could have the best quality red brick that had ever been available by that time. There are of course examples of the latter in the Fitzwilliam Estate – the trend of adjacent streets naturally proved enduring.

I thus remain to be convinced!

To clarify, I don’t dislike red brick. How can one not like it; that would be the equivalent of saying one doesn’t like bread. Rather, I find yellow brick that bit more interesting than the standard, the norm, the everyday, that is red brick.

Yellow brick is urbane, sophisticated, beautifully mellow and sultry, and thoroughly pleasing to the eye.

@GrahamH wrote:

All of the above pictures suggest a later application to me, rather than an original, intended finish.

Come on now Graham, you’re clutching at staws there!

You’re the one who introduced the phrase ‘colour wash’, everyone else sees this as coloured mortar!

Remember this started with a divergence of views on the Capel Street terrace. The Capel Street terrace had big wide brick joints, as can be seen from the mess made of the lime pointing to the houses on the left. Wide joints were ‘tuck-pointed’. Tuck pointing required coloured mortar! To nail down your argument, you’ve got to find a yellow brick building from the period that features yellow coloured mortar in conjunction with the white lime tuck.

Good luck with that!

@GrahamH wrote:

Yellow brick is urbane, sophisticated, beautifully mellow and sultry, and thoroughly pleasing to the eye.

I think the phrase you’re looking for is: ‘cheap and cheerful’ 🙂

I think not!

To clarify two issues: firstly there is such a thing as colourwash, as distinct from coloured mortar. Colourwash was, as might be expected, a water solution of a pigment and a fixative which was often applied – presumably by brush – across a facade to even the brick tone, or to change the colour of the brick itself. A coloured mortar was then used on the joints, followed by thin lines of tucking or wigging, depending on the method used. Colourwash in Dublin was almost universally red.

Secondly, on the issue of wide joints and yellow brick, for some reason it would appear that tuck pointing or wigging was not always used with yellow brick in Dublin. Presumably the earthy tones of yellow brick were deemed sufficiently similar to the standard lime mortar used in coursing as not to warrant any further refinement. Typically when one encounters tuck pointing on yellow brick in Dublin, it appears in flat arches above windows and around fanlights in imitation of gauged brick, lending a tailored appearance to the facade.

Notably, the most important yellow brick facade in Dublin, that of the Wide Streets Commission on D’Olier Street, does not appear to have been tucked. It just features wide, even joints.

Considerable levels of alteration have of course taken place over the years, but no apparent tuck pointing survives anywhere along the terrace. The bricks are of a high quality.

From my walk around the city today, I am absolutely convinced that the vast majority of red colour-washing of yellow brick facades in Dublin took place as a later fashion in the mid/late-19th century, and not as an original design intention originating at the time of construction. As such, it is not only disheartening to see the amount of misguided colour-washing of these relatively few yellow facades that has taken place in recent years, it is particularly troubling that so many cases do not even follow traditional red colouring.

Below, I hope I have proved that yellow brick was a confident architectural statement in the Dublin of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and not used as an economical material to be covered over by a veneer of deceiving red wash and mortar.

A famous grand five-bay townhouse on Merrion Square. No colourwash, no tuck pointing, but very much unaltered, uncleaned yellow brick.

A little further down the square, the same scene.

The Arts Council house. At least they appreciate a good yellow brick!

Evidence of tuck pointing here. Thus the choice of yellow brick was intentional.

Another yellow brick house with tuck pointing and lime putty-highlighted flat arches above the windows.

Extensive mellowed tuck pointing evident here also. Unquestionably tuck pointing was applied to yellow brick in Dublin.

A handsome set of yellow houses on Upper Mount Street. These have never been touched by any colour-washing or tuck pointing, yet feature wide joints. This is quite common.

An interesting blurring of the boundaries occurs on one of the last rows to be completed on Merrion Square. A curious mixture of predominantly yellow brick scattered with pink brick marks the emerging favouring of ‘cooler’ shades.

The effect is not particularly pleasing at closer quarters.

Soft and elegant from afar.

The house to the left is of identical brick, only it has been cleaned (and clumsily repointed).

All of the above cases indicate that yellow brick was sometimes widely coursed in Dublin, often featured tuck pointing, and above all the colour was intended to be left exposed.

Practically every, if not indeed all, cases of colourwash encountered, as pictured below, are by my estimation dating to the mid-late 19th century, i.e. later additions. These were not selective – indeed I went out of my way to try and find anything that looked remotely like an original colourwash. I was not successful.

The most prominent yellow brick building in Dublin on College Green. Modified c. 1870 with sheet glass windows, it is highly likely the weak red colouring was applied at this later time.

It even appears to have been applied over the original Georgian pointing.

This Georgian building on Talbot Street with Victorian modifications presents a similar scene.

No. 83 Merrion Square. Without question the grubby institutional look emerged c. 1870, with sheet glass windows and a quick-fix colourwash, in what is an otherwise immaculate collection of yellow brick houses.

The same on Fitzwilliam Street (centre).

The same directly across the road (left).

Likewise on Herbert Street with similar Victorian modifications.

Baggot Street. Both buildings were Victorianised (the left-hand one has reproduction Georgian sashes probably replacing Victorian).

Another on Baggot Street (mid-right). Again this yellow brick house was Victorianised with a red wash and plate sashes. The current windows are Georgian reproduction, with plate still surviving to the rear. Neighbouring yellow houses survive as intended.

Likewise at this prominent corner. Victorian fingers all over it.

As with this house (right) on Upper Mount Street. More Victorian modification of the original design intention.

Another institutional wash-n-sheet makeover on Merrion Square.

The same can be said of this grouping on Baggot Street. Although apparently of red brick, they nonetheless received a Victorian wash and tuck upgrade, along with other alterations.

Some houses naturally buck the trend where just a simple colourwash occurred. Not everyone wanted or could afford to have their windows replaced too. Some frilly cast-iron hoods proved sufficient.

The same here. The coluring was so weak, it barely exists anymore.

There is, therefore, little question in my mind that the vast majority of colour-washing and coloured mortar repointing of yellow brick in Dublin took place in the 19th century, and was not a design intention of the Georgian period. The availability of excellent quality mass-produced red brick by the 1810s and 1820s, at a time when yellow brick was practically as popular, made the colouring of yellow brick all the more pointless.

There are superb examples of early high quality brick on Upper Mount Street. Yellow brick was used on the secondary elevations in such cases – not lesser quality red brick as might be expected.

This pair shows the transition from traditional handmake irregular brick (right) to regular – if not necessairly entirely machine-made brick – to the left.

Fabulous quality.

Therefore, as mentioned earlier, it is a great shame to see this practice still being conducted on virgin yellow brick facades, which are already extremely limited in number in Dublin, and even moreso given how much is being executed according to the personal tastes of bricklayers and their clients, rather than in line with historical precedent. Given how much confusion there is on this website alone, one absolutely dreads to think what it is like inside Dublin City Council. There is a dire lack awareness of historic brickwork in Dublin, the resultant manifestations of which are infecting countless streetscapes.

Some examples.

A recently completed group of yellow brick houses in a yellow brick terrace on Fitzwilliam Street.

What on earth is that colour supposed to be?

A pink colouring of a yellow brick house on Upper Mount Street. Yes the neighbouring house has faint fragments of a later colourwash, but that sets a precedent for this?!

Madness.

A recently applied salmon scheme a little further up.

A bizarre concoction of Henrietta Street apartment block proportions on Baggot Street.

What a mess.

Another unnecessarily garish job on a yellow brick house on Upper Mount Street.

An eye-watering newly completed number opposite the ESB headquarters. As if the latter’s recent dusty pink transformation wasn’t bad enough. Woeful.

Likewise with the Merrion Hotel on Merrion Street. After a decade it’s only beginning to mellow, but is still a disaster zone.

The Irish Architectural Archive’s facade was considerately treated. Presumably it hadn’t been tuck pointed originally. Much of this terrace features a similar wineish red brick.

Another good example of a recently completed job further up in the same terrace.

Historic brickwork really is not rocket science. Factors to consider are fairly limited.

– Is the brick red, yellow, or a mixture of both?

– Is the brick colour-washed?

– If colour-washed, when was it applied and what condition is it in now?

– What sort of pointing does it have?

– What are neighbouring houses like?

These few elements should explain the provenance and present-day appearance of an historic brick facade, and inform conservation/restoration works.

Red brick is without question the dominant facing material of Georgian and Victorian Dublin.

This makes the conservation of the limited stock of yellow brick buildings that we have all the more important. Every effort should be made to ensure these buildings survive as they were originally intented to appear.

At least my house, I mean my favourite house, survives intact 🙂

GrahamH: a magisterial post – need a lie-down after viewing all that magnificence. Fascinating debate, but it would be great to be in Dublin just looking at it all in the spring sunshine. I’m with you on yellow, but this crisp plainness and economy of detail surely still provides a template even for contemporary design in Dublin.

This isn’t over you know!

@gunter wrote:

This isn’t over you know!

I dunno. Looks to me like you’re on the ropes. I reckon the KO punch will come in the next one or two posts from GrahamH.

Oh dear, has it not been given already?

*hastily gathers together Gardiner estate pictures*

From November ’08:

@GrahamH wrote:

Hey! I thought it was an unwritten rule on Archiseek that we don’t post pictures of each other’s houses! Dream world houses included! . . . . I bagged that wendy house years ago.

From yesterday:

@GrahamH wrote:

At least my house, I mean my favourite house, survives intact 🙂

I was just wondering Graham, does your . . . ‘Wendy house’ . . . on South William Street know that you’re seeing her sister on Fitzwilliam Square??

. . . her paler, younger, sister!

No!

This is only just beginning.

*Victory dances may prove to be premature!*

mammoth post Graham 😉 I think your goose is well & truly cooked gunter !!!

@Peter Fitz wrote:

mammoth post Graham 😉 I think your goose is well & truly cooked gunter !!!

gunter’s goose may have lost a few feathers, but he hasn’t been stuffed and roasted just yet!

Let’s have another look at that Capel Street terrace:

At issue is the red(ish) mortar used in the tuck pointing restoration of the facade of no. 80, which significantly alters the appearance of the brickwork from yellowish to redish.

Graham, (as a signed up member of the Yellow Brick Society) has denounced the work as injurious to the unity of the terrace, and as not an accurate restoration of the original finish, which he contends was then fashionably yellow.

Is that a fair summary?

So what does this look like to you?

Is this not a fragment of original finish found in between the blue shopfront at no 82 and the red shopfront at no. 83.

Or maybe this is just another example of one of Graham’s convenient ‘alterations’ from ‘sometime later in the 19th century’ ! :rolleyes:

Lol. I was very precise about 19th century alterations, so shall not get drawn in on that one.

I concede the above scene paints an interesting picture. My explanation – and I’m being neither fesecious or desperate – is that a simple red colourwash was applied between the shopfronts ‘sometime in the 19th century’. The colourwash has simply washed off the bricks, but has remained on the more porous and absorbant yellow mortar (it is also of such a pungent shade as to immediately suggest a wash of some kind).

This type of scrappy colourwashing would be in character with the typical human instinct – and an especially Irish one at that – to focus on improving one’s own patch in a piecemeal, detached fashion, in a manner similar to other nasty practices such as painting the grubby decorative brick and terracotta piers of one’s shopfront, or tacking plastic cladding over worse-for-wear elements. A quick slap of red colourwash, however incongruous, finished off with a quick repointing would tart things up nicely at pavement level.

This can clearly be seen at the next pier down, with the division between treated lower floor and non-treated upper floor directly following the cornice line.

In this instance, the colourwash was applied over both the original pointing and brick.

The other explanation for gunter’s scenario is that, yes, a red mortar was used as a quick and cheap solution to improving the dirty pier at pavement level. But again, I would contend, a later alteration – and one that was confined to ground floor level.

(and leave my collection of houses alone – they accept shared affections)

Graham-finally got a chance to catch up on this great thread and really appreciate the forensic level of detail- but may I suggest you give the door numbers of townhouses when discussing the respective facades ( as an ex-courier I would be able to ‘put a face to the name’ immediately if you know what I mean?)

Now he says it, after the horse has bolted! I’ll try 😉

This magnificent pile of a yellow brick terrace out in Clontarf was one of the earliest speculative housing developments to be built in the seaside village. It always catches the eye when passing along the main road from behind the greenery of its own private park. The severe Grecian entrance portal of the first house is particularly striking.

The terrace stands as an interesting monument to the first tentative steps to turn Clontarf into the Rathmines of the northside: built in a late Georgian style, faced in fashionable yellow brick, and set back from the road shielded by its own park, all in a manner characteristic of contemporaneous southside housing schemes of the 1830s and 1840s.

The cornice and chimneys are so handsome – the closest Dublin ever got to Regency architecture.

Beautiful use of yellow brick.

Not a scrap of tuck pointing at this late stage.

What makes this terrace of particular interest, however, is that it also serves as a good physcial indicator of how ultimately unsuccessful Clontarf was as a residential location until the housing boom of the 1860s. There are notably no other terraces of yellow brick houses in Clontarf characteristic of the early Victorian period, with only a handful of typical seaside rendered houses in the village proper as one would expect of a small conurbation. The majority of Victorian housing in Clontarf dates from the 1860s onwards, built in machine-made red brick, and with a particular explosion in development from the 1890s onwards (as seen below for example).

If one looks closely at the yellow brick terrace, it is noticeable that it is not symmetrical, with the right-hand projecting terminating house missing as it exists on the left, as if it was never completed as intended.

Also oddly, there is only one entrance into what should be a dual-entrance development.

Look a little closer still, and it all becomes apparent.

Either this 1840s developer experienced a cash flow problem similar to his modern-day colleagues, or there just wasn’t the demand for such large houses in second-rate Clontarf at this early stage.

Alternatively, gunter’s ancestors sabotaged the scheme to halt the spawning of yellow brick housing on the northside.

@GrahamH wrote:

Alternatively, gunter’s ancestors sabotaged the scheme to halt the spawning of yellow brick housing on the northside.

Lollers 😀

Gunter, Graham is making a fairly convincing case at this stage; how can one explain well-detailed terraces on Lower Gardiner Street, near Talbot Street – there’s some great examples of high-end development with walls of perfected blind windows, all in yellow/ brown brick?

@hutton wrote:

. . . . how can one explain well-detailed terraces on Lower Gardiner Street, near Talbot Street – there’s some great examples of high-end development with walls of perfected blind windows, all in yellow/ brown brick?

Not everything can be explained hutton, some things you just have to believe!

Supposing we were to accept Graham’s theory that yellow brick, for some inexplicable reason, became fashionable in Dublin early in the 19th century, the question remains around what date would that have happen? 1800: not a chance!, 1810: no way, 1820: don’t think so, 1825: maybe, but that’s pushing it as far as I would go.

Without ever wishing to risk a fiver on it, I’ve always believed that, for the bulk of the later Georgian period, say 1800 to 1820, yellow stock brick was only ever used reluctantly (probably for cost saving purposes) and in conjunction with red mortar to maintain a broadly consistant appearance with the predominant finish of imported red brick, the staple building material in Dublin at that stage for over a century.

Although they might be to some peoples’ taste (or lack thereof) I find it hard to believe that D’Olier Street (1800), for example, would ever have been intended to have been presented as the yellow stock brick facades that we see, in a re-pointed state, today.

The former Irish Times stretch of D’Olier Street and the corner on Fleet St.

Surviving original structures on both sides of Westmoreland Street are all faced in good quality standard Georgian red brickwork and we know that the whole creation of this city block was a single enterprise, designed by a single architect (Henry Aaron Baker) and constructed in a single phase at the instigation of a single client, the Wide Streets Commissioners. Why would they have suddenly decided that yellow brick would be ‘fashionable’ for D’Olier Street if it wasn’t ‘fashionable’ for Westmoreland Street? and, even if you choose to accept this unlikely scenario, at what point in the unified, wrap-around, composition did they switch to yellow?

I think that it is far more likely, given that we know that the blending up of yellow brickwork with red mortar was a practice in use at this time, that they simply saved a few quid on brick costs when it came to D’Olier Street having made a reasonable judgement that, of the two new thoroughfares, Westmoreland Street was the marginally more prestigious.

From what I can see of D’Olier Street today, every surviving original building has been either completely re-pointed, potentially destroying the evidence of original tuck pointing using red mortar, or completely rendered over, but somewhere I’ll bet there’s a street name plate or a ward boundary plaque just waiting to be unscrewed to reveal a little patch of preserved original finish underneath!

Tsk – we’re going to have the rank the media machine up a gear to face down this relentless anti-yellow brick spinning from ‘the other side’.

@gunter wrote:

the question remains around what date would that have happen? 1800: not a chance!, 1810: no way, 1820: don’t think so, 1825: maybe, but that’s pushing it as far as I would go.

Quite the opposite from what I can make out – you need to go back to the 1790s to include the first, and by all accounts very substantial, yellow brick terraces of Gardiner Street. Agreed it would be most worthwhile to find the earliest openly ‘out’ yellow brick buildings in the city.

I’ve always believed that, for the bulk of the later Georgian period, say 1800 to 1820, yellow stock brick was only ever used reluctantly (probably for cost saving purposes) and in conjunction with red mortar to maintain a broadly consistent appearance with the predominant finish of imported red brick, the staple building material in Dublin at that stage for over a century.

Alas you’ve been fed a pup, gunter! And I suspect the same is the case for a disturbing number of bricklayers and pointers in the city. The obsession for lashing on pink mortars (which conform to neither red or yellow traditions!) over perfectly sound and naturally coloured yellow brick (and often red too) is surely a Dublin peculiarity.

…given that we know that the blending up of yellow brickwork with red mortar was a practice in use at this time

We don’t know this at all! Indeed I have yet to come across a single example in Dublin, let alone even a vaguely convincing one, where yellow brick was colourwashed and/or pointed using red mortar from the outset of the building’s construction. The Capel Street terrace has far from proved to be such a case, and beyond that contentious little number we have encountered nothing thus far.

I’m glad the Westmoreland/D’Olier Streets example has been raised. As the most ambitious set-piece of urban planning of its age in Ireland, this development must surely stand as an accurate barometer of accepted tastes in brick amongst the architectural establishment, and thus eliminating the more muddled aspirations of the developer and self-builder.

There is little question that Westmoreland Street, as the more prestigious of the two thoroughfares, was built intentionally in red brick. Red brick was indisputably the prestige material of the 18th and 19th centuries, notwithstanding intermittent favouring of yellow brick along the way. However, the use of both red brick and yellow brick was also an intentional device in my view, designed to generate a distinctive identity for each street, rather than have them both entirely of the one material. The fact that the Wide Streets Commission were also desperate to inject some modicum of graciousness into Dublin street architecture through the employment of London-esque dressings, suggests they were also favourably disposed to the use of yellow brick in the London manner.

Good question about where the red ended and the yellow began on the distinctive ‘triangle’ plan. I imagine the apex building (now demolished) was built of red brick, with yellow following directly after for the entire length of D’Olier Street. Given the relatively narrow depth of that building, this would not have been overly jarring to the eye (shown here with Victorian accretions).

I believe the Carlisle Building formerly on the site of O’Connell Bridge house was also of brown brick? I do accept though that cost may well have influenced matters to some degree on D’Olier Street.

But there is absolutely no question in my mind that D’Olier Street was intended as anything other than an expressly yellow brick street. There is no evidence whatever on its many surviving facades to suggest the use of either red mortar or colourwashes, either original or later alterations. The mortar joints also appear to be original in some cases (it’s difficult to be sure viewing from street level), and exhibit no hint of tuck pointing as the yellow brick is of such regular quality.

We must also remember that the yellow brick scheme also extended all of the way round onto College Street and also jumped over to the site of Pearse Street Garda Station with what would appear to be a distinguished matching yellow brick building with granite dressings.

@GrahamH wrote:

We don’t know this at all! Indeed I have yet to come across a single example in Dublin, let alone even a vaguely convincing one, where yellow brick was colourwashed and/or pointed using red mortar from the outset of the building’s construction.

That’s because some of us are refusing to accept the evidence that’s been put before us 😉

The way I understand it, ninty five percent of Georgian facade brickwork was tuck pointed, (do we agree with that ?), using red mortar and thin projecting lines of lime putty to imitate the other five percent that was high quality red, fine jointed, gauge brickwork.

That is the context in which I’ve always understood that the practice of using cheaper local yellow brick started, when they discovered that, employing the same combination of tuck pointing in use on red brickwork, yellow brickwork could be made appear not dissimilar and with presumably a considerable cost saving, as with the Capel Street house that started this discussion.

@hutton wrote:

. . . . how can one explain well-detailed terraces on Lower Gardiner Street, near Talbot Street – there’s some great examples of high-end development with walls of perfected blind windows, all in yellow/ brown brick?

@GrahamH wrote:

. . . . quite the opposite, from what I can make out – you need to go back to the 1790s to include the first, and by all accounts very substantial, yellow brick terraces of Gardiner Street.

I think you’re both way off the mark on that one.

The terraces of Lower Gardiner Street look 1820s to 1830s to me, which explains the yellow brickwork, as far as I’m concerned. There’s nothing there on the 1797 map and the terraces up the hill on Middle Gardiner Street and even Upper Gardiner Street, as with Mountjoy Square (not finished until 1818) were all red brickwork.

1797 map showing no development between Beresford Place and Middle Gardiner Street, and little indication that development was imminent.

As far as I know that former church behind the loop line bridge, designed by Frederick Darley (Gardiner St. Dole Office), was built circa 1838! The brickwork here is indisputably yellowish brown and it matches very well with the brickwork of the adjoining terraces, including that one with the blind windows on the side elevation noted by hutton.

Starting a smear campaign? , . . . . gunter doesn’t feed on puppy dogs!

Fight fire with fire!

Okay you’ve definitely got us on the Gardiner Street houses.

It was a presumption partially based on the completion of the Custom House in 1791. I doubt they’re much later than 1820, having looked at them closely, but am open to correction on that. The economy of their detailing relative to their contemporaries on Fitzwilliam Street raises a smile.

Yes tuck-pointing was used on the principal facades of the vast majority of Georgian buildings. Contrary to popular belief, however, it was not a ‘prestige’ detail, used only on prized buildings and the houses of the extremely wealthy, as is often remarked. It was a device used out of necessity on all buildings above that of artisan level. Guaged brick was virtually unheard of in Dublin, as was pretty much the same in London I imagine, and was more associated with the Continent. Thus, tuck-pointing was a British Isles solution to a British Isles problem (with Irish, or ‘bastard’ tuck-pointing a variation on that again, of which more in due course).

However yellow brick as far as I’m concerned was a deliberate architectural choice, not considered a compromise, and most certainly not pointed over in red mortar. This was a later trend of the Victorians, and we all know the dangers of blindly following the trends of a society which considered the Ha’penny Bridge a blight on the city. I do concede that the harsh economic climate of post-1800 probably fuelled the popularity of the use of yellow brick in the completion of the large residential estates.

A typical Gardiner Street house of c. 1810-20 😉

Tuck-pointing still clinging on at this late stage.

The harsh effects of battering elements on exposed upper storeys. Yikes.

And Darley’s very attractive little number beside the railway bridge. It mellowed so well, as do most yellow brick buildings.

A number of parallels with the earlier Clontarf terrace.

And for what it’s worth, just to show that the Clontarf development also did picturesque in addition to austerity, here’s its cutsey gate lodge behind the yellow brick gate piers.

An example of very poor pointing of yellow brick buildings also occurs on Gardiner Street. Indeed, these buildings were probably the first large-scale case of yellow brick houses to be cleaned and re-pointed in Dublin. The effect is far from pretty.

Very simply, the problem is that the wrong colour mortar was used. It’s positively peach!

Dear oh dear. What a mess.

There’s just no quality control over this sort of thing. The samples applied for the Conservation Officer to inspect (if they even got to see any) should have been the guiding template.

By contrast, an excellent example of yellow brick tuck-pointing occurs on this fabulous Regency building on Mayor Street.

Need the matching colour of the dark bedding mortar and the bricks, and the off-white creamy tone of the pointing be even noted…

Perfection.

Finally, probably the worst case of dodgy pointing in the entire city can be seen around the corner from Gardiner Street on Talbot Street. This time it’s the opposite to when we’re used to seeing.

Yellow mortar pasted over red brick with a shovel 😮

(though at least yellow brick gets its own back ;))

@GrahamH wrote:

Finally, probably the worst case of dodgy pointing in the entire city can be seen around the corner from Gardiner Street on Talbot Street.

Not sure you have to leave Gardiner Street to find ‘the worst case of dodgy pointing in the entire city’, look at the great sand and cement ridges on this one!

. . . . and in no way does that hanging basket redeem what’s been done to the brickwork 🙂

Back on the southside, I was going to concede your wretched Merrion Square yellow brick terrace (posted on a previous page), but then I took a stroll down that way . . . .

This is your terrace, it runs from the last good red brick house at no.76, to no.87 on the corner with Merrion Street Upper.

no. 83

What is clear is that no house within this terrace has escaped re-pointed, except for no.83 which thankfully retains a good proportion of it’s original tuck ponting. Once again on the house that looks least altered, we find the same red mortar we’ve seen across the city at this period, and once again the effect is the same:- the appearance of the yellow stock brick is transformed into something very like the appearance of the terraced houses constructed in imported red brick (also tuck pointed with red mortar).

Anybody hungry? . . . we’re having goose 🙂

That is absolutely, unquestionably not the case. The visual evidence of the wide shot tells it all, with the Victorian veneer exposed for the sham that it is at attic level – the red colouring having simply been washed off. The ‘red mortar’ you refer to, as far as I can see, is simply the original yellow mortar with aborbed Venetian red wash. It stands out more than the brick as the mortar (by design) is softer than the substrate, while it has washed off more quickly from the harder brick which originally absorbed less. You can see quite clearly that the original white tucks were just washed over at that time too. It was an awful job. All it needs is an array of prissy Victorian nets to complete the po-faced aspirant ensemble.

@GrahamH wrote:

That is absolutely, unquestionably not the case . . . the Victorian veneer exposed for the sham that it is at attic level – the red colouring having simply been washed off. The ‘red mortar’ you refer to, as far as I can see, is simply the original yellow mortar with aborbed Venetian red wash . . . all it needs is an array of prissy Victorian nets to complete the po-faced aspirant ensemble.

Solid 1820s? block on Nassau Street, constructed in your favourite yellow stock brick, very fashionable you might say!

They were a busy lot Graham, your . . high wire Venetian-red Victorian veneer washers! . . . here they are again wantonly targeting no. 16 (the Northern Ireland Tourist Board shop) and no. 17 (Lapis Chocolate Café).:)

Very devious of them to always destroy all evidence of the ”original” yellow mortar;)

At last! A convincing case! (though I’d be interested to see other parts of the facade also). I (almost) concede to this being the first likely instance of original red mortar application over yellow brick yet uncovered. Even then I’m somewhat wary, going by the sheet glass windows above the NI Tourist Board, and the dark appearance of its wider facade. It could yet prove to be a later alteration.

In any event, I’d be pleased if this did prove to be an authentic example of red mortar application dating from the time of construction. At least we will know that it did happen. Either way, we have still proven beyond doubt that this was categorically not standard practice. If even 5 per cent of yellow brick buildings were treated in this way, I’d be surprised.

A modest yellow brick terrace on Synge Street. What in the name of…

More bizarre anchovy paste application of Enid Blyton proportions.

Woeful stuff.

The George Bernard Shaw house across the road wasn’t treated much better (blue door), though at least it has mellowed somewhat.

The first house is an example of red wash application (hard to know if it’s later or not). In this case, the joints were simply roughly stuffed with white mortar and then square brick shapes painted over each brick and surrounding excess jointing mortar, presumably using a form of Venetian Red.

This would appear to be a variant of the Irish ‘bastard tuck’, the only difference being the use of Venetian Red wash rather than more substantial red mortar.

Historic Brick Pointing

Okay, so belatedly, some images showing the composition of the most common pointing techniques. These are demonstrated by Gerard Lynch, master bricklayer and brickwork consultant.

Tuck Pointing

This was the most common type of pointing used in the 18th century and early 19th century for the principal facades of brick buildings, along with the Irish variant known as ‘wigging’. It came about as a result of the irregularity in shape of handmade bricks, and the desire to imitate high-quality guaged brick found in continental Europe.

It is a relatively simple technique, though requiring skill in execution. A rough bed of stopping mortar, of a colour matching the brick, is first applied into the joints.

This is then lightly grooved to receive a later ribbon of tuck putty.

Once this has been done, lines of lime putty are then carefully applied along the length of the groove, using a piece of timber as a guide.

The ribbons are then precisely trimmed of excess using a palette knife.

Vertical tucks are typically applied using a narrow putty trowel.

Again, these are carefully trimmed.

Wigging

The Irish variant, known as ‘wigging’ or sometimes ‘bastard tuck’, is perhaps unsurprisingly a cruder form. To what extent this was used over English tuck pointing (above) I’m not sure. Frankly, I’m not sure anyone really knows. Susan Roundtree is probably the best bet.

This process involved the pasting of thick courses of lime putty into the joints.

This white putty was then trimmed and moulded to create a central ribboned profile.

To either side of this ribbon, a course of coloured stopping mortar was then applied, giving roughly the same effect as tuck pointing.

The part-finished result.

Pencil Pointing

Another common technique was pencil pointing, using a fine line of white putty literally penciled into a shallow groove in the stopping mortar.

Weather-struck Pointing

Also weather-struck pointing, used commonly in the 19th century with regular machine-made brick, using a potent black putty.

at last, i was totally lost, why do you need to add the fake ‘stopping mortar’

and then add wash on top of it?

why not just apply the mortar to the bare brick and do the putty second.

I think Graham was saying the rough bed of brick coloured mortar was added initially to conceal any irregularity in brick size, which was common.

yeah but you could still do that first and putty afterwards

ah you mean for the ‘wigging’, don’t get that at all myself.

Sorry, completely forgot about this thread 🙂

I’m not completely sure what either of you are talking about! If you refer to colourwash lostexpectation (as in a dye that changed the colur of the bricks), this was rarely, if ever, applied to my knowledge at construction stage. Rather this was sometimes applied many years later to spruce up the appearance of sullied brick.

As Peter says, stopping mortar was only used to conceal the irregularity of handmade bricks. Wigging refers to the Irish alternative where thin bands of stopping mortar were applied over white mortar or putty.

I’m still not sure if that answers the questions!

Either way, all shall be explained in detail at the demonstration seminar outlined below. It was at this event that the above pictures were taken a couple of years ago.

ONE DAY CPD SEMINAR
Historic Forms of Jointing and Pointing

Tuesday 9th June 2009

Dr Gerard Lynch
Co-author of Bricks – A Guide to the Repair of Historic Brick as part of the Advice Series, published by the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government.

Time: 9.00am – 5.00pm
Cost: €175.00
Application Form: Click Here

Venue: Drimnagh Castle, Longmile Road, Dublin 12

Dr Gerard Lynch is an internationally acclaimed and highly respected historic brickwork consultant, master bricklayer, educator and is author of Gauged Brickwork, A Technical Handbook and Brickwork: History, Technology and Practice.

Timetable:

9.15 am – 9.30 am
Registration

9.30 am
Welcome and Introduction
Geraldine Walsh CEO Dublin Civic Trust

9.30am – 11.10 am
Dr. Gerard Lynch
Conservative Repair of Traditionally Constructed Brick Buildings
Philosophy and Principles of Repair
Detailed Survey
Establishing Pointers
Foundation Failure and Recommended Treatments
Failure of Related Parts of a Building
Failure in the Bonding
Failure of Bricks
Discussion

11.10am – 11.30 am
Coffee

11.30 am – 1.00 pm
Dr. Gerard Lynch
Repointing Historic Brick
Raking and Filling
Demonstration.

1.00pm – 2.00 pm
Lunch

2.00 pm –4.00pm
Material for Mortar and Analysis
Choice of Joint
Aftercare
Discussion

Dublin Civic Trust
4 Castle Street, Dublin 2
Tel: (01) 475 6911
Fax: (01) 475 6591
Email: info@dublincivictrust.ie

http://www.dublincivictrust.ie/courses.php

its seems awkward to apply the mortar after the putty

@GrahamH wrote:

I’m not completely sure what either of you are talking about! If you refer to colourwash lostexpectation (as in a dye that changed the colur of the bricks), this was rarely, if ever, applied to my knowledge at construction stage. Rather this was sometimes applied many years later to spruce up the appearance of sullied brick.

As Peter says, stopping mortar was only used to conceal the irregularity of handmade bricks. Wigging refers to the Irish alternative where thin bands of stopping mortar were applied over white mortar or putty.

I’m still not sure if that answers the questions!

I was confused initially, but I think the question was, essentially, Why use wigging when tuck pointing is obviously better?

@GrahamH wrote:

11.30 am – 1.00 pm
Dr. Gerard Lynch
Repointing Historic Brick
Raking and Filling
Demonstration.

Is this the bit where you stand at the gates of Drimnagh Castle with a picture of the Capel Street house in one hand and a Down With This Sort Of Thing placard in the other? 🙂

Indeed it was, ctesiphon. Okay, the so it did get a bit messy when the Garda arrived, but we got the message across.

20/9/2009

No. 17 Kildare Street, a townhouse of c. 1750 date, located directly opposite the Department of Agriculture, has just been entirely repointed by ACOL Ltd.

Horrendously and destructively repointed in cement some time in the 20th century, the original tuck pointed exterior has been faithfully reinstated.

Quite a transformation.

This was one of the most challenging repointing projects of any building in Dublin, with a combination of cement pointing requiring removal, patches of Victorian machined brick to disguise, and an entire attic storey of more machine-made brick, possibly dating from the late 20th century, to try and make more palatable to the eye. Ideally this would have been removed and replaced with a matching handmade brick, but cost dictates everything.

The granite doorcase had also been painted over, probably for the past century, while Victorian plate glass had consumed the interesting array of sash windows.

The doorcase post-paint removal.

The brickwork had to be extensively colourwashed before pointing in order to achieve an even colour tone with the mismatched brick. Presumably it was because of this that the rather bright shade of red was chosen. At least it’s red though, rather than the more typical pink we’re used to seeing with less experienced contractors. The ribbons of putty are a beautiful shade of off-white. Very well chosen.

The windows of this house are of interest. The second floor level appears to retain its original chunky sashes of c. 1750 date – relatively rare in Dublin. Think Trinity’s West Front rolled back a century. The glazing bars were of course chopped out.

By contrast, the fashionable first floor level features slender sashes of c. 1790 date – an indication of just how fashionable Kildare Street had remained. Again the bars were whacked out by those swinging Victorians.

Sadly the attic storey windows are badly informed new replicas, using 1750s frame proportions with delicate 1830s horns tacked on for good measure. A shame. Also I think the case could have been made for reinstating chunky glazing bars on at least the upper two levels.

The ground floor window of c. 1830 (again, glazing bars removed) has just had new timber (wahey!) beading installed with robust looking draught brushes. I suspect all of these windows are going to be painted charcoal…

A deep black or charcoal door and this number could come together quite nicely.

18/4/2010

Mountpleasant Square, one of the most charming enclaves of Georgian houses in the city, is suffering the ill-effects of misinformed brick pointing to the same degree as the city centre.

No. 41, a fine three-bay yellow brick house of c. 1810 date, has just been repointed in the worst fashion conceivable: using the wrong coloured mortar, the wrong type of pointing, and leaving a patchwork of mismatched brickwork.

The distinguishing characteristic of Mountpleasant Square, aside from its gracious curved terraces and the modest scale of its housing, is its almost exclusive use of yellow stock brick as a walling material. Thankfully this has been little interfered with to date.

As pictured above, No. 41 is one of the earliest houses on the square, sited amongst the first tranche to be built shortly after 1807. We need only compare it with the adjacent house (below) to observe what it looked like before the recent nasty repointing damaged the mellow ensemble here – a beautiful soft yellow brick with characteristically Irish ‘wigged’ pointing, using dark yellow mortar carefully applied over a rough white fill mortar.

And yet at No. 41 we end up with anchovy coloured mortar applied in the English tuck pointed manner, with ribbons of lime putty and sand laid over it. Could the contrast with the neighbouring house be any more apparent?

The same scene with the intact house on the other side.

Here is close-up example of original wigged pointing, where we can clearly see dark yellow mortar applied in a linear fashion over the white construction mortar to emulate guaged brickwork.

And here is the new job at No. 41 with an incorrect inverse pointing method, where the white is applied over the stopping mortar, and wholly incorrect colour.

What a shame.

Also, the first floor brick appears to have been cleaned before stopping half way down, hence the disparity between the two storeys. What a mess.

Sadly, there are many more terraces of yellow brick in the vicinity that are ripe for mauling in this way if a watchful eye is not kept over proposed works. Indeed only three doors down another house is getting the same treatment as we speak. It would appear proposals for repointing are dealt with on a discussion basis with planners and the over-stretched conservation officer, rather than necessarily through planning applications, so strict methodologies and follow-up are probably rarely set out or conducted once the basic ‘conservation principles’ are agreed on with established firms. There is a school of thought – certainly amongst some brick specialists – that it is the owner’s personal choice and taste that dictates the method of repointing. This is not the case, as DOE guidelines point out that existing pointing should always be retained as much as possible and only repaired where necessary. The extension of this is that the existing pointing method should always be used.

Bessborough Parade just around the corner is a charming example of a largely intact yellow brick terrace. Only the first tall house was pointed in the 19th century with red mortar.

Long may it last untouched.

@GrahamH wrote:

Yip. I hauled a couple of these gems out of a skip in Dame Court a few weeks ago. Luckily I had a brown paper bag with me that I could pretend was covering an abnormally large block of butter.

Lovely Dolphins Barn brick of c. 1900, in pristine condition. It came from an internal wall. Probably amongst the last to be made too as the brickworks there closed in the following decades.

Devin’s above Capel Street picture makes matters worse – the brick wasn’t even colour-washed! Even more pointless. It’s the equivalent of using limestone for ashlar granite splicing repairs.

classic……….i renovated my house in smithfield and as walls came down, i saved all the bricks with those stamps and others! i have the very same brick percehed at the top of an internal exposed brick wall as a little testiment!

🙂

19/7/2010

Okay, so the battle to save (what remains of) our Georgian legacy has largely been won. Can we now start a campaign to prevent what we have left from being mauled by botched trade jobs? We may have been twenty years behind the rest of Europe in coming to terms with saving architectural heritage, but alas we remain the same distance away from conserving it in an appropriate manner.

There are exquisite repointing works being carried out in Dublin as we speak, largely being conducted by the leaders in the field, ACOL and Bacon Restoration, which are worth charting in due course. In the meantime, we have the likes of the works just carried out at No. 11 Clare Street to endure.

Before

During

After

Yes the windows have been neatly tarted up, alarm boxes rationalised and the buddleia chopped, but the reason for the facade looking a little, ahem, ‘brighter’ than its neighbours in due to the pointing method used, involving the removal of heavy cement strap pointing and its replacement with lime mortar, in the very loosest sense of the word. The ghastly result at close quarters.

Trowel-loads of coarse lime mortar have literally been stuffed into the joints in a highly disregarded practice commonly known as ‘conservation jointing’. In nearly every course, the joint is half a stretcher high! Honestly, this has to be the worst job carried out on a Georgian townhouse in the past decade. In fact, cement strap pointing demonstrates considerable finesse by comparison.

Not only are these guys butchering houses, they’re also taking the rare business that’s left in the city from the chaps that know what they’re at. This is completely unacceptable. The only reason they got this job is that they can do it cheaper and faster than the professionals.

The original cast-iron rainwater goods have also been replaced in flimsy steel. What a shame.

This is an interesting house (with a fabulous chunky staircase inside typical of Clare Street), with a few quirky features including a Victorian canopy surviving above the door…

…and what appears to be one of two original chunky c. 1750 sash windows in the basement, modified with later sheet glass. If the case, this would make these the only original windows left in Clare Street’s early houses.

By contrast to the disaster at No. 11, three doors down the owners of No. 8 are going about a proposed restoration the correct way, by employing professionals to conduct a test strip.

Two options are being explored in this instance. The first, seen above and below, is the wholesale repair of the brick through the removal of cement pointing and the application of red ‘stopping’ mortar around the edges, as is typical, but also the apparent addition of a ‘sacrificial’ layer of red mortar to the entire surface of the brick, to compensate for spalled surfaces and to unify tone across the façade.

The second option uses the same practice with the exception of the complete covering of the brick surface, enabling a more honest expression of the original fabric – allebeit uncleaned and somewhat half-heartedly executed.

Of course, the central question to be asked is if this façade should be tuck pointed at all. It is entirely likely that of these 1750s Clare Street houses were wigged originally, and not English tuck pointed as is proposed above. Unfortunately, Clare Street is renowned as playing host to arguably the most butchered terrace in Dublin when it comes to original brick finishes, so not a single house now gives a clue to the naked eye as to what the original pointing types along here once were.

A parade of 20th century botch jobs.

Two houses have 1940s-type replacement brick.

While the Dublin Chamber of Commerce presents a 1970s delight.

1980s brickwork further up.

Remarkably in this case, the original late 18th century windows survived the ravages of change all around it. This is the only case of this I know of in Dublin. Extraordinary.

That’s truly appaling, They shouldn’t even be let near a retaining wall for a flower bed, there is no way whoever did that work has rudimentary block laying skills of ANY kind, nevermind conservation experience. The mortar mix even looks well off:confused:

Grahan dunno how long it’s been finished but there’s a tidy looking job done on 51 Merrion Square I only recently noticed.

Yep tommy, the mortar mix is inconsistent and rougher than a hot mix you’d fling up on a gable wall on the west coast! Such a shame, as a bit more money could have bought us a beautiful job.

Like, as you say, seen at No. 51 Merrion Square – arguably the most exquisite job in Dublin, on a par with 38 North Great George’s Street by Bacon. I’ve no wide shot of 51 Merrion Square at the minute, but this will have to do – you can just make out the sultry, buttery tones of the wigging – beautifully picked up from the Portland stone doorcase 🙂

Compared with, ahem…

Graham – what do you think of the HJL refurb beside the Accountants building on Pearse Street. I hesitate to venture that it looks well

I remember watching this unfold in my pre-camera days:

On Merrion Square North there must have been some deterioration in the brick pointing or some differential settlement in the facade, or some such, but anyway the builders moved in and the entire original front wall was taken down to the foundations and rebuilt in reinforced concrete, painted with bitumen and then re-clad in machine cut granite and rustic brickwork, all to – conservation-best-practice – 1980s style.

Somehow the house next door escaped being struck down by the same terminal defect.

Ha – yes the Red Cross house was entirely refaced (you still need sunglasses to look at the granite), but I don’t think that is it you sketched above as the door is on the other side. Unless the Red Cross have been in a few houses, which is quite likely.

wearnicehats, yes the pointing of the Pearse Street houses is just perfect – an immaculate job. Some details on the Pearse Street thread.