Bricklayers Guild Hall
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Looking back through the old board system that used to be on this site, i found this query… any ideas….
Posted by Eamon Moriarty on July 10, 1998 at 00:29:44:
There was an letter in yesterday’s edition of ‘The Irish Times’ about a former Guild Hall in Cuffe Street that was removd for road widening and the facade stored away. Does anyone know any more about this?
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Don’t qoute me on this but I think it may be the hall of the weaver’s guild – I recall the letter you mention and have wondered about it myself, and also recall seeing an image of the building still standing in this Century, most probably a National Library or Museum image- it looked like an early 18th Century building, with a facade not unlike that of the old markets on Francis Street though obviously much older- this may be a little mixed up so I’ll check it out.
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In late 1984 Cuffe Street was being widened, and I remember this building being carefully taken apart.
It was a very painstaking process with everything numbered and crated. The understanding was that it was meant to be reinstated when the widening was complete.
However it disappeared never to be seen again. I passed by the site yesterday and the (temporary?) hoarding is still there.
Anybody remember it, or even better, know where it is now?
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Did a bit of digging last night and found this ruling:
http://www.ucc.ie/law/restitution/archive/irelcases/brick.htm
As far as I can make out from the legaleese, the Corporation paid the bricklayers money to take the building down and then put it back up, but they never did and the Corporation tried to get the money back, but failed.
Stalemate I guess.
I wonder if the crates are in the same warehouse as the floozie?
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Any photo of this building?
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I’ve read Peterson’s Heart of Dublin. There’s a few things Perterson mentions as having been dismantled and put into storage by the Corpo – gateways, impressive Georgian doorways, statues from buildings long since demolished etc. – I wonder also where is this storage. And what will ultimately become of such items?
For example I read that Guinness bought all the amazing statues from the amazingly impressive Irish House pub on Wood Quay before its demolition in the 1960’s and put these into storage.
I’ve also read that the facade of the old Abbey Theatre is also in storage.
I wonder also is this actually myth or is there such a place?
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The very idea is spine-tingling!
The Abbey’s definitely in storage – I think a private individual has/had it but with a public interest in mind.
Remember when Nelson’s head was nicked by students from a Corpo yard – surely there must be a couple of yards like that with lots of goodies. Where did all the city’s small gas lamposts go – I know I asked it before, and naturally they were all replaced with good reason, but did they all just go into landfill or are some still kicking about? We didn’t have to melt anything down for the War like the UK.
And Iarnrod Eireann must have a bucket load of similar things too.There must be loads of railings and bits of balustrades and stuff somewhere that once graced the city streets – perhaps it’s all the content that now graces the country’s salvage yards…
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Apparently a lot of original granite street paving was lifted in the 60s to be replaced with concrete slabs and was dumped as landfill in the bay.
Daithi Hanley, former city architect, was in possession of the Abbey facade and campaigned for many years to have it re-erected somewhere, but nothing ever came of it. Presumably it’s all together in one place still, but I the numbering for re-erection might not have survived.
I don’t know if the corpo or CIE have a depot for old objects anywhere. I worked for an architectural office in London which converted a warehouse which British Rail used as a store for all its old objects – from station clocks to piled high stacks of copies of the 1966 All England Freight Timetable. The building was known as collector’s corner and was a Mecca for trainspotters across the land. Long after we had moved in, parka-clad individuals would wander into reception in bewilderement (‘B-b-but it’s gone!’ ‘Yep it’s been an architect’s for a while now.’ ‘Gentrifying bastards.’)
It was run on quite a profitable basis I understand – back issues of the Freight Timetable fetched quite a hefty price.
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Originally posted by Paul Clerkin
Inchicore works has a lot of old CIE stuff lying around afaik.IR will sell it to you if you ask nicely and aren’t on their hate list (as I am :rolleyes: ).
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Is it possible to have a wander around this yard?
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The case arose out of the quintessential late twentieth century problem of
the high and increasing volume of traffic in cities. Consequently, in
Dublin, the Corporation decided to widen Cuffe Street, by purchasing and
demolishing buildings, and so sought compulsorily to purchase the
Bricklayers’ Hall, the headquarters of the Bricklayers’ and Stonecutters’
Guild. Appropriately, the Hall possessed a fine cut stone facade, and the
Guild were reluctant to lose it. In negotiations between the Corporation
and the Guild, it was agreed that if the Corporation were simply
compulsorily to purchase the entire plot, the amount of compensation
payable to the Guild would be £ 87, 857; but if the Corporation were
instead to purchase only so much of the plot as was in fact necessary for
the purpose of widening the road, and to pay the cost of removing and
storing the facade and to reinstate it on the remainder of the Hall once
the road widening was complete, the amount of compensation payable to the
Guild would be £ 224,414. The matter was then referred by the parties to a
property arbitrator under the terms of the Acquisition of Land (Assessment
of Compensation) Act, 1919, to determine which of these bases of
calculation ought to be adopted. During the negotiations, and again before
the arbitrator, it was the bona fide intention of the Guild to retain the
Hall and reinstate the facade. On this basis, on 27 May 1985, the
arbitrator made an award on the second basis above. Some time thereafter,
the Guild demolished the entire of the Hall; later still, on 30 December
1985, they conveyed to the Corporation the relevant portion of the plot and
received the £ 224,414. It being impossible to reinstate the facade, there
being no building upon which to construct it, the Guild simply retained the
entire of the sum. -
So, are you :
A. Demonstrating that the instinct towards grasping gombeenry is inherently stronger in brickies’ union officials than their love of good workmanship .
B. Implicitly complimenting the Bricklayers Guild on its acumen, while conveying to us a template for profitable purchase engagements with the Corpo in similar situations .
C. Impugning the professional ethics of lawyers for both the Guild and the Corpo who may have been complicit in agreeing a settlement far in excess of the true compensation on the basis of a visibly humbug claim .
D. Asserting a basis for successful post facto litigation against the Guild in view of its failure to fulfil the intentions implied in its compensation deal with the Corpo .
E. Bewailing yet another past transgression of an Irish local authority in relation to property sale or purchase .
If E. is the correct answer, then why not discuss instead the much more entertaining story of the Phoenix Park Wall contract ? :thumbup:
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It actually went to court in the 1990s, the corporation won eventually
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-24942956.htmlThis is it in legal-speak
http://www.ucc.ie/law/restitution/archive/irelcases/brick.htm -
@teak wrote:
So, are you :
A. Demonstrating that the instinct towards grasping gombeenry is inherently stronger in brickies’ union officials than their love of good workmanship .
B. Implicitly complimenting the Bricklayers Guild on its acumen, while conveying to us a template for profitable purchase engagements with the Corpo in similar situations .
C. Impugning the professional ethics of lawyers for both the Guild and the Corpo who may have been complicit in agreeing a settlement far in excess of the true compensation on the basis of a visibly humbug claim .
D. Asserting a basis for successful post facto litigation against the Guild in view of its failure to fulfil the intentions implied in its compensation deal with the Corpo .
E. Bewailing yet another past transgression of an Irish local authority in relation to property sale or purchase .
If E. is the correct answer, then why not discuss instead the much more entertaining story of the Phoenix Park Wall contract ? :thumbup:
All of the above, I think is the only conclusion we can draw. . . . What’s the story with the Phoenix Park Wall?
I don’t suppose anybody knows where the granite from the facade of the Brick and Stone Layer’s Hall might have ended up, or is that like looking for the fees you paid a solicitor thirty years ago.
With the benefit of hindsight, there may have been clues to an inclination within the Brick and Stone Layers Guild towards grasping gombeenery long before the 1980s. At some point late in the nineteenth century, the venerable guild appear to have purchased the crisply detailed ‘Billy’ next door at no. 50 Cuffe Street and summarily demolished it just to give themselves another six foot of building width and a second door.
this image was lifted from McCullough’s: Dublin, an Urban History.
Paul’s image of the expanded Hall [from the Cuffe Street thread] shortly before demolition
an aerial view from about the same time showing the devastation to the streetscape caused by all the Corporation setbacks, with the Hall [and its extension] still hanging in there, just
a grainy view of the expanded Brick and Stone Layer’s Hall with nos. 47 and 48 Cuffe Street then still standing. No. 47 displaying the entrance door and window disposition of a [twin] Billy . . . . to those of us who believe in such thingsApparently Meredith’s Pawn Shop, at no. 48, was a legendary establishment in the Dublin of the 1940s and 50s and held a special place in peoples’ affections as the only pawn shop in the city that would take false teeth.
aagh, the good old days
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Interesting thread here….especially the Raider of the Lost Ark store house. Turns out Dublin Civic Trust have the artefacts from the Irish House Pub, while much of the interior was kept by the pub’s owners. There appears to be a storage yard in Cherrywood that holds many items f interest from around the city. DCC must have a yard…eg where have they stored the 3 Fates statues that used to sit in the small park beside City Hall.
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All of the above, I think is the only conclusion we can draw. . . . What’s the story with the Phoenix Park Wall?
Yerra, I heard it on the Sunday morning Miscellany programme years ago.
Apparently, a gombeen builder by the name of William Dodson got the contract to wall in the newly designated park grounds.
He also got the task of building the Anna Livia Bridge at Chapelizod.
Anyhow, the bould Bill subcontracted the bulk of the wall to numerous less well-connected masons at a fraction of the per length rate that he’d agreed for himself.
Result, the wall falls down at many points and a Commission of Inquiry is held into the whole thing.
Curiously, the work done on the Anna Livia seems to have been well approved by the Commission. When the new cantilevered walkways were added in recent years, they found they could build walkway supporting piers on the foundations of the breakwaters up- and down-stream of the arches.
A sort of 17th century instance of cross-subsidising the more interesting part of the public project by skimping on the routine part. -
The Dodson case is notorious alright – quite the Priory Hall of its day, though even then still likely to be more fireproof.
I hadn’t seen the extended version of the Bricklayer’s Hall before – you couldn’t make this stuff up.
At least it’s somewhat comforting that standards started to slip a long time before now. A once marvellously stocial, austere mausoleum-like facade confidently slotted into the streetscape, completely butchered by a cack-handed, lop-sided add-on by Bob the Builder’s great-grandfather. The new rustication running straight into the original serene ashlar of the upper floor is bad enough, but to course it as randomly as ashlar just takes the biscuit. And what was the original cornice not getting right to warrant such a clunky deviation? As for the mini-Wyatt window alongside the original – talk about asking for a visual fisty-cuffs, never mind the random toothy gawk of a cornice tacked above as icing on the cake. Who are these guys, and where can I subcribe to their newsletter? The poor aul balustrade got a whack too. Probably recycled for the new decking out the back.
The original building is very much in the style of Frederick Darley, though the balustrade is a bit much for his chaste manner. Architect Isaac Farrell is another name of this era that springs to mind. I imagine it was originally built with a large, square top-lit hall on the first floor, before the building was extended later in the nineteenth century with a new access door to the side and a long narrow passage leading down to a vast new hall added on the back as suggested by the aerial view.
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I was thinking William Farrell, the architect of Kilmainham Court House, as a possible candidate.
The broad entrance door composition to the brick Layer’s Hall is a bit like his Grand Jury entrance to the Kilmainham building, which I think was a competition winner in 1817. The extraordinary elongated fanlight here is something of a design highlight in Farrell’s career, as far as I can tell, but the Brick Layer’s Hall would be another, if it his.
Grand Jury entrance to Kilmainham Court House -
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I was going through a file of newspaper cuttings from the 1970s . . . as you do, and I came across this snippet from a wonderfully beligerant article entitled; Squandered Dublin – 2, by Elgy Gillespie, Irish Times, 28 May 1976:
Also found my, half page, cutting of the Liberties Moterway shocker from the Irish Times of 26 June 1973, which was a bit damp and is currently undergoing conservation on the radiator.
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