Refurbishment of one of the oldest, State-built social housing complexes will start this month.
The Peter McVerry Trust is renovating former “artisan dwellings” in Dublin’s south inner city, eight years after getting the go-ahead from the Department of Housing and more than century after the flats were built by the then Dublin Corporation as “healthy dwellings” for “the working classes”.
The 18 tiny flats, at 181-187 Townsend Street, have been empty since 2011 when the last, mainly elderly, residents were rehoused. Ground floor retail units were fully de-tenanted during the pandemic.
The trust identified the boarded-up buildings as a refurbishment opportunity but, despite getting initial planning permission and funding in 2015, has faced repeated delays. Partial demolition works are due to get under way, to the rear, on March 20th.
When completed in mid-2024 there will be 20 one-bed apartments – considerably larger than the current dwellings – over four storeys. They will be allocated to households on Dublin City Council’s housing list with a proportion going to long-term rough sleepers under the Housing First Scheme.
Built between 1907 and 1909, they were considered quite luxurious at the time – with indoor plumbing and between two and three rooms per household. “The original families came from tenements, but they would have had to have had a decent income to afford them,” says Francis Doherty, head of housing policy with the Trust. Records in the Dublin city archives show the rents were set at between four and 10 shillings per week – requiring regular incomes.
Their open fireplaces, lead piping, asbestos in the roof and narrow stairwells between floors, however, rendered them unsuitable by modern standards.
The flats were among the first built by the city authorities following a 1903 conference about housing for the city’s poor at the Mansion House. The conference was attended by elected representatives and members of Dublin Trades Council. Dublin had some of the worst slums in Europe with 36.6 per cent of families (21,702) living in one room and 13,620 occupying just two, according to a report arising from the conference. It also recorded 302 derelict houses, 148 houses in ruins, and derelict sites on which 82 houses had once stood in the capital.
A target was set to move almost 13,000 people out of tenements and into “proper accommodation”. The corporation’s “improvements committee” – specifically tasked with improving housing – turned its attention to derelict buildings at 179-190 Townsend Street in 1905. The site was identified as a location to which 80 families could move.
Trinity College, which owned 185-189, would not sell, but a Miss Bowen who owned 179-184, gave the land on a 500-year lease. The corporation’s chief medical officer, Dr Charles Cameron – who was central in driving the corporation to provide housing to tackle high illness and mortality rates – supported the plans. He declared the derelict Townsend Street buildings “unsanitary” and in an August 1905 letter said it would be “desirable... to erect some dwellings for the working classes on the site of the ruined houses”.
Dr Cameron added: “There is a great want of healthy dwellings in the neighbourhood and if proper dwellings were erected... there would be an immediate demand for them.”
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In October 1905, the corporation sanctioned £4,450 to purchase and demolish the buildings and to build three, four-storey blocks, with five three-room flats on the ground floor, and fifteen two-room flats above. Builder James Egan of Blackrock, Co Dublin, won the tender process with his quote for £3,451 in November 1906, and the flats were completed by 1909.
A visit inside finds signs of past life in all the flats, with wallpaper, lace curtains, an April 1990 copy of the Evening Herald, a tub of Bryl cream and kitchen utensils still in place. Some have immersion heaters. There are small galley kitchen areas, though not all have cooking facilities. “At the end, a lot of the old residents probably didn’t cook for themselves,” says Doherty. “They’d have gone to local cafes or pubs, or might have had home helps.”
At the top floor, there are holes through the roof with pigeon feathers and bird excrement everywhere. On the floor, a newly-hatched chick is alive in a nest.
Structurally, says Doherty, the building is “very solid, with no cracks or subsidence, which given where it is with the amount of traffic passing, it’s impressive”. Central stairwells will be removed, providing space to increase the flats’ floor size from 18-21 sq m, to 30-35 sq metres. Residents will still enter the building at Townsend Street, accessing lifts and stairs in a newly-constructed shaft at the back.
At €6 million, the project will “still be cheaper than a new-build,” Doherty says. “Buildings like this, vacant for over a decade and uninhabitable, show there really is no building that can’t be brought back.
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“The vast majority – 85 per cent of the stock we bring into use – is refurbishment and regeneration, or new-builds as infills on sites between buildings. These types of homes, in towns and cities, are where our future tenants need to be,” he says. “They need to be near amenities – gyms, libraries, GPs.”
There is “less competition” for vacant, dilapidated buildings of which there could be “over 100,000 around the place” including school buildings, monasteries, abandoned flats, Doherty adds.
“These projects make sense for the local authority; they work for our service users; people get housed, buildings get used, communities get reinvigorated, it’s cost effective and it’s sustainable.”
