Corner of Pimlico and The Coombe. Photograph by William Murphy
The Dublin Artisans Dwellings Company was established in 1876 by a group of investors as a semi-philanthropic private venture to provide quality housing for the city’s working class who lived in appalling conditions but also as a profit-making business. Capital raised through shares and government loans was used to build cottages and houses.
Proposed DADC houses at Meath Place, off Pimlico
To keep costs under control and speed construction, a small number of common house designs was used across the DADC’s schemes. Type A, the simplest, was a two-roomed cottage with one fireplace and was in use from the early 1880s to the late 1890s. The Type E, a three-roomed (living room and two bedrooms) single-storey cottage was the most common of all house types constructed by the DADC and was used in at least sixteen schemes from 1883 to 1909.
Plans for DADC houses on Reginald Street and Reginald Square
In 1885, the DADC built sixteen houses and twelve cottages on the south side of what was then known as Tripoli and around the corner onto Pimlico. They range in scale from single-storey cottages in the central square to two-storey terraced houses on the perimeter. The two-bay red-brick houses had a pitched roof and a shared brick chimney stack with single square-headed openings on the first floor and arched openings on the ground floor and were originally fitted with timber single sash windows and timber panelled doors. Each house and cottage had its own mains water supply, its own back yard, a privy and a coalhouse. The rents, however, were too high for a general labourer and many of the houses and cottages were occupied by Guinness Brewery employees and Jacob’s factory workers.
DADC houses on what was known as Tripoli, now Pimlico, built 1885. Photograph from Google Street View. Tap/Click to open
World War One stopped building schemes and this halt continued well after the end of the war because of a rent strike but three schemes were built from 1929 to 1933. The basic dwelling was now an eight-roomed house with a kitchen, an indoor bathroom, front and back gardens and mains electricity.
Plan of DADC house to be built on The Coombe
The DADC was unwilling to develop further schemes after 1933 as local authorities were now providing working-class housing regardless of profitability. In 1961, the DADC began to sell off its houses and use the income to invest in commercial property. The last houses were sold in 1979 and the DADC, now called D.A.D. Properties Ltd was taken over by Rohan Holdings in 1984.
City of Dublin 1886, held by Ordnance Survey Ireland. © Public domain. Digital content: © Ordnance Survey Ireland, published by UCD Library, University College Dublin. Tap/Click to open
© Lorna Peel
Dublin, Ireland, October 1885. The fragile peace within the Fitzgerald family is threatened when Dr Jacob Smythe becomes one of Will’s patients, angering his mother. But in attending to the elderly gentleman’s needs, Will inadvertently reunites Sarah with an old adversary and Isobel discovers she and Dr Smythe have an unexpected and tragic connection.
When Alfie receives a card on his twenty-ninth birthday, the recognisable handwriting and cryptic message shatters his hard-won personal contentment. Has a figure hoped long gone from his life returned to Dublin to wreak a cruel mischief on all those who banished him? Is Alfie’s ambition of becoming a doctor about to be derailed when he has less than a year left at Trinity College?
Read an excerpt from Chapter Four…
Two hours later, after a busy surgery, Will let himself into Bob’s house on Tripoli and left his hat and medical bag in the hall. He went into the parlour, lit a small oil lamp on the mantelpiece then glanced around the room. Two easy chairs stood on either side of the fireplace, one with a copy of the Freeman’s Journal lying on it and a laden bookcase stood against the opposite wall. Taking the lamp, he went into the living room, around the table and chairs and on into the scullery in an extension at the rear of the house. Noting the sink and the tap with water from the mains, he smiled to himself, recalling how he had gone out to the yard at the back of the house on Brown Street in all weathers to pump water into an enamel bucket for cooking, washing and cleaning.
Unlocking the back door, he went out to the concrete yard and tried the first of two doors at the rear of the extension. It opened into the coalhouse and he shut the door then opened the second and peered into the privy – another luxury he hadn’t had at the Brown Street house – and he nodded approvingly. Closing the door, he went inside and locked the back door. He placed the temporary surgery hours notice in the parlour window then went upstairs to Bob’s bedroom which was located at the front of the house as Will’s had been in the house on Brown Street.
The bedroom housed a large double bed with a brass bedstead and a mahogany bedside table, wardrobe, chest of drawers and corner washstand. Putting the oil lamp on the chest of drawers, he went to the wardrobe, took out a russet-coloured carpet bag and put it on the bed. He lifted Bob’s dressing gown down from the hook on the back of the door, folded it and placed it in the bag. He opened the top drawer of the chest of drawers but it contained shirts and collars so he went down to the next and the next, finding nightshirts folded neatly in the third drawer. He put two in the carpet bag and was closing the drawer when he saw the corner of something white protruding from under the chest of drawers.
Crouching down, he reached for it and pulled out a dainty lady’s cotton handkerchief edged with lace. Since moving out of the rooms next door to the surgery on Pimlico, once occupied by Jimmy and his late mother, Bob had continued to join Mrs Bell and Jimmy each evening for dinner. Other than that, Bob had not opted to engage Mrs Bell as his housekeeper and now Bob had a lady friend, Will could only assume the arrangement was unlikely to change. He put the handkerchief back under the chest of drawers, picked up the oil lamp and the carpet bag and went downstairs to the parlour. Extinguishing the lamp, he put it back on the mantelpiece then left the house and walked to Thomas Street in search of a cab.
Explore my blog for more excerpts, character profiles, and background information
Tap/Click a banner below to catch up on the rest of the series!
I’ve created a map of the Dublin area with locations which feature in The Fitzgeralds of Dublin Series. As a few locations don’t exist anymore, some are approximate but I’ve been as accurate as I can. Tap/Click in the top right hand corner to open the map.
Lorna Peel 