43 North Frederick Street, Dublin 1

Fuggin' typical... you wait for ages for a blog post and then two arrive at almost the same time... There's something I find incredibly inauthentic about squats run in the anarchist or "autonomen" tradition in Europe and the UK. You get the impression most of the people living there are doing so by choice rather than by necessity; a lifestyle decision primarily taken by kids of parents with comfortable existences rather than doing it through the urgent and very real need of a roof over the head. And this decision is taken as part of a greater all-encompassing plan to destroy authority, end all wars, free mankind, and whatever other utopian unachievables you're having yourself.. This building, about two minutes walk from O'Connell Street, although it has the recognised squatter logo subtly scrawled on the door, doesnt feel the need to plaster itself with circle-A slogans and have black-clad politicos tramping in and out of the entrance all day, dedicated to "smashing the state". Instead its just been taken over by people (AFAIK at present its controlled by mostly newly arrived Eastern European immigrants who splash down with little money and need a place to kip while they secure work) who recognise the immediacy of the situation requiring some form of action. In this respect, IMHO, places like this building and others like it dotted around the city (more of which will be documented here soon) are much more valid and interesting than the overtly polticised squats as mentioned above, who constantly feel the need to bark about their horizontal internal structures and supposed importance in the world. This four-storey over basement used to be a Bed & Breakfast called "An Stad" (the Stop) but has only very recently started to fall into disrepair, with several of the windows broken and not replaced.

70 Blessington Street, Dublin 7

I met someone recently enough who said that they lived in Blessington Street during the 80's, when it was dilapidated and grim, populated by smackheads and the Special Branch looking for republicans. There's a good few buildings on the verge of collapse around here which makes you wonder if the street's been stuck in a bit of a timewarp. Perhaps its the location that gives it that misery -further down the road everyone knows O'Connell Street is rapidly approaching, and nothing sags the heart more than a plethora of fast food joints and sportswear shops... This building is a par for the course post-Georgian three storey over basement house, currently boarded up at ground floor and basement level. Was probably subdivided into flats (like the rest of the others on the street) and if ever renovated would probably stay that way, I cant see it being attractive to D4 types who would buy the whole thing for a family residence. Shame. Could be very nice, the constant stream of traffic at your front door would inevitably grind anyone down though...

UPDATE: 142 Navan Road, Dublin 7

Apologies to you, dear reader, for another extended absence. But it was a bad month. A shocking unexpected very first self-harming episode, roller coaster emotional trips (from ecstatic erotic elation running through every pore of our bodies, to the black core of human darkness pitching us into extreme depression and continuous self-doubt), sliver blade gut wounds, overseas heart shredding, bone breaking binge bicycle rides.. not stuff you want to experience. Not stuff we wanted to experience either. L'amour fou will chew you up and spit you out like so much unwanted Wrigleys Extra. But what can you do? You persevere, you endure... You move on. Or you try. We've all been there... things change, they adapt, they get better... just like this building on the Navan Road. Of course we wouldnt dare claim credit for the building being fenced off, its windows properly boarded up and the overgrown jungle of a garden out the back being churned up and turned into a manageable space... but it would be nice to dream we had something to do with it, regardless of miniscule readership. No idea what's being done with it, a lot of work seems to have happened within a short space of time and then nothing again in recent days. Again these pix are from the mobile but in the course of the move from the burbs to the core, the piece of shit digital camera seems to have gone walkies and we're reduced to the grim washed out pixels of the nokia.. no fucking Leica thats for sure. But you get the general idea. Not everything has to be aesthetically pure for you to appreciate the essential essence of its being, or the transformation of it. Does it..? If it does, then we're all fucked...

York Street Buildings, York Street, Dublin 2 (RIP)

Some more old mobile phone pix dug up from the archives, these were taken approximately two years ago before these buildings were demolished. I really liked these buildings, and even though they were done in the old 'tenement' style, they were actually much more modern than that.. although I am unsure exactly what year they were built in. One of the pix shows a plaque on the frontage stating that the buildings had undergone a facelift/renovation in 1991, but obviously within 15 years they were deemed unliveable and have now all been knocked. I think the RCSI bought the last two buildings off the Corpo, the two that were adjacent to the RCSI itself (the end closer to St Stephen's Green), and this injection of cash funded the current building that is going on there. The new units will all be social and affordable housing as far as I know. Shame they didnt keep the facade of the existing one though. Adios!

4 Beresford Place, Dublin 1

Has it really been nearly four weeks since the last contribution..?? Humble apologies to our thousands of loyal readers, there have been other rather enjoyable "summer projects" and addictions that have eaten into our time here at Derelict Dublin. So we'll show this amazing little beauty to you. In a prime location, with Busaras just around the corner, and the LUAS on your doorstep, this is a four-storey over basement king size whopper not to be sneezed at. Whatever about the likes of the two-up two-downs in Cabra being temporarily blessed with the steel shutter treatement, a gorgeous redbrick like this being treated with the same level of neglect is just shameful. Perhaps the reason for its lack of human occupation is akin to the gorgeous redbrick on Clonliffe Road; here the neighbours are The Irish Catholic newspaper - rather you than me, brother. As per the Prospect Square properties, whoever has the keys to this gaf seems to think that slapping a lickle bit of nice primary colour paint onto the front door will somehow cover up all the other dilapidation of the building.

Slightly meandering here. A friend of mine with a keen but non-professional interest in planning matters and the like, once expressed a serious hatred for "facade retention". To him the other meanings of the word facade - a front for show or exhibition purposes but with nothing of substance behind it - was a perfectly fitting dual description of this practise. A good example of this is the retention of some old stone frontage at "Wallace Towers" aka The Italian Quarter as you cross the Milennium Bridge. You've got some nice brickwork propped up with nothing behind it - or in this case, some hyper-modern apartments and newly built from scratch Italian cafes and restaurants. Whats the point in keeping the front of the building, he said, if you're going to crush the rest of it into the ground? I wasnt sure I agreed with him, because for most people the memory of a building, especially private dwellings along the quays or Georgian residences, is what they see on the outside. Never or seldom the interior. What would FitzWilliam Street look like if they had kept the facade for the ESB HQ? Granted it wouldnt be the same, but it would surely be better than the current travesty.

Anyway. Food for thought. We'll try to be more regular with the posting in future. Honest. Try.
Here's a couple more pix to keep you juicy. Check out that ripped out wiring on the doorbell. Mmmm...

3, 4 Prospect Square, Glasnevin, Dublin 9

Right next door to one of the best pubs in town, the Gravediggers, right outside an entrance to Glasnevin Cemetary. The pub itself is OK, would I be right in thinking that they only dragged themselves into the 1950's recently with the installation of a phone in the bar? Not sure if this is urban legend or what. How exactly would they have organised deliveries to the place? What makes it a good spot for me is the little green outside the front. When the weather is fine, there's a small sun trap there into the evenings, and you can bring your pints outside for some slightly more expensive than usual knacker drinking.

As for these two small houses next door to the pub, not sure about ownership or potential future plans. Possibly they might belong to the pub, because when I was taking photos of them at around midday on a midweek day, just as I was heading off on the bike a few grouchy looking punters (pints in hand, who are all these fuckers drinking during the day? Can I have your job please?) and a couple of bar staff emerged from the gloom, shooting me some serious evil eye, pointing fingers and muffled comments. They did a Cross Guns Bridge job on these houses - some cosmetic changes, but they're still on the verge of collapse, check out the roof. The "windows" and "doors" are actually cleverly painted panels. Its probably so the properties dont get put on the Derelict Sites Register, and hence subject to a percentage fine of the market value every year. I think its 4%. Check out the "front door" - wait a minute, there's no handle or keyhole!

Mountain View Court, Summerhill Parade, Summerhill, Dublin 1 (RIP)

Following on from the last post, I remembered I had a couple of old mobile phone pix of the last Mountain View Court block before it got demolished a few months ago, so here you go. A reminder of what Summerhill Parade used to look like. There was still remnants of graffiti from the CPAD/COCAD era sprayed on some of the steel panels at the ground floor units, e.g. pushers out, no drug sale today, etc.

Bella Street, Summerhill, Dublin 1

Apologies for the lack of text on the previous entry, every time I tried to edit it, it kept on putting the text as blue, bold, and underlined. It looked awful, and as you've gathered by now from some of the posts here, the aesthetic is sometimes everything :-) . The previous house is just off the NCR, three stories above a basement, and looks like it was divided up into flats before. Lots of "development potential" as you might say. The structure seems reasonably sound, but some of the windows were left open. I often wonder if property owners do this on purpose for some reason with derelict houses, so if there's some sort of list or preservation order on them, then they can get around it within a few years if the brickwork rots with eventual exposure.

This place on Bella Street (no number visible, and its on its own without any neighbouring houses) is right down in the belly of the beast, with a high wall topped with razor wire separating this street from Sean O'Casey Avenue on the other side. There was a recently burnt out house on the far side of the wall but I was heading the other direction so didnt get a pic of it. There's a few of these type of derelict places around Summerhill - which look like they've been boarded up for a long, long time and probably 100% uninhabitable. Bella Street is a turn off Upper Buckingham Street, just at the corner of that block of flats (which AFAIK is now sheltered housing, with a 24h security guard at the gated, CCTV'd entrance) which was built some time in the late 80's or early 90's financed with drug money. I read this in some P Williams pulp faction book somewhere so I'll try and dig up the exact facts later. I really like Summerhill in some ways, its still got that nervous energy reminiscent of Monto, and there's a part of it that can never really be gentrified, despite a rash of apartments being squeezed up against places like Liberty House down towards Talbot Street (the biggest clash of worlds in the city yet, possibly). I dont think anyone will shed tears for the demolition of Mountain View Court but its good that the council are rebuilding brand new nice social housing units on the site, and around other locations nearby too. Hopefully the derelict sites office will get the finger out and CPO places like this on Bella Street for conversion/renovation into housing units.

32 North Great Charles Street, Summerhill, Dublin 1

134 Navan Road, Dublin 7

You'd nearly miss this one because its surrounded on all sides by very mature trees. Its right up the road from the previous entry, and again just on the corner of the Nephin Roadand the Navan Road. Its a big, detached house on a corner site, with a large (overgrown) garden, and a small shed to the side with vehicular access from the Navan Road. I seem to remember the entire site being for sale recently within the last two years maybe, billed as "development potential", so its quite possible the whole house will be knocked and some low-rise apartments built on it. There's no planning permission notice up as yet but I wouldnt be surprised if one popped up soon. The rest of the area is all 2-storey semi-detached houses so any high rise development would probably encounter local opposition. If you hop the front gate, and walk around the back of the house, you can access the garage via a back entrance. You can also see a couple of accessible open windows around the back, so for junkies and squatters its pure bingo - the only drawback to this of course is that its right across the road from Cabra Garda Station. The photos below (very tricky getting the hang of this) are from the sitting room, the back door (note the open bathroom window), and the inside of the workshop/shed next door to the house. ** update ** This house is known locally as "Cabra Farm", and I really should have seen the sign with this name when I was hopping over the front gate. There's a planning application in the works for a 7-storey apartment block on the site. Thanks to P for the info.

142 Navan Road, Dublin 7

This is one of a few small cottages near the junction of the Navan Road and the Nephin Road. I guess you could call it Cabra but people just generally refer to anything north of that junction as the Navan Road. The other cottages behind are called the Roosevelt Cottages, so that name might warrant further investigation, although I dont recall any American president ever claiming to have ancestry near Cabra.. This house doesnt look too bad from the front, apart from the plastic sheeting taped up over the smashed glass on the front door, but if you go around the back, all the windows are boarded up and graffiti'd on (and I'll happily post some extra pictures of it up once I get more to grips with the blogging technology, forgive my ignorance), and the generously sized back garden is heavily overgrown with tall weeds. The cottage itself isnt that big, possibly two bedrooms, with a small kitchenette extension out the back, and would be a decent home for a small family. The stepped entrance down to the front door with the gate is a nice touch. There's a planning application stuck up on the side wall by a Michael McGarty, but the date has faded from it with age. The application was for alterations and an extension, but what possibly got turned down was the request for vehicular access from the Navan Road. The house is right next to a bus stop, and its hard to see how this could be altered so a driveway could be constructed. Its still no reason to let the house fall into disrepair though...

202 Clonliffe Road, Drumcondra, Dublin 3

Ooooh. This is a real nice one. Not sure if its Drumcondra or Ballybough, but I've been reliably informed that 'Ballybough' is vanishing off the face of the earth these days with estate agent imperialism-speak, and this gaf is closer to the Quinns pub end of Clonliffe Road anyway. Its next door to some sort of religious order building, so maybe thats why nobody is living there. I wanted to have a peek at it a couple of weeks back but there were some buzzies having some cans and works at the ground floor level flat (also boarded up). Its got a lovely long driveway (littered with cans, suitcases, plastic bags, a few needles, and some mature trees) leading up to the house. The gaf itself is large and stretches a good bit back, you can see a return from the car park of the religious place. Just above the front door though there's a large crack snaking its way up the front of the building. Nothing that couldnt be repaired though. With a bit of landscaping the garden could be nice, other houses in the same strip have big grassy patches in front of them, very pleasing indeed.

100 St. Mobhi Road, Glasnevin, Dublin 9

This one's been in shit for a few years now, definitely. I've passed by it on numerous occasions on the way out to Ballymun, noticed it getting slowly worse with time. Not sure if its empty or just neglected, but the front door looks totally fucked with several missing panels and a frame that looks chewed with woodworm, the blinds inside are all dusty and rotten, and the front garden is completely overgrown. But the Black bin and the Green bin are still sitting in the front garden, and the gate wasnt locked. Maybe its just the sign of a nice neighbourhood (which it is). It definitely looks like nobody's been in there for a long time though. I cant be arsed looking through Daft for a comparison but my guess would be somewhere around the €750k mark.

112 & 113 Phibsborough Road, Phibsborough, Dublin 7

These two gafs have been like this for as long as I can remember. They're right next to the "Cross Guns Bridge", which is at the junction of the Phibsboro Road and the Canal/Villa Bank/Whitworth Road. You can see that at some point they made a bit of an effort to clean them up by putting in paintings of window frames but they're still a fucking disgrace. I remember a planning application up on them a while back but nothing seems to be happening with them, except people parking their cars in the front yard. I think they may have been sold as one lot along with the pub next door, which was once the Cross Guns Inn (I think? I was never in there anyway), now called Smyths and gone more upmarket. So maybe the pub owns them and will do something with them. They're on a prime site, the apartments around the corner - with a wonderful view out the back of the Mountjoy Wall - sold for shitloads.

2 Carnlough Road, Cabra, Dublin 7

This is one of these two-up two-down gafs that you see around Cabra, Whitehall, Crumlin, Larkhill, East Wall, off Clonliffe Road, etc. I think these ones in Cabra were built in the 40's and 50's, most if not all by Dublin Corporation, rehousing people from town. A lot of them around Cabra I think are in private ownership now, and they sell for around €350k. Although an ex-work colleague who lives down around Imaal Road was saying to me before that the Corpo (now Dub. City Council) were buying them back off the older folks. This one on Carnlough Road near the Old Cabra Road junction has steel boards up and spikey fencing at the side garden. Next door didnt look too healthy either, it had the same temporary steel gate to the side, and an overgrown garden... but the windows were still intact. This gaf might have something to do with a future redevelopment of the area behind, next to the railway tracks. There used to be some sort of chemical plant there (you can still see it) next to the underused connection between Heuston & Connolly stations. I think there might be apartments going up, so maybe this one might be getting the chop. Still, its shit that it isnt being used as a temporary rental space.

OK here we go.

Coming soon. I swear. An antidote to the property porn of Daft.ie and the Irish Times Thursday supplement. Images and videos of a city crumbling around you. I'll try. I promise.