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.