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.