Kitchen windows extend downwards almost to floor level to admit more daylight and also to provide passive surveillance of the area, including an outdoor “home zone” where children can play.īuilt at a cost of €249,000 each (including VAT), the scheme took 21 months to deliver, from the initial design stage, which involved Bob Hannan collaborating with A2 Architects, through the tender stage, when the contract was awarded to Sisk, which also had its own consultant architects, O’Mahony Pike. Tiny gardens were “pre-planted” with a shrub or two while trees have been used to “soften” the parking bays. Right on the corner of Crofton Road, just metres away, is Scrumdiddly’s ice cream shop. They are within easy walking distance of the Dart station and bus stops as well as the harbour and main street, which makes one wonder why they all needed individual off-street parking bays for cars. Each of the two-bedroom houses has a narrow front garden and a parking bay on-street. The layout consists of a terrace of four gable-fronted houses and the pair of longer, thin houses on Kelly’s Avenue and a further six houses to the rear, on Stable Lane, a cul de sac that is to be extended towards Crofton Road. But maybe it's this variety that makes it quite an attractive little residential enclave.Ī classic “brownfield site”, its redevelopment contributes at least in a small way to achieving the three principal aims of Dún Laoghaire’s urban framework plan: to reconnect the town centre with the waterfront, to create more vitality in the area and to strengthen links with adjoining areas undergoing redevelopment. Unlike Griffith Avenue, with its double lines of trees and grand houses, the Dún Laoghaire version is a relatively narrow street, fronted by miscellaneous housing from different periods. Not that Kelly's Avenue is much of an "avenue". And in this case the choice was not capricious, as the former 19th-century wash house and abattoir on Kelly’s Avenue also has a gable front. “I always wanted to do gable-fronted houses,” Hannan says. The remaining 10 houses are gable-fronted and clad in warm-coloured brick on timber frames, with zinc roofs. Closer to the harbour, this pair are also rendered and painted white, in line with the traditional treatment of Victorian seafront houses in the area. Two of the 12 houses are long and thin, just one room deep, and have no windows at the rear, but there’s still plenty of light because those on the front are generous in scale.
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