THE RESTORATION

The restoration of this amazing building was given a time scale of four years. Phase I saw the rebuilding of the back wall for the whole five floors. The new piles and foundations will ensure that the house will stand for a few hundred years more. Phase II saw the erection of the missing top floor and roof. Phase III addressed the interior together with the painstaking restoration of the brick façade. Matching brick was sourced to allow the top floor marry into the existing brickwork to the front. Before that could be attempted we had to remove layers of paintwork from the entire façade and repoint the building using slow and expensive tuck point techniques. Some twenty two coats of paint - one for every decade and an extra one for luck - were removed from the pillar to the left of the hall door. The pillar to the right had been stolen so we had to rebuild it by hand. Can you spot the difference between the old and the new? Can you tell where the new brickwork on the façade commences?

RECREATING THE INTERIOR IN VICTORIAN STYLING

Although 15 Usher's Island is a Georgian building the style of the house at the turn of the 20th century would have been Victorian and emerging Edwardian. Homes of that time would have been furnished with a mix of something old and some thing new. Furniture which had seen better days would slowly work its way up through the house ending up in the bedrooms. Furniture was repaired and renewed but rarely thrown out.

Mr. Arden Gantly, the Art Director from John Huston's film adaptation, has been an invaluable source of information and encouragement to us and we wish to thank him for his time and knowledge and for guiding us in the right direction. There have been countless numbers of people over the last three years that have offered their advice and services and we thank one and all for their invaluable contributions. We even held a Wallpaper Day Out. With the help of Newstalk 106 we invited the public to come by and give us feedback on wallpaper samples. The debate on wallpaper samples and which ones to use in the dining room was quite heated! However wallpaper cannot hang until the internal walls fully dry out over the next five years.

FAN LIGHTS

All the wonderful fan lights in 15 Usher's Island were stolen during the years when the house lay derelict. These amazing pieces of glass sculpture need to be recreated and replaced in James Joyce's house of The Dead. Each piece entails detailed workings of lead glass and metal produced by an expert. The side lights have been replaced. These are the vertical panels on each side of the main door. We will shortly install two internal fan lights on the ground floor and one each on the first and second floors. These fanlights allow borrowed light to penetrate into the stairwell and stair lobbies. The prize which we are really looking forward to is the restoration of the fanlight which sat in a half moon shape immediately above the hall door straddling the entire width of the hallway. Built into the centre of this elaborate fanlight is a small chamber. A hinged door allows a candle to be placed inside. The candlelight both warms the heart of the passerby and lights up the hallway inside.

FIRE PLACES

As with the fan lights all the original Georgian fire places were believed stolen out of No.15 long before it was acquired for restoration. Replacement fireplaces are very expensive. We have photographs of the original fireplaces and fanlights. Should you be aware of their current location we would appreciate a call. Any help with this very crucial part of the restoration would be of great importance for future generations to appreciate the true atmosphere of this Joycean house. We have no wish to embarrass anyone and recognize that they might have been acquired in good faith. Accordingly we are willing to pay a fair current market price for them. We simply want to see them returned home.

RUBBLE

In October 1998 Joyce's home at Millbourne Avenue in Drumcondra was demolished despite the existence of a preservation order. When Brendan Kilty heard about this he went to the site and purchased 18 truckloads of this rubble. He claims he bought it on the "spot market" as it was in transit to the city dump at the time. His acquisition of the rubble led to the serendipitous opportunity to purchase and restore No. 15. As a way of "giving the luck back" Brendan is building a network of James Joyce seats in 63 locations all around the world. From Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur; from the Artic Circle to Antarctica; from Vancouver to Shanghai; from Santiago to Bratislava.

[EXTRACTS FROM A BUILDING STUDY BY MR. JOHN HEAGNEY 1993/4]

USSHER FAMILY TREE

The Usshers were a long established and distinguished family with branches in Dublin city and county. From Arland Ussher who was the Mayor of the city in 1467 were descended the members of the family who were Aldermen after 1550.

Arland had two sons, John and Christopher: from John were descended the Santry/Crumlin and St. Nicholas parish branches and through Christopher the Bridgefoot street branch were descended. All three branches were active in civic affairs by the mid 16th century. The principal residence of the Ussher family was on the bank of the Liffey in Bridge Street just west of the Old Bridge (now Father Matthew Bridge). There had been a fortified house in this location, which lay at the northwest corner of the city walls from as early as 1300.

The area, roughly rectangular in plan, between the Liffey, the main millstream and the two discharge streams was probably what was known as Usher's Island at the time. It is not clear whether Usher's House was or was not on Usher's Island as maps differ. Easy access would have been available over a private bridge as Usher's Pill cannot have been wide.

THE QUAYS - Development

In the years after 1660, the city leased out the length of the river from the countryside to the sea for development. This was a profoundly important gesture traditionally inspired by the Parisian Quays, but as likely influenced by the Protestant mercantile city of Amsterdam, which was at this time at the height of its prestige. Control was exercised through a leasehold system; this meant that although the Corporation themselves created Aston Quay, the majority area was leased to private individuals acting as sub-landlords, who in turn, offered plots for development.

Due to lease stipulations such as the Quay width of 60' required in the Armory Grant, coupled with common conditions around the city, the response was to build a terrace of houses on an esplanade.

The strip of developed land landlocked and preserved the old shoreline behind it and, by its nature, caused a caesura in the plan of the city by diverging from the order of the streets immediately behind them.

They became a bankable location: A. M. Jouvin, who visited Dublin in 1668, mentions 'the great quay over the river, where the palaces are'.

The North bank was disposed of in two enormous lots. The Amory Grant (1674) was developed as Ormonde Quay and Bachelors Walk with a 60' roadway stipulation. The Ellis Grant (1682) was developed as Arran and Ellis Quay (36' wide).

On the South side, Ushers Quay and Island date to the reign of George 1st; they were generous tree-lined terraces established on what had effectively been an island beside the old city.

The land to the West on both sides was not embanked until the 19th century. To the East of the old city, the Custom House, its Quay and Mr. Pooley's Yard marked the extent of Stuart enterprise. In 1663 the Quay walls were dramatically extended beyond it as far as Hawkins St (then Hawkins Quay) on a holding called the 'South Strand' and backfilled for development in the following decades.

A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL

15 Usher's Island wishes to thank all of the parties below for their gracious help in the past and they're on-going support on this historic project: ..... [View List]