URBAN DECAY AND DEPRESSION NEAR THE BIKE YARD AT RYDER’S ROW
A street named Ryder’s Row is without doubt an appropriate address for a Bike Yard business.
The area is question is a triangle of properties formed by Ryder’s Row, one end of Capel Street and one short section of Capel Street.
There was a derelict site to the right of the bicycle yard which was converted into a mini public-park which immediately became a magnet for rough sleepers at night and students during the day. Daytime users were not a problem but from about 7pm it became a place to be avoided.
Sadly a person believed to be sleeping rough was found dead in the park. This was the second homeless person to die in the immediate area in recent times. One, who died, was a well known local character who wandered the city together with his little dog in a shopping trolley.
The mini-park is currently fenced off and unavailable as a public space.
This semi-derelict complex is behind a house of note on Capel Street. Described as a Dutch Billy it is one of a small number of extant examples of Dublin’s rich pre-Georgian architectural heritage, many of which have now been demolished or unrecognisably altered. In fact, it is one of only a few surviving intact on Capel Street, a thoroughfare once dominated by these structures.
Today the schools returned and as a result Kings Inns Street was full of excited children when I visited at about lunch time.
The original Williams & Woods is the landmark building on Kings Inns Street. The industrial building, where products such as Toblerone and Mint Crisp were manufactured, was Dublin’s first reinforced concrete building.
Donnelly & Moore designed this large building as a jam and sweet factory and it was constructed by G. & T. Crampton for Williams & Woods in 1910. There was confectionary factory on the site since 1856.
To the best of my knowledge it operated as a data storage centre for many years. The building is being now being developed as a creative community, Chocolate Factory, with studios, event spaces and a cafe.
Mount Carmel National School operates from a modernist building, located on Kings Inns Street. It built to designs by William H. Byrne & Son, to replace an earlier nineteenth-century building, which itself had replaced the original school located on Middle Abbey Street, dating from 1812. The compact multi-storey plan addressed the need for space on a restricted site within the densely populated city centre, and included a roof-top playground.
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