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Henrietta Street Conservation Plan

Significance

Henrietta Street ranks amongst the more important architectural and urban ensembles of this country. It is the single most intact and important architectural collection of individual houses – as a street – in the city. In the international context, the street is of unique European significance, being the single remaining intact example of an early-18th century street of houses, which was at the forefront of what was to become the Georgian style. Henrietta Street is an entirely unique repository of historical and archaeological data about the built fabric of our early 18th-century city, which is of great rarity in the European context, as well as incorporating surviving evidence for the far more humble partitioned hovels of the late 19th-century and 20th-century poor.

Henrietta Street’s historical importance stems not only from the quality and scale of its houses, but also from the singular political and social status of its residents. These included, from the 18th-century, four All Ireland Primates, including Archbishop Boulter, the first resident of Henrietta Street and Luke Gardiner, the banker, large-scale property developer and administrator of the treasury, who laid out the street in the first place.

Henrietta Street is also remarkable for the quality and variety of its present social character. The present residents, owners and those who work and live there, embrace a very varied range of cultural, institutional and personal approaches to their presence on, and contribution to, the street.

Today, Henrietta Street appears at first to be somewhat isolated as a cultural phenomenon, located, as it is, in an area of streets and houses which has suffered from economic neglect for many years. Henrietta Street, however, provides a unique opportunity to act as an anchor of cultural renewal in what is otherwise a fairly run-down north inner-city quarter.

Objectives of the Conservation Plan

The objectives behind this Conservation Plan are

0. to re-affirm the significance of Henrietta Street,
0. to identify the issues which presently undermine the importance of the street and
0. to set out policies aimed at protecting the aspects of the street which are of importance into the future.

Vulnerabilities

Of the various threats which presently challenge Henrietta Street, the following are of the most immediate concern and gravity:

• The current status – both physical and legal – of Nos. 3 &.4 give cause for great concern. Both buildings are in a very poor condition, both internally and externally.
• The struggle to maintain the houses in the appropriate condition places a sizeable burden on the property owners.
• The development boom which the country has enjoyed over the last fifteen years, has visited the Henrietta Street area in recent years.

• The contrast in scale and architectural hierarchy between Henrietta Street and the urban vernacular of its environs, which has endured historically, is now under threat. Equally, new development brings new uses which threaten to change the character of the Street.

Policies

0. To acknowledge the primary role of the property owners in protecting the significance of the houses and the street
0. To identify and promote existing and new initiatives which will assist the property owners in the substantial task of maintaining the buildings to the appropriate standard.
0. To improve the wider public’s awareness and appreciation of the international cultural significance of Henrietta Street
0. To acknowledge the contribution which the varied history of the street and the present diversity of uses and users makes to the cultural significance of the street
0. To ensure the condition of the houses is maintained to the appropriate standards.
0. To ensure proper and sufficient technical guidance and architectural historical information is available to both property owners and planning officials.
0. To protect against inappropriate uses.
0. To consolidate and improve the presentation of the street and the public realm environment
0. To protect and consolidate the street’s historic importance and its unique urban character.