Maybe it’s time for council to sell its derelict cottages in Chapelizod, councillor says

The postman marched along the terraced houses on Martin’s Row in Chapelizod.

He approached one of these houses, known collectively as the Mulberry Cottages. It had a painted yellow pebbledash front, and he slipped a letter through its postbox.

He skipped the next of the cottages, and the one after that. And the one after that.

There was only one more on the terrace which he paid a visit to, before ignoring another three and carrying on the remainder of his route.

It wasn’t simply that he didn’t have any deliveries for these houses. He didn’t. But there also wasn’t anybody living in them.

Seven of the eleven two-storey terraced Mulberry Cottages are listed on Dublin City Council’s derelict sites register.

Owned by the council, a council official said in 2022 that the cottages were due for refurbishment, with a view to being ready for use in early 2024. But progress on those upgrades has been slow.

So much so that, back in November, they were a topic of discussion at a meeting of the council’s Chapelizod Steering Group, says Green Party Councillor Ray Cunningham.

“There’s been no movement at all,” Cunningham said Friday. Restoring them should only be a small project, he said.

In the absence of any sign that their rejuvenation is looming, Cunningham decided to ask, at the recent full council meeting on 6 January, whether Dublin City Council would consider auctioning off the cottages.

There are some immediate works that need to be carried out, before the council can begin to assess its options, a council spokesperson said on Tuesday.

Remedial works and designs

In the 1700s, a silk production mill was established in the village, according to a council report.

Silkworms were needed for the mill, and those worms ate mulberries, says Peadar Kavanagh, a member of the Chapelizod Heritage Society.

“So the area where the cottages are now is where all the trees were planted to feed the worms,” Kavanagh says.

The cottages were built circa the 1820s, he says, and by the early 2000s they were already falling out of use, Kavanagh says.

Five of the cottages, numbers 1, 2, 7, 10 and 11 – which were then privately owned – were entered onto the council’s derelict site register in June 2015, according to a 2017 council report.

By 2019, the council notified the owners of numbers 5 and 6 that it planned to put those on the register too, a council report that year said.

In 2022, Dublin City Council acquired the seven cottages via a compulsory purchase order, Michelle Robinson, a senior executive officer in the council’s Housing and Community Services, said that November.

The council told the Chapelizod Steering Group that the houses needed stabilisation works, Kavanagh says. “They repaired the roofs on them.”

The plan was to refurbish them by early 2024 so people could live in them, with funding from the government’s Buy and Renew Scheme, which supports local authorities to purchase and refurbish vacant homes, Robinson said.

That hasn’t been done yet, says Cunningham, the Green Party councillor. “There’s no design team appointed to make any changes. Nothing is happening.”

So Cunningham asked the council’s chief executive, Richard Shakespeare, in a written query, if it would be possible to instead put the cottages up for auction.

“Other properties in the village have been restored by private owners,” he said in his question.

The response was that renovation is challenging because the cottages are in an Architectural Conservation Area, in close proximity to St Laurence’s National School’s entrance, and these works could impact on parking and local deliveries.

In the short-term, the council plans to clear “communal” grounds behind the cottages, knock extensions to the cottages that are in poor condition, and “steel up” rear access to the properties, the report said.

Once those works are carried out, the council’s housing team will consider what options there are for the houses, the report said.

The council is also awaiting survey reports on the cottages, according to its housing delivery report published this month.

Pretty poorly

Chapelizod’s Main Street is livened up by colourful and charming pieces of artwork and photography – used to decorate its many derelict and vacant buildings and sites.

In the heart of the village, there is a roofless, crumbling house, part of what is known as Gamble’s Buildings, an early 18th-century former tenement, according to Debbie Chapman, who spearheaded Chapelizod Dereliction, a community-led arts project.

Its boarded up front door and window were painted by Chapelizod Dereliction to recreate a photograph of a man on its doorstep setting foot inside.

Pale grey wooden hoardings surround the rest of Gamble’s, blocking off a portion of the building where Kelly’s, a grocers, formerly operated.

The hoardings are covered in pictures, a Chapelizod Tidy Towns series, showing locals in their gardens.

Less than 100 metres down the sloping street is 39a Main Street, a three-storey terrace.

It’s a protected structure, dated to the early 1800s, according to the National Built Heritage Service.

One of the boarded up windows has been covered by an illustration of a happy baby elephant. Another has a derelict site notice posted by Dublin City Council.

Besides the seven Mulberry Cottages, 39a is the only other property in Chapelizod listed on the council’s derelict site register as of 3 January.

Dereliction is a really prominent issue around the area, Cunningham says. “It’s a small village, and it doesn’t take much to bring the street down.”