20.03.17
The restoration and reuse of No. 10 Mill Street, off Newmarket, seems to have captured many people’s imagination and come to represent the remaking of this city neighbourhood. No. 10 has a long history but for the past three decades the building has been all but ruined, standing forlornly among the clatter of industrial units and sheds that defined Newmarket until recent months.
The original house was built by an Earl of Meath and was in use by the Brabazon family for over 100 years, mainly as a dowager house for each Earl’s mother or siblings. The early house was built in the Dutch Billy gable style, and images show a distinctive double gable. After the Meath’s left, the house was converted first into a school and then a mission hall and took on its present slightly Gothic looking appearance, its dutch-style gables giving way to a central pediment and the addition of a porch. Next door a Mission Hall was built, now all but gone (Read more about the house here on Come Here to Me)
The recent renovation of the property has been undertaken by Creedon Group, the local landowners, and the building forms part of an adjoining complex that includes 400 student housing units, new offices and retail. Internally, little of No. 10 survives, having fallen victim over the years to vandalism and theft. This included the staircase. Some elements of the older building have been retrieved and reused, including a beautiful large bow-window to the rear and wainscoting panels in the main entrance hall.
The New Mill student housing opens for tenants in the summer, and the offices are sure to be of interest in what’s increasingly an up and coming area of the city. Adjoining New Mill is a new hotel, Aloft Dublin, due for completion in 2018, while to the rear of that again a second student housing complex is set to open in 2018. On the other side of No. 10 will be a nursing home, while Newmarket itself is set for radical transformation, with both a Dublin City Council application for public realm works and a new park (Weaver Park), together with a wider masterplan for the development of Creedon Group’s holdings in the area imminent.
Added to these projects the continued growth of Teeling Distillery, which opened in 2015 and welcomed over 100,000 visitors in 2016, and a range of vibrant markets in the area including Dublin Co-op and Green Door Market as well as weekend flea and brocante markets. Its all go!
