ABSTRACT
Dublin was ranked as one of the finest in the British Empire, resplendent with a 'long lie of beautiful quays, spanned by many graceful bridges'. In contrast to other similarly sized cities in Victorian Britain, comparatively little housing was built for Dublin's working-class population. In Belfast, thousands of houses were built for those working in the linen and shipbuilding industries. However, with Dublin's declining industrial base and a plentiful supply of older housing, the labouring poor had to make do with existing accommodation in the city. In Dublin, the historiography of its architecture tends to focus mainly on the eighteenth-century city, while considerably less attention is paid to its larger nineteenth-century urban fabric. Challenging the common depiction of Dublin's Catholic commercial class as mere publican-grocers, or petty-bourgeois at best, their achievements are reflected in the high-quality houses that they built around their homes. Finally, this chapter presents some overview of the book.
