Sometimes this is almost comically ludicrous, such as the six-storey Seabank Court built on Sandycove's Marine Parade, a building which in both design and scale seems totally to ignore its location and, in the manner of Dun Laoghaire shopping centre, manages to present a predominantly brick wall to the sea. Nearby is a more insidious development in which a single two-storey property has been given an extra floor on its roof and divided into three houses called Seaview, Seabreeze and Seaspray; the integrity of the original property has been disrupted without any evident benefit, other than economic.
There are many such examples throughout the greater Dun Laoghaire area of changes being made to both individual structures and sections of terraces. On Marine Terrace, for example, the unity of line has been destroyed by the intrusion of an apartment block called Cool na Mara which, while maintaining the same roofline, has four storeys to the three of its immediate neighbours on either side and eight bays rather than six. All the apartments have PVC windows and are entered through one meanly-proportioned communal door, which further disrupts the appearance of the terrace.
A similar problem can be observed on the west side of Clarinda Park, one of Dun Laoghaire's first squares, begun in 1849; here again the integrity of the Victorian terrace's line has been broken by a number of houses which have been converted into apartments, admission to which can be gained through just one door, the others being turned into absurdly small balconies with French windows. Further up the terrace more houses have suffered the same fate; in this instance, decorative supports have been fixed to the wall on either side of the doors but without the architrave they are intended to support. This superficial homage to Dun Laoghaire's Victorian past is widespread and, far from indicating a sympathy with the town's heritage, suggests a total lack of understanding of the most basic architectural principles.
No better example of this exists than the new Garda station and adjacent district court on Corrig Avenue, which weakly ape the design of the nearby terraces and semi-detached villas by means of tiny pediments and thin window surrounds. While the massive five-storey office development next door cannot be recommended for its design merits, at least there is a certain rude honesty about the block which the Garda station and court do not possess.
Individual units in the area's terraces have not been treated with respect either. Adelaide House, at the bottom of Adelaide Street, is typical of the manner in which a property's character has been damaged by poor handling of its redevelopment. The Ionic portico, common to all the house entrances along the seafront terrace in which Adelaide House is located, has here been removed, the door blocked up and the steps covered in tiles, while an additional storey has been gained by means of a mansard roof and the first-floor bay window extended to the ground floor.
In fact, it is curious that Dun Laoghaire's sea frontage, which might have been thought most precious of all, has suffered some of the worst and coarsest assaults. The Royal Marine Hotel, for example, built in the mid-1860s to the designs of John McCurdy, had its original roofline taken down a century later. The hotel's northern wing was then demolished and replaced by a breathtakingly bland block in concrete and glass around the same time as nearby Gresham Terrace was pulled down.
Nor can these errors be considered as assigned to the past; some of the worst instances of redevelopment in the vicinity have occurred during the past few years. Dun Laoghaire's newer shopping centre, off Lower George's Street, stands on the site of the old Dominican Convent, a Regency villa called Echo Lodge. This was subsequently expanded into a much larger property with pedimented pavilions in the Palladian manner before being entirely swept away in the middle of the last decade.
Even more shocking - due to its critically important location - is the new Pavilion development on the site of the old theatre of the same name on Royal Marine Road. Now nearing completion, this six-storey dull, grey block, incorporating a theatre as well as retail units and apartments, overshadows everything in its vicinity, including J.L. Robinson's Italianate palazzo-style Town Hall.
Ironically, many of the apartments in the building have balconies from which the occupants can gaze on precisely the same shopping centre car-park which has met incoming ferries for so many years.
The demand for more housing in the area, and in particular the growth in popularity of apartments, probably poses the greatest future threat to Dun Laoghaire's 19th-century building stock. In many of these old properties, space has been allotted more generously than would now be the case. There will therefore be a temptation among owners to squeeze more on to sites. However, such attempts to maximise value are less likely to meet with approval from the local authority, thanks to the appointment of a conservation officer, Majella Walsh. This certainly bodes well for the area's future and for Dun Laoghaire's extant Victorian Heritage.
Architectural and Decorative Studies: The Journal of the Irish Georgian Society, Volume III, 2000 is available from the IGS, 74 Merrion Square, Dublin, price £15.