A childhood home of James Joyce has been demolished, causing conflict between the developer and Dublin Corporation. The action has also dismayed relatives and devotees of Joyce, who had campaigned for a number of years to save the house.
While the Joyce family lived in at least 17 homes in Dublin in all, Joyceans regard the house at 2 Millbourne Avenue, Drumcondra, as particularly important. In the novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce described the hero of the novel, Stephen Dedalus, returning to the house from a day at university to find his brothers and sisters finishing a very meagre meal.
Dedalus "pushed open the latchless door of the porch and passed through the naked hallway into the kitchen. A group of his brothers and sisters were sitting around the table. Tea was nearly over and only the last of the second watered tea remained in the bottom of the small glass jars and jampots which did service for teacups."
Mr Ken Monaghan, a nephew of the author, said he was "very very sad to see the house go. It wouldn't be possible to keep every house the Joyces lived in because they led a fairly nomadic existence, but this house has very strong resonances. The whole scene in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is very poignant . . . "
A conflict has arisen between the director of the company which owns the site and Dublin Corporation. Mr Patrick J. O'Rourke, director of MX Systems Ltd, the owners of the site, says he believed the site was to be the subject of a compulsory acquisition order because the two houses situated on it were in such disrepair. He said the state of the house posed a danger to children playing in the area.
"An engineer did a report on it and said it was dangerous and it would have to be taken down and made safe. The roof had collapsed in 1996 and the walls were cracked - it was very dangerous. We sent the corporation a commencement notice over a fortnight ago."
Mr O'Rourke said he was not aware the site had been the home of James Joyce, and thought that its most famous resident had been an archbishop.
However, Mr Eamonn Hennessy, the acting senior staff officer of Dublin Corporation's property acquisition section, says that the existing planning permission for the site does not permit the destruction of the houses. "The permission allows the houses to be redeveloped and converted into apartments, but certainly doesn't give permission to destroy the house." He said the matter had been referred to the corporation's enforcement section.
While the corporation had been preparing to initiate the acquisition of the site under the Derelict Sites Act 1980, it had not served formal notice of the order to the owner of the site, he said.
