On Tuesday, 3rd December, 15 Offshoot members made the trip to the Henrietta Street Dublin Museum. The museum is a social history museum documenting the house from its Georgian beginnings to its later tenement times.
It was built in the late 1740s. The grand rooms of the house displayed the material wealth, status, and taste of Dublin’s Georgian elites.
During the 1800s, the residents of Henrietta Street shifted towards the professional classes.
In the 1870s, after the Great Famine, many of the houses were converted into tenement flats, including No 14, where 19 tenement flats of one, three, and four rooms were installed. In 1979, the last resident moved out, by which time the house was close to imminent collapse.
In 2000, Dublin City Council acquired the house and, following a 10-year conservation project, opened it to the public.
History aside, the group met at Blas Café for a healthy lunch, after which we spent about 2 hours in 14 Henrietta Street, moving through, photographing, and documenting the various rooms and areas of the house. From the open, light-filled upper stories to the lower, dark and dank basement and corridors, the walls and stairs are etched with 200 years of history. Finally, we finished in a model tenement living area, dating from the 1970s, filled with everyday items from that period — some of which resonated on a personal level with memories from an earlier lifetime.
A little after 4 pm, our tour was complete, and we set out on our journeys home — happy after an enjoyable afternoon in good company.
Some images (click on an image to open in full-screen mode) from the outing can be seen below:
