Category Archives: Dublin

Another Light Hand


No.36 Westland Row, Dublin and its exquisite neoclassical plasterwork has featured here before (see A Light Hand « The Irish Aesthete) Home for more than 150 years to the Royal Irish Academy of Music, the building was originally constructed in 1771 as a private house but in the 19th century, like so many others, became used for commercial purposes. Somehow, its interiors remained intact, not least one of the first-floor reception rooms, the ceiling of which has an elaborate decorative scheme with a classical scene painted by an unknown hand at its centre. Meanwhile, on either side of the chimney-breast are substantial fluted niches, with various classical figures inside ovals. As mentioned before, the stuccowork here has been tentatively attributed by Conor Lucey to Michael Stapleton, drawing on designs made by Thomas Penrose. The latter acted as agent for the English architect James Wyatt who during this period had many clients in Ireland.

Then and Now

 

In the middle of the 16th century, one Hans Fock moved from the north German city of Lübeck to Estonia, which was then coming under the control of Sweden. Around 100 years later, Queen Christina, shortly before her abdication, elevated Fock’s descendants to the Swedish peerage. After Sweden’s decisive defeat by Peter the Great at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 and the subsequent annexation of Estonia to Russian rule, Henrik Johann Fock moved first to Malmö and then to other parts of Sweden, where through marriage he came into possession of an estate. His heir, Jacob Constantin Fock acquired further property, including land at Råbäck in the county of Skaraborg; it is from this place that the family’s title, Baron de Robeck, derives. His son, Johan Henrik Fock, enjoyed a colourful career, including fighting against the British army during the American War of Independence, before moving to England where in March 1789 he married Anne Fitz-Patrick, heiress to a Galway landowner: four months after the wedding, by an Act of Parliament Fock was naturalised as a British subject under the name ‘John Henry Fock, called Baron de Robeck.’ The couple’s son, John Michael Henry Fock, after serving under General Sir John Moore in the Peninsula Wars, settled in Ireland where in 1820 he married the Hon Margaret Lawless, daughter of Valentine Lawless, second Baron Cloncurry. Famously, her parents had divorced after Lord Cloncurry had successfully sued Sir John Bennett Piers for criminal conversation with his wife. Alas, it proved to be a case of ‘like mother, like daughter’ and in 1828 the de Robecks were divorced after the baroness was found to be having an affair with Lord Sussex Lennox, a younger son of the fourth Duke of Richmond (the couple subsequently went on to marry and have three children). Baron de Robeck married a second time and in due course acquired a house in Dublin’s Merrion Square which at some date in the early 1850s he elaborately redecorated. 






Like its neighbours, 40 Merrion Square dates from the late 18th century and has a three-bay plain brick facade. Its interior was presumably decorated in similar style to those on either side, with neoclassical plasterwork and white marble chimneypieces. However, as mentioned already, the house underwent something of a transformation in the mid-19th century when occupied by the third Baron de Robeck. Here the two first-floor reception rooms were redecorated in elaborate Louis Quinze style, the walls covered with thin panels filled with pendants, urns, leaves, ribbons and musical instruments. Some of the panels were also filled with mirrored glass while pedimented roundels were inserted over the doors and, in the rear room, the central oval of the ceiling painted with a trompe-l’œil sky. The architect responsible for this scheme is unknown, although Christine Casey has suggested the Belfast firm of Lanyon, Lynn & Lanyon since soon afterwards it was commissioned by the fourth baron to design a new country house, Gowran Grange in County Kildare. He may have been inspired to do so by the unfortunate death of his father, the man who had undertaken the refurbishment of 40 Merrion Square. Aside from his residence in Dublin, the third baron also rented Leixlip Castle a few miles outside the city. While staying there in October 1856, he disappeared, his body only being found 11 days later; it would appear the baron, who had gone down to the edge of the river Liffey below the castle to see the Salmon Leap, had slipped and drowned. 






In the period after the third baron’s death, 40 Merrion Square served various purposes. During the First World War, it housed the Irish War Hospital Supply Depot, and at the time of the Easter Rising in 1916, it was transformed by Dr Ella Webb into an emergency field hospital capable of treating 50 patients. Later in the last century, the house’s neighbour, 39 Merrion Square, became the British Embassy until burned by rioters in the aftermath of Derry’s Bloody Sunday in January 1972. By that date, the state-owned Electricity Supply Board already owned 40-43 Merrion Square and the same body subsequently acquired and restored No.39. Various alterations were made to the buildings, not least openings made at different levels, allowing internal movement from one house to the next. A lift shaft was inserted to the rear of No.41 and the party walls between rear gardens largely demolished, with much of the ground covered in frankly prosaic buildings and sub-stations. In 2019 the ESB offered the quintet for sale as a single lot, bought two years later by a development company which has since undertaken a scrupulous restoration of the whole property, so that it now provides flexible workspaces for a variety of businesses. Today’s pictures show the first floor rooms of 40 Merrion Square before and after this recent refurbishment. 

Tremendous Swagger



Francis Andrews was born in Derry 1718. The official Trinity College Dublin website describes his father as being a man ‘of independent means’, but the Dictionary of Irish Biography notes that contemporary gossip proposed Andrews senior had been imprisoned for debt. In any case, the parent died when his son was aged only two, after which the widow Andrews married a Mr Tomkins who took such good care of the boy, that the latter was able to attend Trinity College Dublin, graduating in 1737 and elected a Fellow three years later. He then read law at the Middle Temple in London and was called to the Irish Bar in 1746. Andrews was a noted bon viveur and his legal practice does not appear to have interfered with a very busy social life, at one time involving travel to Italy on a Grand Tour. Nevertheless, Andrews did possess scholarship, impressing professors in Padua with his knowledge of Latin and classical authors. The most momentous change in his circumstances occurred in 1758. He happened to be in London when it was announced that the Provost of Trinity College Dublin, Richard Baldwin, had died. A month later, Andrews was appointed by George II to the position, the first layman to hold the post since 1626. His close friendship with John Russell, Duke of Bedford and Richard Rigby, then respectively Lord Lieutenant and chief secretary of Ireland, are believed to have played a major role in securing him the Provostship as did – according to the same aforementioned gossip – lobbying by the popular actress Peg Woffington. In 1759 he was elected to the Irish House of Commons for the first time and to the Irish privy council two years later. Thereafter, despite – or perhaps thanks to – his responsibilities in the college, he served on innumerable committees and boards, as well as maintaining an already hectic social round. Not surprisingly, in 1774 he was obliged to travel abroad for the sake of his health, but died on his way back to Ireland. During his time as Provost, Andrews was responsible for establishing a number of new professorships, as well as a chair in music (its first incumbent was Garrett Wesley, first Earl of Mornington and father of the Duke of Wellington). He also oversaw much building work within the college, not least the construction of a residence for himself and his successors, the Provost’s House. 





Unquestionably the most splendid private residence remaining in Ireland’s capital, Number 1 Grafton Street is otherwise known as the Provost’s House. The building was commissioned by Francis Andrews in 1759, in other words almost immediately after he had taken up his new post; previous provosts had occupied lodgings in the college quadrangle, so this was something of a departure, not least because the house with its substantial forecourt closed off from the street by a high stone wall, looks more like a nobleman’s palace than an academic’s residence.  The splendour of the place was immediately and widely recognised. In September 1764, a London newspaper, the St James’s Chronicle, reported ‘The King of France has not so splendid a palace in all his Dominions as that the University [of Dublin] has lately erected for its Provost.’ The building is thought to have been designed by Dublin architect John Smyth, although as is well known the facade is a shameless copy of the garden front of General Wade’s London residence, designed by Lord Burlington in 1725 (and demolished in the 1930s). That design was, in turn, taken from one of Andrea Palladio’s drawings owned by Burlington. Smyth had form here: St Thomas’s church on Marlborough Street, Dublin which he designed around the same time was directly modelled on Palladio’s church of the Rendentore in Venice (the church was destroyed in 1922 during the Civil War). As for the Provost’s House, even at the time its indebtedness was noted; in 1761 George Montagu, then living in Dublin while his cousin the Earl of Halifax was Lord Lieutenant, wrote to Horace Walpole, ‘The provost’s house of the university is just finished after the plan of General Wade’s, but half of the proportions and symmetry were lost at sea in coming over.’ The only difference between the earlier buildingsand this one is that the Provost’s House is flanked by long, low pedimented single-storey wings.





The fine vaulted entrance hall of the Provost’s House in Trinity College Dublin is divided into two sections by a pair of substantial arches, behind which lie two ground floor reception rooms and a pair of staircases. The walls here are rusticated in wood, painted to imitate stone, that material used for the flagged floor and the chimney piece on the south wall. To the rear on the ground floor, the drawing room is surprisingly modest but the neighbouring three-bay dining room, in keeping with Francis Andrews’ fondness for social life, is altogether more substantial and elaborate in its decoration. Here the stuccowork, as elsewhere in the building, was undertaken by siblings Patrick and John Wall, while James Robinson and Richard Cranfield were responsible for the carving. Moving upstairs,  the first-floor saloon is one of the great rooms of 18th century Dublin, only comparable to that in 85 St Stephen’s Green (see The Most Beautiful Room in Ireland? « The Irish Aesthete).. Running the entire length of the building, the saloon is lit by a west-facing central Venetian window flanked by pairs of sash windows. With its deep coved ceiling, the space is divided in three by two Corinthian columnar screens, while elaborately carved chimneypieces can be found on either side of the door giving access to the saloon. At the southern end of the space hangs a portrait of the man responsible for its creation, the aforementioned Francis Andrews, painted by Anton von Maron, presumably when both men were in Rome. Facing him at the other end of the room is a portrait by Thomas Gainsborough of John Russell, Duke of Bedford, Chancellor of the University, 1765-1771 and old friend of Francis Andrews. A room of tremendous swagger, the saloon, like the rest of the Provost’s House, testifies to the assurance of Ireland in the mid-18th century.


A Repetitive Story


Twenty years ago this week, the contents of Lissadell, County Sligo were offered for sale at auction. The importance of accumulated house contents is insufficiently appreciated in this country. Often spanning hundreds of years of occupation by the same family, they represent changes in taste, and in affluence, not just of a particular property’s owners, but of the entire country. They inform our knowledge of Ireland’s history through both good times and bad, and provide enlightenment about how our forebears, of whatever status, lived. Accordingly, their dispersal represents the dissipation of knowledge, leaving us all less well-informed and thereby poorer. In the case of Lissadell, the house, and its predecessor, had been home to generations of the same family, among whom was the revolutionary politician Constance Markievicz. Her association with the building, along with that of many other distinguished figures in Irish history, led to a widespread public campaign for the property and surrounding estate to be bought by the state. As has been so often the case, before and since, this did not happen, and accordingly Lissadell’s contents were auctioned. One of the key losses from this event was a collection of furniture specifically commissioned by an earlier owner, Sir Robert Gore-Booth, for the house. Dating from the 1830s, these pieces were representative of taste in Ireland at the time and were believed to have been made by the Dublin firm of Williams & Gibton. Until the auction, Lissadell was the only house in Ireland to retain its original furniture by this company, so the dispersal was much to be regretted. The items’ importance can be gauged by the fact that most of the lots exceeded their estimates: a rosewood writing table, for example, which was expected to make €8,000-€10,000, fetched €19,000. In the dining room, a set of 17 mahogany chairs (€12,000-€18,000) fetched €22,000 and the dining table itself (€30,000-€50,000) went for €65,000. Forced to bid against other potential purchasers, Lissadell’s new private owners managed to acquire some pieces, such as a pair of handsome mahogany Grecian-style bookcases clearly inspired by the work of Thomas Hope and, again in the dining room, a sturdy mahogany sideboard. But many of the contents, first installed some 170 years earlier, now left for good and not just the Williams & Gibton furniture. There were, for example, a number of fine 17th century Italian baroque paintings, many in spectacular gilt frames, which had been acquired for the rooms by Sir Robert Gore-Booth. And then there were all the miscellaneous objects that build up in any house over generations, from sets of copper jelly moulds to discarded furnishings such as old curtains. These, as much as the more valuable pieces, are what inform the history of a building, and when they are gone, part of that history disappears forever. 





In Ireland, it has long been apparent that if the remaining number of historic houses and contents are to survive, then a coherent strategy to secure their future needs to be considered. The first attempt to devise such a strategy occurred back in 1985 when a body called the Irish Historic Properties Commission, established three years earlier, produced a report written by the late Kevin B Nolan and Lewis Clohessy and called Safeguarding Historic Houses. This clearly stated that ‘our heritage historic properties cannot be preserved without the active and consistent support of the Irish Government.’ Eight years later, in 1993 the Irish Georgian Society and another body since gone, Irish Heritage Properties, held a conference on the future of the Irish country house, subsequently publishing a report on its proceedings. This makes for melancholy reading, since so many of the problems then highlighted remain to the present day, not least the want of sufficient support from central and local government. Ten years later again, Professor Terence Dooley of Maynooth University, at the request of the Irish Georgian Society and the Dept of Environment, Heritage and Local Government, produced a report, A Future for Irish Historic Houses? A Study of Fifty Houses. A year later, the same government department invited Indecon International Consultants to produce an Examination of the Issue of Trust-type Organisations to Manage Heritage Properties in Ireland. Most recently, in 2015 the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht in collaboration with Irish Historic Houses Association after extensive consultation with a wide variety of interested parties and stakeholders, issued an Action Plan for the Sustainable Future of the Irish Historic House in Private Ownership, a document which was duly approved by the Irish cabinet and appeared in 2016. In other words, no one can complain that the challenges facing the Irish country house and the retention of its contents have been insufficiently examined and analysed. Produced over a period of almost 40 years, these and other documents have constantly made the same point: that houses in private ownership, if they are to have a viable future and hold onto their original furnishings, need assistance from central and local government, the kind of assistance that is available in other European countries but has consistently failed to materialise to any adequate extent in Ireland.





Outside observers often note with surprise that in Ireland there is no equivalent of the National Trust which operates on the other side of the Irish Sea and in Northern Ireland. An attempt was made to create such an equivalent with the establishment of the Irish Heritage Trust in 2006. The IHT was largely the brainchild of the Irish Georgian Society’s current president Sir David Davies. The original purpose of this organisation was that it would, like the National Trust, acquire for public access significant heritage properties deemed to be at risk and for which the State did not want to assume direct responsibility. This would ensure that the houses and their contents would remain intact and preserved for future generations. At the time of its establishment and in recognition of the potential significance of IHT’s work, the government of the time earmarked €35 million for the organisation over the duration of the National Development Plan 2007-2013. Accordingly the IHT entered into discussions with the owners of a number of properties judged to be most suitable for such an arrangement. At all times the relevant government department – for Environment, Heritage and Local Government as well as the Department of Finance – was briefed on developments at Anne’s Grove and in 2008 all relevant parties agreed the IHT would assume responsibility for its first estate thanks to an endowment fund of €5 million (drawn from its National Development Plan funding) and associated tax credits. Then in December 2008, the department’s minister wrote to the IHT advising that due to changing circumstances it would not be possible to provide the necessary support. The IHT has since successfully reinvented itself, but the fact remains that there is still no equivalent of the National Trust in Ireland, and historic properties, along with their contents, continue to be lost because of want of state support for their survival. Today’s photographs show the empty interiors of Howth Castle, sold in 2019 after being occupied for more than 800 years by the same family. The house’s remaining contents were dispersed at public auction two years ago in September 2021. Unless there is a change in state policy towards these properties, and towards the histories they contain, more such sales will occur in the years ahead. And we will continue to be the poorer. 

A Surprising Survivor


It is likely that most visitors to the Francis Bacon Studio in Dublin’s Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery are so busy looking at what can be seen on the walls and behind glass screens that they rarely, if ever, glance upwards. Yet in one of the spaces there survives a rococo ceiling installed when this was part of the Earl of Charlemont’s library wing in his townhouse, designed by William Chambers and constructed in the 1760s. The greater part of that section of the original building was lost in 1931-33 when then-City Architect Horace O’Rourke converted the house into an art gallery but somehow this one ceiling, featuring interwoven garlands of leaves tied with trailing ribbon and a testament to the skill of an unknown stuccodore, has survived.

Rising High



Now surrounded by suburban development but originally set within an extensive demesne overlooking the city, this is the Stillorgan Obelisk, erected in 1727 for Joshua Allen, second Viscount Allen. The obelisk is believed to have been designed by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce and is sometimes claimed to have been inspired by Bernini’s monument in the Piazza della Minerva, Rome. However, since the latter obelisk rests on the back of an elephant, more likely inspiration came from the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, also designed by Bernini and erected in 1651 in Rome’s Piazza Navona. Constructed from cut granite, the Stillorgan obelisk rises 100 feet above a base of rough granite boulders. This holds a large vaulted chamber with double flights of steps rising up to a viewing platform from which doors provided access to a room at the base of the obelisk. This was, seemingly, intended to be a burial chamber for Lady Allen, but since she outlived her husband by 15 years, only dying in 1758, it has also been proposed that the viscount instead interred his favourite horse here.


Unmissable



One of Dublin’s best-known – and most visible – public monuments: the Wellington Testimonial in the Phoenix Park. Originally conceived in 1813 (in other words, two years before the Battle of Waterlook), this enormous obelisk faced in granite ashlar measures 220 feet from base to apex and is 120 feet square at the base. Designed by Sir Robert Smirke, funds of £20,000 for the monument were raised by public subscription. Work began in 1817 and was completed three years later, albeit without the three pedestal bas-reliefs. Finally unveiled in 1861, these represent, on the west, the 1799 Siege of Seringapatam (actually overseen by Wellington’s elder brother Richard Wellesley who was then Governor-General of India), on the south a celebration of the 1829 Catholic Emancipation (achieved while Wellington was Prime Minister) and on the north, the Battle of Waterloo. The east face carries a laudatory inscription to Wellington in Latin and English. The original intention was for an equestrian statue of the duke flanked by guardian lions to be placed in front of this side of the monument, but although the pedestals were erected, the figures never materialised.


The Importance of Trust



After last Monday’s report on the present unhappy state of the Iveagh Markets (see A Preposterous State of Affairs « The Irish Aesthete), here are some images of another initiative undertaken in the late 19th/early 20th centuries by Edward Guinness, first Earl of Iveagh. The Iveagh Trust buildings comprise a series of eight four-storey blocks north of St Patrick’s Cathedral, an area of Dublin which until then had been a warren of lanes and alleys, judged to be ‘centuries deep in filth.’ All this was swept away in the early 1890s for the construction of new housing for some 250 families, designed by Joseph & Smithem in red brick with terracotta used for details such as date stones. Subsequently in 1913, Guinness commissioned the Iveagh Play Centre on Bull Alley Street, designed by McDonnell & Reid, once again in red brick but with extensive use of Portland stone in what might be described as a Queen Anne-inspired idiom. Built at a cost of £38,000, by 1915 the school was attended by 900 children. However, declining attendances and mounting costs eventually led to its closure and in 1976 the building was sold to the Dublin Vocational Educational Committee; today it houses Liberties College which offers further education courses to people in the area.

A Preposterous State of Affairs



Founded in 1890 as part of a larger philanthropic initiative by Edward Guinness (head of the family brewery and future first Earl of Iveagh), the Iveagh Trust is one of this country’s most effective, but relatively little-known charities. As the trust’s website explains, Guinness regularly passed through Dublin’s Liberties area on his way to work and ‘was appalled at the conditions that prevailed in this corner of Dublin. A warren of foul-smelling laneways lined with crumbling and overcrowded houses that were no longer fit for habitation.’  Having floated two-thirds of the company in 1886, he became the richest man in the country and so began to think about establishing a charity to address the terrible living conditions experienced by so many people in both Dublin and London, and donated £250,000 ‘for the amelioration of the condition of the poor labouring classes’ in the two cities. Among the trust’s first undertakings was the construction between 1894-1901 on a two acre site at the corner of New Bride Street and Kevin Street of three five-storey blocks originally containing 336 separate flats. But perhaps the best-known work of what in 1903 officially became the Iveagh Trust, was an enormous scheme undertaken at the start of the last century on the area north of St Patrick’s Cathedral and south of Christchurch Cathedral, and running from Bull Alley Street and Bride Street; requiring several acts of parliament to ensure its successful conclusion, the project’s cost exceeded £220,000, with further monies spent on the creation of St Patrick’s Park and other associated works which were directly funded by Edward Guinness. 
A superlative example of Edwardian architecture constructed 1901-05, the Bull Alley Estate, designed by the architectural partnership of Joseph & Smithem, comprises eight five-storey blocks today holding 213 apartments (a comprehensive, six-year refurbishment of the entire site was completed in 2012). But of course, the clearance of large areas of the old city for improved housing meant many of the residents lost the place in which they had hitherto earned their meagre livelihoods. In the Liberties, this was especially the case for street traders, who found their former pitches cleared and needed to find an alternative site in which to conduct business. It was for this reason that, according to a report carried in the Irish Times in July 1906, when work commenced on the Bull Alley site, Edward Guinness, by then Viscount Iveagh, undertook ‘to provide suitable accommodation for the vendors within five years.’ He was as good as his word and personally paid for the provision of an alternative venue, the aforementioned Irish Times report which celebrated the official opening of the Iveagh Markets.





Designed by Dublin architect Frederick George Hicks, the Iveagh Markets sits on a parcel of land much of which was formerly occupied by a brewery: the initial cost for the project was some £45,000 but in the end the sum was closer to £60,000 all personally funded by Lord Iveagh. The site includes two covered markets, the larger one, measuring 100 x 150 feet, intended for selling clothes. Roofed in iron and glass, and with a first floor gallery 15 feet wide carried on cast-iron columns around the perimeter of the building, this market also provided the main entrance to the property from Francis Street, the seven-bay facade has an advanced and pedimented breakfront, the granite-fronted ground floor taking the form of an arcade, with quoined arches of Portland stone, each keystone representing various trading nations of the world: the upper parts of the building are of red brick. Behind the clothes market is a second, smaller space measuring 130 x 80 feet where stallholders sold fish, fruit and vegetables. Within the complex and to the immediate north was an area for the disinfection of clothes before they could be offered for sale, with space for 40 washers, four centrifugal wringing machines and 40 hot air drying horses: these facilities represented an enormous improvement in what had previously been available to residents in the area, and reflect Lord Iveagh’s understanding of the importance of good hygiene. A number of other buildings were constructed here for administration and a resident manager. 





The Irish Times article of July 26th 1906 noted that although Lord Iveagh had paid for the new markets to be built, on the occasion of their official opening a deed of conveyance and keys to the property were handed over to Dublin’s then-Lord Mayor. ‘The Corporation of the City of Dublin,’ the report added, ‘has undertaken to take over and control the markets as in other parts of the city, and though a further responsibility is thrown on the shoulders of the city fathers, still, everyone will admit it is a worthy one.’ The corporation – now Dublin City Council – continued to exercise that responsibility until the early 1990s, although even before that date inadequate maintenance of the markets meant they were in poor condition. A report commissioned by the local authority and produced in 1992 observed that the ‘restoration of the building to its original splendour and its refurbishment as a modern indoor market would be of considerable economic and social benefit to the surrounding area.’ The following year, the council offered each of the market’s stall holders £20,000 to vacate their stands and give up their licenses, before announcing plans for a £1.25 million refurbishment. However, nothing happened – other than a steady rise in the cost of the proposed refurbishment, and in 1996 the council decided to invite a private developer to take on the job. The following year the council granted Dublin publican Martin Keane a licence to redevelop the site, and all appeared well until questions were asked about whether the council had the authority to issue such a document under the terms of the Dublin Corporation Markets Act, passed in 1901 to allow the construction of the Iveagh Markets. The dispute was only resolved in 2004, it then took a further three years for Mr Keane to obtain planning permission for a scheme that would have included restaurants, a 97-bed hotel, a music venue and an apartment hotel, as well as the refurbishment of the old buildings. This work was never begun and a long, sorry saga over the building then ensued: anyone who wishes to understand what befell the Iveagh Markets over the past 15 years is encouraged to read an article on the subject published in the Irish Times on November 19th (The Iveagh Markets: Can a former Dublin glory be saved? – The Irish Times). At the moment the matter is subject to ongoing mediation but there can be no doubt that Dublin City Council must accept a substantial amount of responsibility for the unhappy situation here. For several decades the local authority has shown scant regard for historic properties in its care. On the other side of the river Liffey, for example, the old Fruit and Vegetable Market, opened in 1892, was closed in August 2019 by the council which said it was about to undertaken a two-year restoration of the site. This was after 17 years of successive announcements of diverse schemes for the building (for a chronology, see Dublin’s Victorian fruit market to close for two years for revamp – The Irish Times). Last August, three years after the Fruit and Vegetable Market was closed (supposedly for just two years), Dublin City Council said that it had ‘initiated a tender process for a design team “to detail the conservation works needed” for the property. Initiating a tender process suggests a great deal more time will pass before anything actually happens and this is just one of a substantial number of projects in which Dublin City Council’s intervention has proven catastrophic. Recently, for example, the council announced that the Parnell Square Cultural Quarter, initiated in 2013 (and supposed to have been completed in 2017) would not see even the ‘first phase’ be delivered until at least 2027. Then there is the long-anticipated development of a new public plaza in College Green where successive design schemes have been launched to much fanfare and then quietly abandoned.
As for the Iveagh Markets, it cannot be denied that what ought to be a thriving and valuable public resource which would do much good for not just the local community but all of Dublin, has been allowed to deteriorate over some 30 years to the point where it is now at risk of being lost forever. The gift of a generous man to an impoverished city has been needlessly squandered as a consequence of poor decision-making and lack of action. Who would ever want to gift anything to Ireland’s capital, seeing what its governing body has allowed to become of the Iveagh Markets? Meanwhile, the original benefactor’s other great philanthropic gesture – the many blocks of flats constructed in the greater Liberties area – continue to be managed by a private charity, the Iveagh Trust, and continue to benefit large numbers of people. The contrast between these thriving buildings and the Iveagh Markets could not be more stark.