Category Archives: Dublin

Curtain Up – Again

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Until recently it was believed that the Gaiety on South King Street was Dublin’s oldest extant theatre premises. However, earlier this year another, more long-established site reopened for business 350 years after first doing so. In the mid-1630s, the Scottish-born translator, cartographer and impresario John Ogilby moved to Ireland where he became tutor to the children of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford who was then the country’s Lord Deputy. Thanks to this patronage, Ogilby received the royal appointment of Master of the Revels and opened a theatre on Werburgh Street in 1637. The rise of the Puritans and the outbreak of war in Ireland forced this venture to close after four years, and the departure of Ogilby not long afterwards.
Following the restoration of Charles II in 1660 he returned to Dublin and two years later received permission to open a new theatre in the city. Although designated the Theatre Royal by special patent (the first such title granted outside London), it was commonly known as Smock Alley after its location, and remains remembered as such to this day. Smock Alley lies in the midst of an area called Temple Bar, now best known for a superfluity of bars and clubs and the hordes of youthful drinkers that these attract.

Prior to the development of Essex Quay in the 1720s Smock Alley Theatre would have lain almost on the banks of the Liffey and this caused various problems: in 1670 and again in 1701 the upper galleries collapsed causing death and injury among the audience, and following another such disaster in 1734 the premises were largely rebuilt to the design of local architect Michael Wills, with increased capacity. There followed what might be considered the theatre’s golden age, during which time it was managed by Thomas Sheridan, godson of Dean Swift and father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan who went on to have a stellar career as playwright and poet.
During this period some of the finest performers in Ireland and England appeared on the stage of the Smock Alley Theatre including Peg Woffington, Colley Cibber, Spranger Barry and Charles Macklin; it was here that David Garrick, the most famous actor of the 18th century, first played Hamlet. But other fare than plays was also offered: a surviving notice for May 1754 advertises that after the performance of Charles Johnson’s The Country Lasses, an equilibrist (otherwise known as a trapeze artist) called Mr Stuart ‘will play very curiously with a fork and an orange such as was never attempted by any other person. He will also stand on his head, and quit the wire entirely with his hands when in full swing, and discharge two fire wheels off both his heels at the same time.’ One suspects health and safety regulations would not permit such a display in our own age.
Smock Alley had already seen off various rivals when in 1758 the wonderfully named Spranger Barry, who had appeared on its stage, opened his own theatre on nearby Crow Street and managed to have the Royal Patent transferred to his premises. This proved fatal to the older establishment’s welfare, and within twenty years it had closed for good. The building subsequently became a whiskey store, and was serving this purpose when an engraving of it, seen at the top of this piece, appeared in The Gentlemen’s Magazine in 1789 (the section of map, incidentally, comes from that of Dublin produced by John Rocque in 1756).

So it remained until 1811 when the former theatre was acquired by a Roman Catholic priest, Fr Michael Blake who worked with architect John Taylor to convert it into a church, SS. Michael and John, which opened for services in 1815. This was some 14 years before the achievement of Catholic Emancipation and it was therefore hazardous of Fr Blake to set up a bell rung several times daily to summon his congregation and to advise them of the Angelus. Seemingly a city alderman instituted proceedings against the priest for this breach of the law, but dropped the action on hearing the case was to be defended by a talented young lawyer called Daniel O’Connell.
One might imagine the Irish Catholic Church would cherish a building so important in its historic struggle to achieve the right of freedom to worship. However, once the institution noticed attendance numbers for services dropping it had no qualms in deconsecrating the premises and abandoning all further interest in the building’s future. The next organisation responsible for the old structure treated it with even more disdain: in 1996 Temple Bar Properties decided to convert the site into a Viking Adventure Centre. This ill-conceived enterprise inevitably closed in 2002 but not before wreaking havoc on the place, stripping out its galleried interior and the plaster from the walls, and inserting an additional floor.

In the intervening years, the property has been thoroughly surveyed by archaeologists who discovered that large sections of the church were actually parts of the original Smock Alley Theatre, although a comparison between the exterior as seen in the 1789 engraving and as it looks today would have indicated this was most likely the case. Earlier in the year, exactly 350 years since it first opened as a theatre, the building reverted to that purpose, thanks to the enterprise of Patrick Sutton and his team at the Gaiety School of Acting. While this initiative is a cause for rejoicing, aesthetically the premises’ problems – created by the mid-1990s remodelling – remain unresolved. Due to the division of the interior into two floors, the main 220-seat theatre has had to be fitted into the lower area and feels somewhat claustrophobic (although, should the production fail to hold the audience’s attention, exposed walls offer a good sense of the structure’s various alterations). Meanwhile the upper room is almost as oppressive due to lack of space between interpolated floor and elaborate neo-Perpendicular ceiling, incidentally the only part of the original decoration to survive Temple Bar Properties’ assault. The ideal would be for the building to accommodate, as was originally the case, a single auditorium and stage. Although that seems unlikely in the short term, the fact that Smock Alley Theatre has now reopened for business suggests the final curtain has not yet come down on this drama.

The Lesser of Two Evils

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So Ireland’s national planning authority, An Bord Pleanála has turned down the proposal for Liberty Hall on Dublin’s Eden Quay to be demolished and replaced by a still-taller building, ruling that the alternative would be ‘unacceptably dominant in the city.’ Completed in 1965 and rising 16 storeys, for many years this was the capital’s highest structure. Liberty Hall is not an work of great beauty or architectural merit. However, what might have gone up in its place would have been far worse. And if the present Liberty Hall is, as was often claimed by supporters of the new scheme, dilapidated and no longer fit for purpose, then that is the fault of its union owner SIPTU which, for all the pontification about iconic status, has signally failed to maintain the building.

Felix Phoenix

Claimed as the largest such enclosed city space in Europe, Dublin’s Phoenix Park this year celebrates the 350th anniversary of its creation. The park’s name derives from an anglicisation of ‘fionn uisce’ meaning clear water, referring to a spa once located in the vicinity. In the Middle Ages, the 1,750 acres now surrounded by eleven miles of wall were owned by the Knights Hospitaller and following the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII the lands eventually reverted to the British Crown.
In 1662 Charles II’s representative in Ireland, James Butler, first Duke of Ormonde established a royal hunting ground on the site: descendants of the herd of fallow deer he introduced still roam the park today. One of its most attractive, if unsung, features is the location of the park. On raised ground to the north-west of the city centre, views to the south soar over urban sprawl and offer an unimpeded spectacle of the Dublin Mountains.
Just over a decade after being created by Ormonde the park was almost lost when the Charles II proposed to grant the land to his venal former mistress Barbara Villiers whose compliant husband had been given an Irish peerage; fortunately the country’s then-Viceroy Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex resisted this scheme’s implementation and ensured the Phoenix Park was not lost.

An equal debt is owed to a later Lord Lieutenant, Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, for allowing public access to the park for the first time; the principal east-west route continues to bear the name Chesterfield Avenue. The worldly Lord Chesterfield is probably best known today for the posthumously published volume of letters to his son which I remember reading with much pleasure over thirty years ago, despite (or perhaps because of) James Boswell’s stricture that they taught ‘the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing-master.’ But in Ireland, Lord Chesterfield’s memory should be cherished since during his brief viceregal tenure (from January 1745 to November 1746) he encouraged indigenous industry and ensured peace while Charles Stuart, the Young Pretender, was trying to inspire rebellion in neighbouring Scotland. It is said that on one occasion, an anxious supporter of the regime burst into his bedroom to report ‘the papists in Ireland are all up,’ to which Lord Chesterfield, with characteristic insouciance, responded, ‘I am not surprised at it’ before looking at his watch and adding, ‘why, it is ten o’clock, I should have been up too, had I not overslept myself.’
This was the man who decided the pleasures of the Phoenix Park should not be enjoyed only by the crown’s representative but by all citizens and accordingly opened its gates to the public. He also initiated a policy of tree planting and other landscape works, as well as erecting the fluted corinthinan Phoenix Column at the centre of the park. Its base features a carved inscription recording Chesterfield’s beneficence while the top is crowned with a fancifully rococo interpretation of the mythical phoenix.

Three of the park’s most significant structures are within a short distance of the Phoenix Column: Ashtown Castle, an early 17th century towerhouse, once part of a larger building that served as the Under-Secretary’s Lodge under the British regime and then Papal Nunciature post-Independence and is now a somewhat uninspiring visitors’ centre; Deerfield, the American Ambassador’s residence, originally the Chief Secretary’s Lodge, the core of which dates from the mid-1770s; and Áras an Uachtaráin, now the residence of the President of Ireland. Prior to this, it was the Vice-Regal Lodge, although originally built for himself c.1752-57 by the politician and amateur architect Nathaniel Clements after he had obtained the sinecure of Park Ranger. Five years after Clements’ death in 1777 his son sold the building to the government for use as residence for the Lord Lieutenant. It has been subject to periodic enlargements and improvements ever since, but overall remains an incoherent, unsatisfactory building.
Indeed, aside from the Phoenix Column, the only really sound piece of design in the park is the Wellington Testimonial (pace architectural historian Christine Casey who calls it ‘formidable and rather dreary’). Designed by Sir Robert Smirke and completed in 1820, this monument to the Irish-born Duke of Wellington’s victory over Napoleon is 220 feet high and 120 feet square at the base. The pedestal bas-reliefs were added in the 1860s; one feels the obelisk would be purer – if perhaps even more formidable – without them. There was an attempt made by dissident republicans to blow up the obelisk, in the same way Nelson’s Pillar on O’Connell Street was destroyed by a bomb in 1966, but the structure’s sheer mass defeated their efforts. Ideologues rarely display good aesthetic judgement.
The Phoenix Park is today under the care of the Office of Public Works which does a competent job, with occasional slips: shame on whoever permitted uPVC window frames to be used in the 1830s Castleknock Gate lodge. And credit to Lords Ormonde and Chesterfield for their foresight.

The Fashionable Side

This year Dublin’s foremost Georgian space, Merrion Square, marks the 250th anniversary of its creation. Actually that’s not altogether true: as early as 1752 there are references in the rent rolls of Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion to his landholding in this area being called ‘Merryon Sq.’ However the square only assumed its present form a decade later when Lord Fitzwilliam laid out the large central space. In March 1762 the estate leased five plots on the western end of the development’ north side, hence this year’s anniversary.
Jonathan Barker’s survey drawn in the same year indicates a number of houses had already been built along what would become the square’s west side, with a large space in the middle offering views of Kildare House. This splendid building, today the seat of Dáil Éireann, the Irish parliament, was designed by Richard Castle in 1745 as a town residence for James FitzGerald, 20th Earl of Kildare who in 1766 became first Duke of Leinster (thus the building has thereafter been known as Leinster House). At the time of Kildare House’s construction, fashionable Dublin congregated on the opposite side of the Liffey and Lord Kildare was advised that he had settled in the wrong area of the city. To which he is supposed to have retorted ‘They will follow me wherever I go.’

As elsewhere in Dublin, building around the square was ‘encouraged’ rather than actually undertaken by its owner. In other European cities the design of new squares and terraces was usually prepared by either a single owner or developer. This means spaces such Queen Square in Bath or Nancy’s sublime Place Stanislas present a uniformity of facades. Such an approach never occurred in Dublin, in part because no landowner was ever sufficiently wealthy, or perhaps confident of commercial success, to embark on such an enterprise. A superb scheme of this kind, for example, was proposed towards the end of the 18th century by the Gardiners for Mountjoy Square but never realised.
Instead landlords would sell off individual plots of land on long leases and then require the purchaser to be responsible for the building’s construction subject to certain conditions. Hence even in the 18th century Dublin was rife with speculators and developers many of whom, like their more recent successors, were over-ambitious and ran into financial trouble: the unfinished building site is not a new phenomenon in the city.
What gives Merrion Square and its ilk distinctive appeal is the fact that the original builders each took a different approach to their plots; even the size of sites differed, although the majority were for houses of three bays. Notice the variation in roofline height because although the standard was for four storeys over basement, proportions of each floor varied from one property to the next. Then there is the subtle variation in colour of brick depending on its source, and the way in which some but by no means all houses were fronted in granite on the ground floor. Look at the way in which each house has mellowed in a different way from that of its neighbours. Also, since the square was developed over a period of more than thirty years, changes in taste are evident in the proportions of doors and windows, and the inclusion of decorative ironwork, whether a first-floor balcony or an entrance lantern. While the interior was, and still is, private space, the exterior represented a public arena offering opportunities to display wealth and discernment.

Never having fallen from favour, Merrion Square survived better than most other parts of 18th century Dublin. All four sides are intact, although rather cluttered with street signage and, at the moment, a daunting quantity of For Sale and To Let notices. The largest extant property is no.45 at the centre of the square’s eastern side. More than 18 metres long and of five bays, it was begun in 1785 by Gustavus Hume, a man who somehow combined a career as a medical surgeon with property development: among his other schemes, he was responsible for laying out Ely Place and Hume Street to the south-west of Merrion Square. Because it was one of the later sections of the square to be built, both inside and out no.45 conforms to neo-classical principles and accordingly is more plainly decorated than some other houses in the immediate environs. Around 1829 the building, by then deemed too big for single occupancy, was divided into two properties and so it remained until ten years ago when restored by the Office of Public Works to its original state. Today no.45 is home to that invaluable resource, the Irish Architectural Archive. The IAA’s gallery is hosting an exhibition on the history of Merrion Square until 12th October.

Irish Architectural Archive, 45 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, http://www.iarc.ie