Category Archives: Dublin

Awaiting Attention



Lucan House, County Dublin was discussed here a few weeks ago (see Addio del Passato « The Irish Aesthete). As noted then, the property, having been under the care of the Italian government for almost 80 years, has now been taken over by the local council. Included in the demesne is not only the house but a number of other significant buildings, including the remains of a mediaeval church. This is located to the immediate east and within sight of the former Italian ambassador’s residence. The church is recorded as being in existence since 1219, some 15 years after the manor of Lucan had been granted to the Norman Waris de Peche. He was probably also responsible for developing the original castle, thought to have stood in the vicinity of the present house, and close to the banks of the river Liffey.






The church of St Mary in Lucan was granted by Waris de Peche to the Augustinian Priory of St Catherine, located on the other side of the Liffey. By 1332, St. Catherine’s had passed to St Thomas’s Abbey on the outskirts of Dublin and remained under its control until the suppression of religious houses in the second quarter of the 16th century. St Mary’s church was then acquired, along with the castle, by William Sarsfield and appears to have remained in a good state of repair until at least the late 1500s. However, in 1630 the chancel was described as ruinous and has remained so ever since. Constructed of rubble limestone, the building consists of a nave and chancel, the former having lost its north wall. Inside the chancel are a number of tombs erected by later occupants of Lucan House, a particularly poignant one commemorating Nicholas Peter Conway Colthurst who died in November 1820 aged six weeks, the tomb noting ‘It pleased Almighty God to take him from his afflicted parents after four days illness.’ On the north-east corner of the building is a three-storey tower, sometimes mistakenly called Lucan Castle. Most likely this was erected in the 15th century as a residence for the clergy serving St Mary’s, during a period when civil disturbances meant some protection from attack – even for priests – was considered necessary. 






On the opposite side of the parkland around Lucan House and quite different in character can be found another building in need of attention: an eighteenth century Gothick bathhouse. Thought to date from the mid-1780s, and therefore perhaps constructed while Agmondisham Vesey was still alive, it was constructed during the period in which the local sulphurous waters made Lucan popular as a spa. However, the limestone rubble bathhouse, complete with whimsically irregular form and bellcote, was for private rather than public use. It sits at the end of a long tree-lined avenue on a site above the river, views of which were offered by a tall arched opening on the north side. This opening gives access to a vaulted antechamber, warmed by a central fireplace on the south wall, the pointed arch stone surround looking as though it may have been taken from an older building, perhaps St Mary’s church? There are arched openings on both the western (external) and eastern (internal) walls of the chamber, the latter leading to the bathhouse itself, a sunken pool with a series of shallow steps. Like other buildings in the grounds of the property, the bathhouse is now in need of restoration, along with the stableyard and a pair of charming Gothick lodges which lie immediately inside the gates. All of this now awaits the local council. One must hope that the authority appreciates the importance of the site’s architectural legacy, and affords it due respect. 


An Evocative Spot



A rare occasion when Foster Place, Dublin is not cluttered with parked cars. This narrow cul-de-sac off Dame Street is located to the immediate west of the Bank of Ireland (formerly Ireland’s House of Commons) on College Green. The space was created in 1787 when buildings on this side were demolished to create a new entrance to the House of Commons designed by Robert Parke (the equivalent on the east side, on Westmoreland Street was designed two years earlier by James Gandon) and distinguished by a massive tetrastyle Ionic portico. At the north end of the place, and in the aftermath of the former parliament being given new purpose, Francis Johnston designed an armoury/guardhouse that sympathetically replicates many of the features of Pearce’s great building. On the west side, and directly facing the Commons entrance, originally stood Daly’s Clubhouse, the most fashionable gentleman’s club in Georgian Dublin; in the 19th century, this became yet another bank and was subject to alterations, notably George Papworth’s porch of c.1840. Deserving -indeed demanding – pedestrianisation, Foster Place holds potential to be one of the most evocative spots in Dublin.

Where Turkeys Voted for Christmas


Like their English equivalent, for many centuries Ireland’s Houses of Parliament lacked purpose-built quarters, instead meeting in various locations, not least a hall in Dublin Castle. However, following Charles II’s restoration to the throne in 1660, the government leased Chichester House, a residence in central Dublin dating from the reign of Elizabeth I which in the early 17th century had been used as the country’s law courts. Overlooking Hoggen (subsequently College Green) and adjacent to Trinity College Dublin, despite its eminent position the building soon proved to be unsatisfactory for its new purpose and by 1728 a decision had been taken that it should be replaced. This was despite, or perhaps because, of the country’s economic circumstances then being in a poor condition: Edward McParland has proposed that William Conolly, then Speaker of the House of Commons and likely one of the driving forces behind the project (although he died while work on the site was ongoing) would have seen the new parliament building’s construction as reflationary; in 1721 George Berkeley, specifically mentioning such an undertaking, argued that it would ‘employ many Hands’ and at the same time ‘keep the Mony circulating at home…’ Likewise, when finished, Robert Howard, Bishop of Elphin, while thinking the Houses of Parliament were ‘too fine for us,’ consoled himself with the thought that at least ‘it hath chiefly employed our own hands.’ Once it had been decided to embark on this enterprise, progress was fast. In January 1728 a building committee was empowered to receive plans, and less than a month later it sought these from Edward Lovett Pearce: he submitted these in early March. The foundation stone was laid in February 1729 and by November of that year, ‘the Walls and Roof…are now near finished and compleat.’ In October 1731 the two houses of the Irish Parliament assembled for the first time in their newly completed chambers. 





Described by Christine Casey as ‘arguably the most accomplished public set-piece of the Palladian style in these islands,’ Edward Lovett Pearce’s building was also the first purpose-built bicameral assembly in Europe. Overlooking College Green, the former Houses of Parliament has a forecourt dominated by a towering Ionic colonnade of Portland stone in front of Granite walls. The only original decoration to this austere facade is the royal coat of arms set into the tympanum (the three figures above, of Hibernia flanked by Fidelity and Commerce, were added in the early 19th century after the building had changed purposes). There were separate entrances for the Houses of Commons and Lords respectively and while the former chamber no longer exists ((it was, in any case, badly damaged by fire in 1792 before being dismantled barely a decade later), the latter has survived with relatively few changes. In Francis G James’s Lords of the Ascendancy, his book on the Irish House of Lords 1600-1800, the author notes that the number of this country’s peers was never very great. In the first three quarters of the 18th century, there were between 100 and 150 families possessing Irish titles, but James notes that only 60 percent of these spent a substantial amount of time in Ireland (some of them had Irish titles but no land or connections here, others were Roman Catholics or émigrés, unable or unwilling to take the Oath of Allegiance to the Crown). Accordingly, the number of peers attending the Irish House of Lords was often considerably less than 100, to which can be added the 22 Lords Spiritual (four Archbishops and 18 Bishops) who also had a right to seats in the upper house, although again many of them did not attend regularly. This explains the relatively small size of the House of Lords, since it never had to hold too many people. The room is tripartite, with an entrance area, the main chamber and the throne apse. Tall and barrel-vaulted with a coffered ceiling, it is lit by thermal windows at either end. The entrance area and apse are entirely panelled in oak with round-headed niches and engaged Ionic columns. The main chamber is panelled in the lower section, above which are giant Corinthian pilasters on either side of walls dominated by a pair of tapestries. Commissioned for the space in 1728, they depict William III at the Battle of the Boyne (above the oak chimneypiece) and the Siege of Derry. When assembled, the peers would have sat here upon benches and wool-sacks. No image of them doing so appears to exist (whereas there is a painting of 1780 by Francis Wheatley that depicts the Irish House of Commons in session). 




In the last quarter of the 18th century, Ireland’s parliament sought to exercise its independent authority to a greater extent than had previously been the case, leading to a series of political crises as the government in London sought to curtail Irish legislators’ power. In 1782, for example, what became known as ‘Grattan’s Parliament’ (after the Irish politician and orator Henry Grattan), succeeded in passing a series of acts that increased Ireland’s legislative and judicial independence. The onset of the French Revolution in 1789 and then an uprising – ultimately abortive but temporarily threatening – within Ireland in 1798, led the British government to fear that the country might escape from its authority altogether. Accordingly the decision was taken to concentrate all legislative power in Westminster, requiring the abolition of a separate Irish parliament. It took a couple of efforts – and a great deal of bribery – to achieve this result, not least because Ireland’s legislators had to approve the loss of their own authority (the phrase about turkeys voting for Christmas comes to mind). The Act of Union, as it was called, initially failed to win approval in the Irish House of Commons in January 1799, but a year (and a number of further bribes) later, the deed was done and the Irish Houses of Parliament ceased, of its own volition, to exist. In his Autobiographical Sketches, Thomas de Quincy recalled being in the House of Lords when it met for the last time, and he observed that when the order of abolition was announced, ‘no audible expression, no buzz nor murmur, nor susurrus even, testified the feelings which, doubtless lay rankling in many bosoms.; They had surrendered their power, he thought, ‘with nothing worth the name of a struggle, and no reward worth the name of an indemnification.’ In the aftermath of this act, an alternative use needed to be found for the splendid building on College Green, and in 1803 it was sold by the government to the Bank of Ireland for £40,000, on the understanding that changes would be made to the interior so that it could not revert to its former purpose. This work was undertaken sympathetically by architect Francis Johnston but while the old House of Commons was broken up, the House of Lords survived, for a long time being used as the bank’s board room. Today it is open to the public during weekday mornings and offers a glimpse into how and where Ireland’s parliament operated in the decades before voting itself out of existence. 

Don’t Hold Your Breath


Irish Times, December 7th 2000: Fresh Look for Fruit and Vegetable Market
‘Occupying a large site of some 6,000 sq m and with its principal facades on Mary’s Lane and St Michan’s Street, the market is one of the city’s least-known or appreciated architectural delights. This situation should now improve, however, because Dublin Corporation has just finished a £1 million-plus restoration of the building’s exterior, for which the funds came from the local authority, the Department of the Environment and the EU. The Fruit and Vegetable Market was intended to replace a jumble of unhygienic and dilapidated structures serving that purpose on Dublin’s northside and first opened for business in December 1892. It was designed by the city engineer Spencer Harty and, when new, was described in the Irish Builder as being likely to “rank foremost with many of our modern buildings”.’
Irish Times, December 11th 2004: Fish Market to close after 100 Years,
‘Dublin City Council is to close the 100-year-old fish market in the north inner-city as part of a €70 million rejuvenation of the markets area. The closure will also see the adjacent fruit and vegetable market move to a site near the M50, at a location yet to be finalised, as the council plans to refurbish its Victorian building for use as a retail “table-top market” modelled on the English market in Cork.It is hoped the table-top market will ultimately see high quality fresh vegetables, fruit and home produce – including organic foods, cheeses and pastas – attract new visitors and shoppers to the area.
The city council envisages the current fruit and vegetable market building becoming “the Victorian set-piece” for the rejuvenation of a large surrounding area which currently includes much warehousing.’





Irish Times, January 3rd 2008,: The Markets: Bidder Identified
‘In July 2005 the council announced a framework plan to redevelop the area surrounding the old fruit and vegetable markets and the fish market southeast of the Four Courts.
The project was to involve private investment of more than €400 million to build a new food market, restaurant and general retail market within the retained Victorian fruit and vegetable market building and the site of the fish market.
Some 600 homes and 60,000sq metres of office/retail units were also to be built in the area. The market square and surrounding infrastructure was also expected to be granted up to €25 million in exchequer funding.
Demolition of the fish market did begin in November 2005, but subsequent development stalled, largely, it is understood, due to difficulties in negotiations with the existing stall-holders in the market.’
Irish Times, August 2nd 2011: Capital’s Fruit and Vegetable Market to get artisan food makeover
‘Dublin’s Victorian fruit and vegetable market, which was the centrepiece of a €425 million regeneration scheme that collapsed three years ago, is to be redeveloped as an artisan food market by Dublin City Council.
The council plans to refurbish the market, which is occupied by a small number of wholesale fruit, vegetable and flower sellers, and provide some 40,000sq ft for food retailers.
The market would be modelled along the lines of European food markets and the highly successful English Market in Cork city, assistant city manager Michael Stubbs said.’
Irish Times, August 19th 2013: Dublin’s Victorian Fruit Market to be Redeveloped
‘The Victorian fruit and vegetable market in Dublin’s north inner city is to be redeveloped as a continental-style food market more than a decade since its regeneration was first proposed.
Dublin City Council has drafted plans for the refurbishment of the market hall between Capel Street and the Four Courts. It intends to go to tender for contractors by the end of this year, with work due to start by autumn 2014. The council hopes to have retailers on site in the newly restored hall by summer 2015.
The building, which was built in 1892 and is on the Record of Protected Structures, has 6,000sq m of internal space, currently devoted to wholesale. Under the new plan, the wholesalers, who serve surrounding restaurants and shops with fruit and vegetables, will move to the western half of the building.
The remaining half of the market will be devoted to a retail food market that includes butchers, bakers, cheesemongers, fishmongers, and a range of other food producers, as well as greengrocers. There will also be space for cafes at the edges of the market and in buildings bordering the market.’





Irish Times, March 3rd 2015: Plans for Historic Dublin Market Approved by City Councillors.
‘The €3 million redevelopment of Dublin’s Victorian fruit and vegetable market as a continental-style food market has been approved by Dublin city councillors.
The 1892 wholesale market building between Capel Street and the Four Courts in the north inner city will be refurbished and converted into a retail and wholesale market.
The council aims to attract a range of food producers including butchers, bakers, cheesemongers, fishmongers and greengrocers, serving goods to take home as well as to eat at the market, while retaining the wholesale businesses in the western half of the market hall.’
Irish Times, May 21st 2018: Victorian Dublin Market Regeneration to Go Ahead
‘A €3 million redevelopment of Dublin’s Victorian fruit and vegetable market as a continental-style food market is finally to go ahead more than 16 years after it was first planned.
Dublin City Council assistant chief executive Richard Shakespeare said he expects to have vacant possession of the 126-year-old market hall by the end of the summer and will then seek tenders for its refurbishment and conversion into a retail and wholesale market.
He said he hoped the revamp of the market, located between Capel Street and the Four Courts in the north inner city, would get under way early next year with work expected to take in the region of 18 months.’
Irish Times, August 15th 2019: Dublin’s Victorian Fruit Market to Close for Two Years for Revamp
‘Dublin’s Victorian fruit and vegetable market on Mary’s Lane will close next week for a major redevelopment project expected to take at least two years.
Dublin City Council has had permission for the past four years to convert the 127-year-old wholesale market between Capel Street and Smithfield into a 50-50 retail and wholesale market.
However, the market may now be changed to a retail-only facility, depending on the outcome of a tender process for the redevelopment, which will get under way in the coming months.’
Irish Times, October 31st 2023: Reopening of Dublin Victorian Market sees Dramatic Plan for Surrounding Area
‘The revitalisation of the area around Dublin’s Victorian fruit and vegetable market, with the extension of pedestrianisation from Capel Street, and the upgrade of parks and roads, is planned in advance of the reopening of the market.
The draft Markets Area Public Realm Plan aims to dramatically improve the environment of the north inner city area between Capel Street, Church Street, North King Street and the quays…
…The area was once a thriving market district, serving the city’s restaurants and grocers. While many wholesale traders still operate in there, the closure of the council’s fruit and vegetable market on Mary’s Lane in 2019 substantially reduced activity in the locality.’
Irish Times, April 6th 2024: Dublin’s Victorian Fruit and Vegetable Market Finally to Reopen
‘Redevelopment of Dublin’s Victorian fruit and vegetable market is finally to go ahead at a cost of €25 million, five years after its closure, city council chief executive Richard Shakespeare has confirmed.
The revamped retail food market and restaurant complex will reopen in just over two years’ time, following an extensive refurbishment and fit-out programme, Mr Shakespeare said.’

Don’t hold your breath…


P.S. While we wait for more time to pass, perhaps someone could take the relevant persons in Dublin City Council to one side and advise them that even basic maintenance of a building will help to reduce the costs of its eventual restoration.

Remembering a Hero



Following last Monday’s post about Lucan House, here is a monument found within the surrounding garden and dedicated to Patrick Sarsfield, first Earl of Lucan and hero of the 1691 Siege of Limerick. While he never lived here (the property was owned by his older brother William), toward the end of the 18th century either Agmondisham Vesey or his nephew and heir Colonel George Vesey is thought to have commissioned this work from James Wyatt. Originally located elsewhere on another site to the west, the monument was moved to its present location on an elevated mound in the mid-1980s when the greater part of the old demesne became a public park. On a stepped base, three tortoises support an elaborately carved Portland stone triangular pedestal, with medallions on two sides featuring classical figures (the third for some reason has been left blank). And to finish it off, on top of this rests a substantial limestone urn. 


Addio del Passato



Last Monday, the Presidents of Ireland and Italy jointly inaugurated a new public park in Lucan, County Dublin, the space henceforth to be known as Parco Italia. The reason for this somewhat unusual name? Since 1942 Lucan House, which stands at the centre of the 30-acre park, has been the official residence of successive Italian ambassadors to this country. The building here has, like so often, a long and complex history but in its present form was commissioned in the early 1770s by the estate’s then-owner Agmondisham Vesey who, although he consulted several eminent architects, played an active role in the eventual design. Vesey’s house replaced an earlier one, probably dating back to the Middle Ages but much altered over the centuries. A painting by Thomas Roberts produced shortly before its demolition shows what appears to be a late-mediaeval tower house with a fortified manor house with castellated roofline to one side. Vesey’s wife Elizabeth, a noted bluestocking (and close friend of Elizabeth Montague) lamented the destruction of the older building, ‘with its niches and thousand other Gothic beauties,’ but her husband was determined to start afresh. To do this, he not only had to overcome his spouse’s opposition but also the original house’s associations with noted Irish patriot Patrick Sarsfield, first Earl of Lucan. His forebear, Sir William Sarsfield, had acquired the Lucan estate in 1566 and although temporarily dispossessed during the Confederate Wars, several generations of the family lived there until the marriage in 1696 of heiress Catherine Sarsfield (a niece of Patrick Sarsfield) to Agmondisham Vesey, father of the man responsible for building Lucan House. 





As mentioned above, Agmondisham Vesey, displayed a keen interest in architecture despite his involvement in many other activities: a Member of the Irish Parliament, he was also a Privy Councillor and Accountant and Controller General of Ireland. Like his wife Elizabeth he liked to keep abreast of cultural developments: in 1773, during the period that work was underway on the new house, he was elected to the ‘Club’, the informal dining and conversational group established by Samuel Johnson and Joshua Reynolds 10 years earlier. Johnson and James Boswell granted him the notional title of ‘Professor of Architecture,’ and the latter wrote that Vesey had ‘left a good specimen of his knowledge and taste in that art by an elegant house built on a plan of his own at Lucan.’ Boswell exaggerated his friend’s role in the matter because while Vesey undoubtedly had a hand in Lucan House’s appearance, so did a number of architects, not least Sir William Chambers who in 1773 sent him now-lost ‘Designs for a Villa.’ It is thought that the facade of the building was based on this work, not least because in March 1774, Vesey wrote to Chambers, ‘I am much more intent in finishing the South front of your Plan at Lucan this summer.’ The aforementioned facade is of seven bays and two storeys over basement except for the breakfront three centre bays which feature an additional attic storey beneath a pediment (despite Vesey reminding Chambers ‘You have taught us to think pediments but common architecture). This central section is faced in granite ashlar with four half-engaged giant Ionic columns above a rusticated ground floor. Originally at that level the two bays on either side were given rusticated render, as can be seen in an engraving of the house produced by Thomas Milton in 1783, but this was removed at some later date. Lucan House’s design looks to have been the inspiration for Charleville, County Wicklow, designed by Whitmore Davis in 1797, although the facade of that building is entirely faced in ashlar and runs to nine bays. Meanwhile, at Lucan, the house forms a rectangular block, other than a three-bay bow to the rear that, as with the facade, rises three storeys over basement. 





If Sir William Chambers was involved in designing the exterior of Lucan House, James Wyatt, together with his Irish representative Thomas Penrose, can claim much credit for the building’s interiors, with Michael Stapleton responsible for much of the plasterwork found on many of the walls and ceilings in the ground floor, as well as the main staircase and first-floor lobby. Lucan House has some of the finest examples of neo-classical decoration in Ireland, beginning with the entrance hall, to the rear of which a screen of columns and pilasters painted to imitate Siena marble, provide access to the principal reception rooms. That to the immediate left here, now called the Wedgewood Room but originally the breakfast room, is a perfect square, its walls rising to a gently domed ceiling at the centre of which is a medallion depicting a warrior kneeling before Minerva accompanied by her maidens. Around the room, floral drops surround panels containing what appear to be grisaille paintings: in fact, these are in fact prints overpainted at some date when age had caused them to fade. To the rear is the drawing room, although this was intended to be the dining room. Its walls were left undecorated (and today covered in paper) but again the ceiling has been covered in plasterwork centred on another medallion, this one, somewhat unusually, featuring the Christ child and infant John the Baptist together with a lamb. The rear of the house is taken up by what is now the dining room but was originally intended to be the drawing room. The ceiling decoration here is simpler than that in the previous rooms, but the walls are decorated with plaster girandoles, their design found among those created by Michael Stapleton. Oval in shape, the bow in the window is echoed by a similarly curved wall centred on a door leading back into the entrance hall. This arrangement of the two rooms  – hall with screen of columns to the rear and central door opening into an oval room – is found in Castle Coole, County Fermanagh designed in the early 1790s by James Wyatt.
Agmondisham Vesey died in 1785 and having no children, left the estate to his nephew Colonel George Vesey. The latter’s only child, Elizabeth Vesey, married Sir Nicholas Colthurst and their descendants lived at Lucan House until the property and its contents were sold in September 1925 by Captain Richard Colthurst (later eighth baronet), after which it was occupied by Charles Hugh O’Conor and then his son-in-law William Teeling. In 1942 the building and surrounding gardens were rented by the Italian government and then bought 12 years later, to serve as a residence for its ambassador. It continued to serve the same purpose until this month, at the end of which the present ambassador leaves his position and the property passes into the hands of a new owner, the local authority, South Dublin County Council. What happens to both house and grounds in the future remains to be seen. 



For anyone wondering, the bronze buffaloes seen in the grounds and fibreglass horse in the entrance hall, all by contemporary Italian artist Davide Rivalta and placed in their present positions last year, are due to remain on site. 

A Rare Survivor



For more than half a century, conservationists have rightly lamented how much of 18th century Dublin has either faced neglect, clumsy restoration or, at worst, demolition. During this period, vast swathes of the capital have seen the loss of their architectural heritage. However, that unhappy state of affairs has a precedent: our Georgian forebears did their best to obliterate almost every trace of the mediaeval city. Admittedly, after the turmoils of the 16th and 17th centuries, much of Dublin was in poor shape. Nevertheless, it is remarkable how few buildings dating from before 1700 survive today. One of them is the city’s only remaining mediaeval parish church: St Audoen’s. 






St Audoen’s derives its name from the seventh century Frankish saint Ouen (or Audoin), thereby indicating that it was established by the Normans following their arrival in the country; it has been proposed the building was first erected c.1200 during the episcopacy of John Cumin, the first Norman archbishop of Dublin. The church has a complex history, involving periods of expansion and contraction. The earliest part consisted of a nave and chancel in the section now known as St Anne’s Chapel and today housing an exhibition centre. Towards the end of the 13th or early 14th century, the north (riverside) wall of St Audoen’s was rebuilt as a four-bay arcade to create an enlarged nave: this part of the building continues to be used for services by the Church of Ireland. Meanwhile, a royal patent of 1430 granted licence for the conversion of the original, southerly nave into a chantry chapel for the Guild of St Anne, the most significant religious guild in the city. The guild supported six chantry priests who each daily celebrated mass at his assigned altar, one dedicated to the Virgin, the other five to SS.Anne, Catherine, Nicholas, Thomas and Clare. A domestic range, in which the priests lived, stood to the immediate south. Over half a century later, St Audoen’s was further enlarged when a second chantry chapel was erected to the immediate east, as wide as the existing structure and like it divided into two parts by an arcade, in this instance of three bays. The new chantry chapel, built in honour of the Virgin, was funded by Richard FitzEustace, first Baron Portlester who served as Lord Treasurer of Ireland, Keeper of the Great Seal and, on two occasions, Lord Chancellor. His tomb, and that of his wife Margaret, originally placed between the chancel and the chapel, was moved in 1860 to its present location beneath the tower at the west end of the church. By the 16th century, St Audoen’s was one of the capital’s wealthiest and finest places of worship, Richard Stanyhurst noting in 1568 that it ‘was accounted the best in Dublin for the greater number of Aldermen and Worships of the city living in the Parish.’ However, that was all about to change. 






Although chantries and guilds were officially suppressed during the Reformation, that dedicated to St Anne and associated with St Audoen’s survived until the end of the 17th century when an Act of 1695 officially dissolved all chantries in Ireland. In the interim, having been transferred to the Church of Ireland and with few parishioners to support it, the building began to suffer from neglect. Fashionable new districts were developed elsewhere and the wealthy preferred to live (and worship) there, meaning those who remained living in the area had little money to spend on the church. In 1773, the chancel and Portlester Chantry were unroofed: a drawing by George Petrie shows the latter in 1829 with lines of washing strung across the arcades. Around the same time, the main arcade was bricked up, with St Anne’s Chapel abandoned and the north nave established as a parish chapel. Such remains the case. The present tower at the west end dates from the 17th century but has been repeatedly repaired and indeed was remodelled in 1826 by architect Henry Aaron Baker. Vulnerable to collapse, it underwent remedial work in 1916 and then a major restoration some 40 years ago. More importantly, in 2000 St Anne’s Chapel was re-roofed and turned into the aforementioned visitors’ centre with the insertion of a steel gallery along the west and north walls. Beside this is the present parish church, its south wall still displays the late 13th/early 14th century arcade, with sandstone piers supporting arches; the space between them would once have been open. At the east end of the north wall are two funerary monuments dating from some time between 1600-30 and commemorating the Duffe and Sparke families. At the other end of the nave is a late 12th century font while in St Anne’s Chapel are the remains of another monument, this one Alderman John Malone (who died in 1592) and other members of his family. As mentioned, the Portlester tomb is now below the tower. It depicts the recumbent figures of a knight and his lady, together with an inscription recording the endowment of 1482. St Audoen’s is open daily (from the months of March to November) and admission is free. The former graveyard to the west end of the church has been extensively landscaped and is now a public park. 

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.