A Remarkable Building



Lecturing at the recently established Royal College of Science in Dublin in 1868, John Ruskin declared that one of the chief reasons for his accepting an invitation to do so was that it allowed him ‘to stand near the beautiful building…which was the first realization I had the joy to see of the principles I had, until then, been endeavouring to teach.’ The edifice to which Ruskin referred is Trinity College Dublin’s Museum Building, now a venerable 170 years old but judged a radical instance of new design when first constructed. Writing in The Irish Builder in May 1866, Sir Thomas Drew declared it to be ‘a great work, most important in its influence on the arts in this country . . . To this remarkable building and to this alone we trace the inauguration of the great revolution in public taste which has since taken place.’ Even while still a work in progress, the Museum Building was exciting comment, William Allingham writing in May 1855, to William Michael Rossetti (brother of Dante Gabriel), ‘Yesterday in Dublin I saw but hastily the part-finished building in Trinity College, which is after Ruskin’s heart. Style early Venetian, I suppose, with numberless capitals delicately carved over with holly-leaves, shamrocks, various flowers, birds and so on. There are also circular frames here and there in the wall, at present empty, to be filled no doubt with eyes of coloured stone. Ruskin has written to the architect, a young man, expressing his high approval of the plans; so by-and-by all you cognoscenti will be rushing over to examine the Stones of Dublin.’ The origins of the building went back a couple of decades before its construction. In 1833 the college’s board launched a competition for the design of a museum to house  the geological and other collections which until then had been kept in a room in Regent House, the large block through which most visitors enter the campus. A number of architects submitted proposals, while others – not least Decimus Burton – declined invitations to do so. Eventually, in April 1853, a scheme from the firm of Deane, Woodward and Deane was accepted (although John McCurdy, who was the official college architect, insisted on taking credit for the original floor plans).  




The firm of Deane, Woodward and Deane – or more correctly ‘Sir Thomas Deane Knt., Son and Woodward’ – was founded in Cork in 1851 when the aforementioned Sir Thomas Deane took his son Thomas Newenham Deane and the Dublin-based architect Benjamin Woodward into partnership. Two years later the firm won the job of designing Trinity College’s Museum Building and in consequence it opened an office in the capital which thereafter became more important than that in Cork. Further commissions soon followed, not least for the Oxford Museum which, like that in Trinity College Dublin, is indebted to the Venetian Gothic style championed by John Ruskin. In the case of Trinity College, the exterior of the building is relatively plain, faced in blocks of Wicklow granite and broken by sequences of arched windows, those looking over College Park centred on sets of four, one above the over, the upper group also being given a balcony. The pilasters, capitals, voussoirs and soffits are all of Portland Stone, as are the sequence of roundels filled with coloured marbles. In every case, these features benefit from elaborate and individual design (notice, for example, how no two pilaster capitals are the same), exquisite carving work executed by a ‘Mr Roe’ of Lambeth and Cork-born brothers John and James O’Shea, also known for their playful capitals on the facade of the  former Kildare Street Club visible on the other side of College Park. Flanked by arched windows and beneath another balcony, the main entrance to the building has a tympanum of Caen Stone bearing the college crest.  Costing £12,768, three shillings and seven pence, the exterior dressings of the Museum Building were responsible for almost half its eventual figure of £27,980, six shillings and eight pence. 




Since being constructed, parts of the Museum Building’s interior have undergone modification, with many of the larger rooms being subdivided. What remains unchanged is the great, double-height stair hall, approached via a vestibule, the latter containing among other things the skeleton of an Irish Elk. The walls, originally intended to be of rubble masonry covered in plaster, are lined in Caen stone, selected by the architects as being more appropriate to the space. The Imperial staircase of Portland Stone leads to facing first-floor, triple-arched galleries supported by similar arcaded screens on the floor below. The columns are of different coloured polished stone, all of it Irish except for a dark-red serpentinite from Cornwall. There are 14 full columns which cost £13 each, 18  half-columns (£8 each) and 98 feet of Connemara marble used for the stair and balcony handrails (£122, 10 shillings). This great space is lit by glazed oculi set within a pair of shallow domes decorated with polychromatic brick, their central supporting arch carried on stone colonettes. Particularly in consequence of these domes, the impression is given of a harmonious marriage between the Venetian Gothic and Hispanic Moorish styles. Above the vestibule arches, for example, can be seen a series of small six-sided star openings; these are part of the architects’ original ventilation system reminiscent of those found in old hammams. Trinity College’s Museum Building has rightly been admired since first built (and, as mentioned above, even before its completion). The place is still much in use as part of a working university, which explains the somewhat distracting clutter. But that staircase and those soaring domes…


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Uncertain Future II



After Monday’s text about Mount Melleray Abbey, County Waterford, here is another historic property with an uncertain future. The Tudorbethan Bangor Castle, County Down dates from c.1847 when commissioned by Robert Edward Ward to replace an earlier house on the same site. There is some disagreement over who might have been the architect responsible, most authorities arguing in favour of William Burn, but both William Walker of Monaghan and Anthony Salvin have also been proposed: Charles Brett proposed that while the original concept was by Walker, Burn designed the main block and Salvin the somewhat different stable wing. Ward had only one child, Matilda who married the fifth Baron Clanmorris. Following her death in 1941, the building and 150 surrounding acres was sold to Bangor Borough Council for £35,000. After making some alterations to the building, including the removal of tall chimney-stacks, the authority moved into Bangor Castle in 1952 and have been there ever since. Last year, however, the council asked a consultancy firm to ‘explore viable options for the future use of Bangor Castle and develop a preferred option.’ A short list of five possible uses of the building was drawn up: a boutique hotel and events centre, a larger hotel and events centre, a creative hub and cultural arts centre, a small business workspace, or a small business workspace and museum. In recent weeks the council has announced its intention to move out of the property to new premises and to find a new purpose for Bangor Castle.



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Uncertain Future I


Just over a week ago, the handful of Cistercian monks still living at Mount Melleray Abbey, County Waterford left the premises and moved to another part of the country. The history of the abbey dates back almost 200 years, to the aftermath of the 1830 Revolution in France when a group of some 64 Irish and English monks were obliged to leave their monastery at Melleray in Brittany. Led by Melleray’s Prior, Waterford-born Fr Vincent Ryan, they arrived in this country in December 1831 and initially rented a property in County Kerry but soon found that site unsatisfactory and were then offered an alternative by Sir Richard Keane who a few years earlier had inherited a large estate at Cappoquin, County Waterford. Keane proposed the monks rent 600 acres of mountain land at a modest rent. Assisted by local people, the furze and scrub covering the property was gradually cleared and a working farm established. Meanwhile, preparations were made for the establishment of a new monastery, the foundation stone of which was laid on 20th August 1833, the feast of St Bernard of Clairvaux. Created an abbey two years later, with Fr Ryan as its first abbot, the monastery was named Mount Melleray, in memory of the French house left behind. 





For a long time, Mount Melleray thrived; at its height the monastery was home to some 150 priests and brothers. A school operated on the premises from 1843 until it closed in 1974 (see Untapped Potential « The Irish Aesthete) and in addition to the farm, there was a carpenters’ workshop, a forge and an aviary. Nothing offers better evidence of the Cistercian order’s confidence in the future than the great church, plans for which were first drawn up a century ago following the acquisition of all the cut limestone which had once been used for the exterior of Mitchelstown Castle, County Cork. That great house, which stood some 28 miles to the west west, had been burnt by anti-Treaty forces in August 1922 (see Doomed Inheritance « The Irish Aesthete) and stood empty when Mount Melleray’s Abbot Dom Marius O’Phelan proposed buying the stone. Once agreement had been reached, the material was transported by steam lorry in two consignments a day over a five-year period. Designed by the Dublin firm of Jones and Kelly which specialised in producing traditional designs for religious clients, the new abbey church’s foundation stone was laid in April 1933, shortly before the abbey celebrated the centenary of its foundation. With its great square lantern tower, the main body of work on the abbey church was completed in November 1940, although it was only somewhat later that the high altar and some 20 lesser altars, gifts of benefactors, were installed, together with stained glass, some of which was made by the Harry Clarke Studios. At the south-west corner of this building and at a right-angle to it, a smaller, ‘public’ church was also built, again to the designs of Jones and Kelly and again with stained glass from the Clarke studios. The interior here is also decorated with extensive use of mosaic on the walls. The church was originally dedicated to Saint Philomena, and was once the National Shrine of the latter saint. However, her statue was removed when, on instructions from the Holy See in 1961, Philomena’s name was removed from all liturgical calendars. 





So what will happen now to these churches and all the ancillary buildings around them, once accommodating hundreds of monks and visitors but now standing empty? The last eight monks have moved to another monastery, Mount St Joseph, County Tipperary and no decision has been taken on the future of the abbey at Mount Melleray. In Ireland of the 21st century, this is not an unusual circumstance: the numbers of people choosing to enter the religious life has dropped steeply in recent decades, and one legacy are substantial properties that are surplus to their original requirement. Finding an alternative purpose, especially for a site such as this one, which is relatively isolated, several miles from the nearest town and with no public services in the vicinity, will be challenging. And yet, again like so many others, the buildings are sturdily constructed and, in this particular instance, of architectural interest not least for the incorporation of cut stone from Mitchelstown Castle. A conundrum. 


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Resisting the Rector’s Request




Standing in a field just outside the walls of the graveyard at Mainham, County Kildare, this is the Browne Mausoleum dating from 1743. The man responsible for commissioning the work, Stephen Fitzwilliam Browne of Castle Browne (today Clongowes Wood College), had wanted the building to stand within the graveyard but the local rector wanted to charge him five guineas for the privilege, perhaps because Browne was a Roman Catholic. Refusing to pay, he latter opted to build the mausoleum on his own land instead; a stone slab over the entrance tells the story, the rector described as ‘the only clergyman in the diocese whose passion would prevent their church to be embellished or enlarged, and to deprive themselves and their successors from the burial fees; and he has been the occasion of obliging said Browne to erect said monument here on his own estate of inheritance, which said Browne thinks proper to insert here to show it was not by choice he did it. May the 1st 1743.’
Inside, the mausoleum holds a stone altar with the figures of Browne and his wife in relief, kneeling on either side of the crucified Christ, with the wall above embellished in stucco with fluted pilasters and a frieze of seraphim. On the north wall is an earlier monument to Thomas Browne (died 1693) featuring a seraphim at its base, a coat of arms and heraldic medallions above a lengthy inscription and on top a large urn flanked by skulls.



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The Four Penny Castle


Now surrounded by suburban housing, Monkstown Castle, County Cork once stood proud in its own grounds and overlooking the estuary of the river Lee and access to Cork harbour. The building dates back to the 17th century when it was constructed c.1636 by one Anastasia Gould, wife of John Archdeacon, said to have been a naval officer who was overseas supporting the King of Spain. Legend has it that when he returned home and saw this large structure on his land, he immediately assumed it had been erected by his enemies, and accordingly fired on it, one cannon ball hitting the battlements. The other story associated with Monkstown Castle is that Anastasia Gould was determined not to waste money on its construction and so employed the workmen at a fixed rate with the stipulation that they purchase their daily food supplies and so forth from her at a moderate price. When the job was finished, all bills paid and all sums collected, she found that the castle had cost her precisely four pence. 




Like many similar properties in Ireland, Monkstown Castle has experienced mixed fortunes over the centuries. The Archdeacons do not appear to have enjoyed possession of the building for very long as in the aftermath of the Confederate Wars and the arrival of the Cromwell’s New Model Army, both castle and surrounding estate were granted to Colonel Hercules Huncks, remembered today for having refused to sign Charles I’s execution order (and accordingly being described by Oliver Cromwell as a ‘froward, peevish fellow’). Huncks sold the property to Michael Boyle, Dean of Cloyne (and future Archbishop of Armagh) but in the aftermath of the Restoration the Archdeacons were living there once more, perhaps as tenants of Boyle. In any case, owing to their allegiance to the Stuart cause, they lost the castle again in the aftermath of the Williamite Wars and in due course it was inherited by two of his granddaughters who had married into the Vesey and Pakenham families; thus portions of the estate came to be owned by both the Earl of Longford and the Viscount de Vesci. How well the castle stood is open to question. In 1700 during his Visitation to the diocese Dive Downes, Bishop of Cork and Ross wrote that ‘Mr. O’Callaghan, a Protestant, lives in Monkstown, in a good square castle with flankers. However, at some point in the 18th century it was rented to the government to serve as an army barracks and in his Ancient and Present State of the County and City of Cork first published in 1750, Charles Smith says the castle ‘is large and in ruins, and is flanked by 4 square turrets.’ On the other hand, the Dublin Penny Journal of August 1833, although judging it a ‘large and gloomy pile of building’, comments that the castle is ‘in good repair.’ 




By the early 19th century, Monkstown Castle was owned by the Veseys but leased to one Bernard Shaw, Collector of Cork Port and a member of the same family as the future dramatist George Bernard Shaw. A large chimneypiece inside the building carries the initials B.S. and the date 1804 (as well as 1636) , indicating work was undertaken here at that time, undertaken by local architect William Deane. Bernard Shaw was duly succeeded by his son, Bernard Robert Shaw who lived here until 1869 when he and his wife moved to England where they died. Whether the castle was still occupied is open to question as around 1840 the Shaws had built a large residence close by, called. Castle House. In June 1871 the estate of Bernard Robert Shaw running to 905 acres was advertised for sale. At the start of the last century, the castle was used by the local badminton club before being acquired in 1908 by the newly-established Monkstown Golf Club, which then made the building its club house. MGC bought the castle and what was then a nine-hole course from the De Vesci estate in 1959 for £4,000, selling the castle and some 32 acres in 1967 for £22,000. Thereafter, while the surrounding land was divided up into plots for housing, the castle remained empty and falling into disrepair, becoming a roofless shell. Between 2008 and 2010 extensive restoration work was carried out on the property, which had permission to be divided into three apartments. However, while re-roofed and made watertight, the building was then left unfinished and has remained in this state ever since. In recent years, it has been on the market for €800,000. Not a huge sum, but somewhat more than the four pence the castle originally cost Anastasia Gould. 


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Ill-Advised Indifference


While last Monday’s page told a cheering story of restoration and renewal, today’s story demonstrates that plenty of work remains to be done in order to secure the future of our urban architectural heritage. Waterford city has some fine Georgian buildings, a number of which have been restored in recent years. However, many others have been left to languish, such as that above, no.18 Lady’s Lane. This street was once an important thoroughfare, lined with fine houses of which no.18 is a particularly good example. Thought to date from c.1750, it is of five bays and three storeys, with a particularly splendid staircase and rococo plasterwork. An ugly extension was added to the rear in 1975  when the house served as a men’s hostel (doing so until 2012). Otherwise, despite a fire thought to have been started by vandals, the building retains much of its original character and appearance, although it hasnow  sat empty for many years. Likewise no.22 Lady’s Lane, which is of a later date (c.1800), but likewise of five bays and three storeys, and again suffering neglect. Aside from being a terrible waste of good housing stock, the impression conveyed by such dereliction in the city – where, incidentally, the local authority has hitherto spent over €24 million on consultants’ fees alone for a north quay scheme that has yet to get underway – is that the future Waterford’s historic centre remains under threat from ill-advised indifference.   

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Operation Transformation


Exactly eight years ago, the Irish Aesthete visited No.3 Henrietta Street, Dublin and subsequently wrote about the house (see Opportunity Knocks « The Irish Aesthete). It was then for sale and in pitiable condition, having been turned into a tenement in the last century, with many of the original features such as the main staircase and the main chimney pieces stripped out and rooms subdivided to create more units in which entire families could be accommodated. Like many such buildings in this part of the city, it had been comprehensively degraded and faced an uncertain future. 






As discussed before, the site of 3 Henrietta Street, along with its immediate neighbour, was originally owned by Nathaniel Clements who completed work on the building around 1740-41 and then sold to the Rev. George Stone, Bishop of Ferns. The latter occupied the building but did not finish paying for it, until 1747 when he was appointed Archbishop of Armagh and, in turn, opportunistically moved into the even grander residence at the top of the street constructed for his predecessor in that office, Hugh Boulter. No. 4 was then leased to John Maxwell, MP for County Cavan and later first Lord Farnham. When John Maxwell moved into the house, it came with a plot of land to the immediate east, perhaps serving as a garden. In 1754 Maxwell’s only daughter married another MP, Owen Wynne of Sligo and it is thought that No.3 was built around this time to provide a Dublin residence for the newly-weds. The interior of the building underwent alterations believed to date from 1830: this was perhaps when the main staircase was removed and the double-height entrance hall divided into rooms on two levels. However, particularly on the first floor, the rooms retained much of their original decoration, the pair to the front of the room having a deep frieze with strapwork and festoons, while below the walls were sectioned by plaster panelling. To the rear at this level was a wonderful room with rococo stuccowork in the coved ceiling which extended into the bow. 





As can be seen, when offered for sale in 2016, No.3 Henrietta Street was in poor condition and looked an unattractive proposition for any possible buyer. Fortunately, it found new owners who in the years that followed undertook a thorough, and thoroughly sensitive, restoration of the building. One of their main interventions was the reinstatement of the double-height entrance hall incorporating a staircase such as would have existed when the house was first constructed and as can still be found in a number of other houses on the street (see, for example, No. 7, Relics of Auld Decency « The Irish Aesthete). This completely transforms the interior, making it altogether lighter and offering a better idea of how such buildings would have appeared to both owners and visitors in the 18th century. Upstairs, all the rooms were similarly refurbished, not least the first-floor bow-ended room with its charming coved ceiling with rococo plasterwork. The Irish Aesthete often (perhaps too often for some readers) focuses on loss and debasement of this country’s architectural heritage, so it is a pleasure to offer more cheering news on this occasion, evidence that at least occasionally our historic buildings, can sometimes be brought back from what appears to be the brink of permanent loss. 


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The Ascent to Knowledge


Herewith the entrance hall and main staircase of the King’s Inns’ Library on Henrietta Street, Dublin. The site, located at the top of the thoroughfare, had previously been the location for a large, six-bay house built in the early 18th century for Hugh Boulter, Archbishop of Armagh and thereafter occupied by a number of his successors, hence the street was popularly known as Primate’s Hill. This building was demolished c.1825 and replaced with the present library, designed by Frederick Darley. The double-height reading room on the first floor is accessed via an imperial staircase lit by a large arched window filled with armorial glass made by Michael O’Connor.

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A Fair Stone Howse


Thought to have been born in Paisley, Scotland around 1577, Sir George Hamilton was a younger son of Claud Hamilton, first Lord Paisley. Following the accession of James VI to the English throne (as James I) in 1603, and the Flight of the Earls from Ulster four years later, Sir George and his older siblings were granted lands in that part of Ireland. By 1611, having received some 12,400 statute acres, he had moved to this country where he and was living with his family in the Strabane area of County Tyrone part of which, lying to the east of a 15th century former O’Neill tower house on Island MacHugh in Lough Catherine, was called Derrywoone. Unlike many of his fellow Scots Sir George was a staunch Roman Catholic, described in 1622 as “an arch-papist and a great patron of them.’ Following the death of his first wife Isobel Leslie, in 1630 Hamilton married Lady Mary Butler, a daughter of the 11th Earl of Ormond. When her father had difficulty paying the agreed dowry of £1,800, he granted his new son-in-law the manor, castle, town, and lands of Roscrea, County Tipperary for 21 years (for more on the castle, see A Dominant Presence « The Irish Aesthete). In 1646, during the Confederate Wars, Roscrea was attacked and captured by Owen Roe O’Neill, but it is unclear whether Hamilton was still alive at this date or had already died. In part the confusion arises because one of his nephews, likewise Sir George Hamilton and likewise married to another Lady Mary Butler, then lived not far away in Nenagh, County Tipperary. The latter Sir George, incidentally, was father of Anthony Hamilton, author of the famous Mémoires du Comte de Grammont, first published in 1713. 





Now deep in woodland but presumably once with clear views over Lough Catherine to the immediate west, Derrywoone Castle is believed to have been built for Sir George Hamilton around 1619; work there was almost complete three years later when it was recorded as being a  ‘fair stone howse, 4 stories high, which is almost finished, and a bawne of stone and lyme, 90 foot long, 70 foot broad and 14 foot high. The house takes up almost the full bawne. As soon as it is finished, he [Hamilton] intends to dwell there himself.’ The same report suggests that in excess of 80 families may have been settled in the vicinity of the castle, although an archaeological survey in 2013 revealed no evidence of houses here. More a fortified house than a castle, Derrywoone was designed as an L-shaped residence with large window openings on all sides and a fine gable end to the south. Stylistically, the castle reveals the Hamiltons’ Lowland-Scottish origins, not least thanks to a  finely carved corbelled out-staircase on the south-west side; a large round tower also survives on the north-east. 





Little information about the later history of Derrywoone seems to be available. Since Sir George moved to Roscrea following his second marriage and seems to have been based there, the castle may have stood empty or occupied by whoever was responsible for managing his property in this part of the country. He had one surviving son, James, who died unmarried in 1659. In the Down Survey for Tyrone, James Hamilton is described as ‘James Hamilton of Roskre Esqr. a minor Sone to Sr George Hamillton ye elder of Roskrea knight deceased who was a Scottish papist.’ Indeed, many of the Hamiltons, not just James’s cousin Anthony, remained both Roman Catholic and loyal to the Stuarts, going into exile in France and elsewhere in the late 17th century. However, eventually one of the family, James Hamilton, sixth Earl of Abercorn and a great-nephew of Sir George, conformed to the Established Church and inherited the Ulster estates. His descendants have lived there ever since, in the 18th century moving to a new residence. Located to the south of Derrywoone, it is called Baronscourt. 


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All in the Detail


Now installed on the first-floor landing of the former Bishop’s Palace in Waterford City, this is a detail of a pine chimneypiece carved c.1758 by John Kelly for the Dublin residence of artist Robert West. Not to be confused with the near-contemporaneous stuccodore of the same name, West was born in Waterford, the son of an alderman, and trained in Paris, seemingly with both Boucher and van Loo before returning to Ireland and establishing a school of drawing in Dublin. By the mid-1740s, this was being subsidised by the Dublin Society, with premiums offered to students by Samuel Madden and annual exhibitions of their work held in the House of Lords. Unfortunately West became mentally ill in 1763 and had to be replaced as head of the school; he returned briefly to the position in 1770 before dying the same year.


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