Two weeks ago, this page showed the present pathetic state of Columb Barracks in Mullingar, County Westmeath (see https://theirishaesthete.com/2020/02/17/mullingar-barracks). Today another former barracks is featured here, this time showing what can be achieved when the task of finding a new purpose for old buildings is approached with sufficient flair and imagination. Dublin’s Clancy Barracks, formerly the Royal Artillery Barracks, was established in its present location on the south side of the river Liffey in 1798 after previous premises in nearby Chapelizod had become too small. Initially the barracks accommodated six officers, 87 non-commissioned officers and men, and eight gunners. In the early 1860s the complex was considerably enlarged so that it could house 18 officers, 589 other men and 435 horses. There was also a veterinary hospital (for the horses) until 1896 when the cavalry moved to another location in the city and this became a general barracks. Handed over to the Free State government in 1922, twenty years later it was renamed after Peadar Clancy, vice-commandant of the Dublin Brigade of the IRA, killed in Dublin Castle during the War of Independence.

When the state decided to dispose of a number of military sites in 1998, Clancy Barracks was on the list of assets to be sold. However, it was not until June 2001 that the barracks and surrounding 13.65 acres of land went out to tender. The property was not to everyone’s taste, as much of it was in a dilapidated condition and there were eight 19th century buildings listed for preservation. In July 2002 Clancy Barracks was sold to a private development company for £25.4 million. Nothing happened (allowing the condition of the buildings to deteriorate further)  until three years later when a planning application sought to demolish demolish three-quarters of the existing listed buildings on the site, construct some 900 apartments in 45 blocks and erect a hotel of 15 storeys. Although the local authority gave permission, the scheme was appealed to the planning authority, An Bord Pleanála. It too found the plans acceptable, but then the recession hit and the project stalled, with the former barracks instead being used as a set for a couple of seasons of the BBC 19th century drama Ripper Street. In 2013 the site was bought by an American property investment group Kennedy Wilson for €82.5 million.

When Kennedy Wilson bought what is now called Clancy Quay in 2013, only the first phase of the scheme to redevelop the former barracks had been completed; this comprised some residential 423 units and 36,000 square feet of commercial space. Since then the company has worked to complete the second and third phases with the same mix of residential and commercial use. Phases 2 and 3 includes an 8.5 acre site with planning permission for a mix of residential and commercial use. Although the southern section of the site is still a work in progress, what has been achieved to-date is refreshingly imaginative and attractive; in 2018 architects O’Mahony Pike deservedly won an RIAI Architecture Award for Housing thanks to its work on this project. While sections of the property are given over to blocks of apartments, a large number of the older buildings have been imaginatively reinvented as accommodation, such as three long two-storey ranges in rubble, brick and granite, built in 1862 as workshops, or the fine pedimented former barrack block which had stables on the ground floor and sleeping quarters above. Elsewhere on the development there are a handsome pair of semi-detached early 19th century houses, the former officers’ mess and a range of red-brick blocks that date from the 1940s. The materials used for all these buildings was diverse, and more have been introduced for newer elements on Clancy Quay, but there is a confident coherence to the scheme, helped by generosity of space; the parties behind the development have not greedily tried to cram too much onto the site but instead left ample room between the different blocks, all linked by smart landscaping. There are few such large-scale developments in Dublin, indeed in Ireland, undertaken with this degree of assurance and panache. If and when Mullingar’s Columb Barracks are given new purpose, let’s hope the same high standards are employed there.