Tag Archives: Dublin

Taken to Court



After Monday’s exploration of Kilmainham Gaol, here is its immediate neighbour, the neo-classical ‘Sessions House’ designed by William Farrell and opened in 1820. Faced in granite, the main entrance is of two storeys and has a pedimented three-bay breakfront with arched windows on the first floor. Below, the rusticated ground floor has blind doors flanking the entrance, while on either side are single-bay outer bays with tripartite windows on the first-floor and blind equivalents below them. Inside the building, the rear section is given over to a double-height, galleried courtroom with Diocletian window above the judge’s bench. To the front is a similarly double-height entrance hall lit by the aforementioned three arched windows on the facade. 


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Lasciate Ogne Speranza, Voi Ch’intrate



One of the most visited sites in Dublin, Kilmainham Gaol is today primarily known for being the place where in May 1916 fourteen key figures in the Easter Rising were executed by firing squad. Yet this was only one incident in the building’s history, which goes back to the late 18th century when ideas of prison reform and the provision of better accommodation for convicted criminals led to the construction of the gaol in Kilmainham. It replaced an earlier prison a little further to the east in an area called Mount Brown: a parliamentary report on this premises in 1782 noted that not only was the building ‘extremely insecure, and in an unwholesome bad situation with narrow cells sunk underground, with no hospital’ but in addition, ‘Spirits and all sorts of liquors were constantly served to the prisoners who were in a continual state of intoxication.’ The ‘New Gaol’ as it was initially known, was intended to improve conditions for prisoners, with single cells and the opportunity of exercise in open yards. 





As opened in 1796, Kilmainham Gaol was designed by Sir John Trail, an engineer thought to have come to this country from Scotland and employed first by Dublin Corporation and then by the Grand Canal Company to work on the completion of this project and bring fresh water to the city. Although dismissed in 1777 after the standard of work on the project was found to be defective and the expenditure to have exceeded estimates (a not-unfamiliar tale in Ireland), Trail continued to flourish and, as engineer to the Revenue Commissioners, was responsible for designing twin octagonal lighthouses on Wicklow Head in 1781. The following year he was appointed high sheriff of Co Dublin and later knighted. In 1787, he was given the task of coming up with the design for a new gaol, which by the time of its completion almost a decade later, had cost the Grand Jury of County Dublin some £22,000. At the time, both the gaol and its surroundings looked very different from the way they do today. Built on a rise above the river Liffey known as Gallows Hill, it was then surrounded by open fields, the intention being that fresh air would be able to circulate through the prison. As first constructed, the building looked somewhat different from what can be seen today. Facing north, Trail’s facade was centred on a three-bay breakfront with long wings running back on either side to create a U-shaped prison. Each of the wings held cells while the main block was used by the gaolers. Enclosed behind high stone walls, a series of yards to the rear were used for exercise or various activities. The main entrance was at the front, incorporating vermiculated stone work and a number of writhing forms: what precisely they represent – snakes? dragons? a hydra? – and who was responsible for this carving remains unknown. Directly above it was an opening with a gallows and this was where public hangings took place: the last such event occurred in 1865. 





Within a matter of just a few decades, Kilmainham Gaol had proven to provide insufficient space for the numbers of prisoners being sent there and in 1840 a block of thirty cells was added to the west wing. However, the onset of the Great Famine led to a further rise in admissions (being in gaol which provided accommodation and food, no matter how inadequate either, was preferable to starving on the streets), and in 1857 an architectural competition was held for enlarging and remodelling the building. The eventual winner was John McCurdy, now best-remembered for having also designed the Shelbourne Hotel a few years later. At Kilmainham, McCurdy oversaw the demolition of the east wing and its replacement with a new three storey over basement, bow-ended block. Inspired by the 18th century social reformer Jeremy Bentham’s ideas for a Panopticon prison, the ninety-six cells here ran around a central glazed atrium, making it easier for warders to see what was going on while also offering a light and airy space within the prison. At the front of the building, two bow-fronted wings were added, thereby creating a courtyard: that to the east held the prison governor’s apartments, and that to the west the Stonebreakers’ Yard (which is where the 1916 executions took place). Ironically, towards the end of the 19th century, the number of criminals being jailed declined, and as a result, the official Prisons Board decided to close some gaols, including Kilmainham, which closed in 1911. Three years later, with the outbreak of the First World War, it found a new use as a military billet for new army recruits, and as a military detention centre. In the aftermath of the failed Easter Rising, as already mentioned, 14 key figures, half of whom had been signatories of the Proclamation of the Republic, were brought to Kilmainham Gaol and there executed. With the onset of the War of Independence, the buildings were once more used by the British government to house Republican prisoners and then, with the subsequent Civil War, it was likewise employed by the Free State authorities to imprison and sentence their Anti-Treaty opponents, several of whom were executed. In 1924, with the Civil War at an end, the gaol was emptied of prisoners, an official closing order being issued in 1929, after which it was left to moulder. By the 1950s, large sections of the site were in a ruinous condition but then a voluntary group, the Kilmainham Gaol Restoration Society, boldly took the initiative to rescue the building, with work beginning in 1960 and being sufficiently complete to open to the public in April 1966, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising. In 1986, the property was transferred to state care and has since been the responsibility of the Office of Public Works



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Often Overlooked



Often overlooked by visitors, this is the spectacular entrance hall of the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin. Designed by T.N. and T.M. Deane in 1885-90 and taking the form of a rotunda, it consists of a ground floor around which run a series of polished Ionic columns in different coloured Irish stone. The deep entablature, pierced by a sequence of oculi, supports a balustraded gallery above which pilasters with gilded capitals framing niches and, in one section, windows. And on top of this floats the dome. Meanwhile, the floor is covered in mosaic designed and laid by the Manchester firm of Ludwig Oppenheimer Ltd; the central section is taken up by the twelve signs of the Zodiac surrounding a stylised sun.



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How Dreadful is this Place



Like Drimnagh Castle, seen here on Monday, the nearby St Mary’s church would once have stood amidst woodland and fields several miles outside the city of Dublin, whereas today it is surrounded by suburban housing estates. Set inside a circular enclosure, this has been a religious site since at least the arrival of the Cambro-Normans, if not longer.  In 1193 the church was given by Prince John to form a prebend in the St Patrick’s collegiate church (later Cathedral) and afterwards vested in the Archbishop of Dublin. The English engraver Francis Jukes produced a view of the area in 1795 which shows the church’s tower which still survives, but the main body of the building was reconstructed in 1817 with a loan of £1,000 from the Board of First Fruits. A new Church of Ireland church was built close by in the last century, but this one continues to be used for services by a religious organisation called the Hope Centre. The entrance at the base of the tower has a fine cut limestone doorcase with broken pediment beneath which is a plaque with a quotation from the Book of Genesis ‘How Dreadful is this Place, none other is the House of God, and this is the Gate of Heaven.’ Above it is a solitary skull; seemingly there were also crossbones but these went missing in the 1990s.


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Showing What Can be Done


Forty years ago, in 1985, the artist and architectural historian Peter Pearson got in touch with the Congregation of Christian Brothers, a religious order which had come to own Drimnagh Castle, once surrounded by forest but by then almost lost in Dublin suburban housing. In John D’Alton’s History of the County of Dublin (1838), the building is described as occupying ‘a spot of much romantic beauty, overlooking at the east the city and bay, and at north, the Park, Castleknock and Clondalkin, while towards the south the view is bounded by the mountains of the county of Dublin, presenting a dark and solemn aspect, congenial to the decaying splendour of the edifice.’ Alas, the same romantic views are no longer to be found today. The building’s history dates back to 1215 when the lands of Drimnagh and Terenure were granted by King John to Hugh de Berneval and when the latter died without issue, these grants were passed to his brother Reginald, whose descendants, their name eventually becoming Barnewall, came to be one of the most significant families in this part of the country: Raymond Barnewall, 21st Baron Trimlestown died last year and, having no known heirs, so ended one of the oldest Irish titles, dating back to 1461 (see Fallen Out of Use « The Irish Aesthete). The Barnewalls remained in the castle until the first decade of the 17th century when Elizabeth Barnewall, heiress to the property, married a cousin, James Barnewall of Bremore (see A Work in Progress « The Irish Aesthete) after which Drimnagh was let on a 99-year least to Sir Adam Loftus, nephew and namesake of the Archbishop of Dublin who had been responsible for building Rathfarnham Castle just a few miles to the south-east (see A Whiter Shade of Pale « The Irish Aesthete). A century later, however, Drimnagh Castle – like Bremore Castle – was sold to Henry Perry, Earl of Shelburne and so passed into the ownership of the Marquesses of Lansdowne. Both buildings were let to a succession of tenants, in the case of Drimnagh Castle until 1904 when it was bought by a successful dairy farmer and Dublin City councillor, Joseph Hatch. He undertook considerable restoration work on the property, used by his family as a summer residence until the 1950s when it passed into the possession of the Christian Brothers. While the order initially used the castle as a school, they subsequently moved into a purpose-built establishment on the land. As a result, the old building was left unoccupied (except for a collection of fowl kept there by one member of the religious community) and gradually fell into disrepair. Its future looked uncertain and, like so many other old properties in the greater Dublin region, Drimagh Castle might have been lost had not Peter Pearson intervened. 






The evolution of Drimnagh Castle from its origins into what can be seen today is complicated and, on more than one occasion, unclear. As was so often the case, the building likely began as a wooden structure, this in due course replaced by stone. The oldest part of the castle is a stocky keep access to which is through a single, low Gothic door on the east side with a typical murder hole directly above. This entrance leads to an undercroft, notable for retaining reedmarks on its vaulted ceiling; analysis of these might be able to confirm a date for when the keep was constructed. In the 18th century, this space was converted into a kitchen, with the insertion of a number of ovens and a large open fireplace. Stone steps at the north and south ends of the undercroft lead to the great hall immediately above. To the immediate north and rising one storey higher, the tower and gatehouse are thought to have been added in the 16th century. Further substantial changes occurred during the 18th century when many of the building’s windows were made larger so as to bring more light into the rooms. On the east side an external stone staircase was added giving direct access to the great hall through a cut-limestone doorcase. It may be that the moat, a parallelogram and something of a rarity among surviving Irish castles, similarly dates from the 18th century when the property was responsible for a number of mills in the area, their mechanism driven by the water which then fed into the river Camac. In one corner of the grounds is a little square battlemented folly, again likely an addition from the Georgian period: its west face overlooking the moat incorporates a late medieval window and later granite doorcase with arched light above, both of which appear to have come from elsewhere. When the Hatches took over the castle in the early 1900s, they made further changes to the buildings, not least inserting brick pediments above many windows and doors, as well as taking out many of the 18th century sash windows. They also converted a 17th century barn into a set of stables and rebuilt the coach house on the opposite side of the rear courtyard, giving its roofline the same curved gables seen on the castle roofline.






When Peter Pearson first approached the Christian Brothers 40 years ago about undertaking work on Drimnagh Castle, the building was in a pitiful state and looked unlikely to have any viable future. Nevertheless, thanks to a grant of £3,000 from Dublin Corporation and assisted by a number of state and charitable agencies as well as a voluntary local committee, work began on the site in 1986. Writing in the Irish Arts Review three years ago, Pearson has described what followed as employing the Italian concept of restauro: ‘which implies both conservation of existing structure and appropriate replacement of elements beyond repair. It implies an artistic rather than a moralistic approach to giving old buildings new life and it means that there has to be an element of compromise if historic buildings are to live on with new uses.’ It is unlikely that were such a project to be initiated today that such an approach would necessarily be permitted, but had it not been adopted at the time, then most probably Drimnagh Castle would no longer stand today. Inevitably, compromise meant not all features of the building’s history could be represented. The best example of this is the great hall which, in the 18th century, had been split into two reception rooms reached via a panelled staircase. The inevitable question arose: ought this later intervention be retained or should the space be returned to what was believed to have been its original appearance? The latter option was chosen, but this meant a degree of conjecture since so little of the material fabric survived. What can now be seen is to a large extent new, not least the hall’s roof entirely constructed of green Irish oak and assembled on site by trainee carpenters. The same was true of the carved gallery running around the upper level of the gallery; here can be admired portrait effigies of many of those involved in the enterprise (including Pearson) which serve as trusses for the roof. The floor is covered in tiles made for the space and based on original medieval tiles found at Swords Castle, County Dublin (see Palatial « The Irish Aesthete), while the window glass was all made for the hall. Outside, in what had been an empty, neglected area of ground at the back of the site, a formal garden with parterres of box was laid out. Today on lease from the religious order and still dependent on voluntary support for its daily maintenance, Drimnagh Castle is an outstanding example of what can be achieved by persistence, dedication and imagination. As so often, much remains to be done around the building and its grounds, but 40 years after Peter Pearson first proposed the property’s rescue, it continues to deserve accolades and amply repays a visit. 

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Behind a Modest Facade


Like many 18th century residential buildings in central Dublin, the facade of Ely House is extremely plain, of red brick with only the pedimented stone fan- and side-lit doorcase offering some interest. Of four storeys-over-basement, the building had been bought in 1770 by Henry Loftus from Dublin physician and property developer Gustavus Hume. The previous year, following the death of his unmarried nephew, the hitherto somewhat impoverished Loftus had inherited a substantial estate and the title Viscount Loftus: the following year he would be created Earl of Ely. Known for his social pretensions, he would be mocked as ‘Count Loftonzo’ in the satirical History of Barataria published in the Freeman’s Journal in Spring 1771. The work he commissioned at Rathfarnham Castle, County Dublin has already been discussed here (see A Whiter Shade of Pale « The Irish Aesthete and Flying High « The Irish Aesthete). Although Loftus already owned a house in the capital on Cavendish Row, following his inheritance evidently he felt the need to cross the river Liffey and occupy a new property, hence the purchase of Ely House. Unusual because of its size, the building was originally of six bays, a seventh being acquired on the left-hand (north) side in the 19th century around the time the house was divided into two properties: today it is near-impossible to photograph the entire exterior of the house without being assaulted by traffic: hence the somewhat truncated image here. When first occupied, the attic floor seemingly contained a private, sixty-seat theatre with space for an orchestra. The Freeman’s Journal of 19th April 1785 reports on the performance of both a tragedy (‘The Distressed Mother’) and a comedy (‘All the World’s a Stage’), both acted by friends of the earl’s second and much-younger wife, Anne Bonfoy. Sadly, nothing of this theatre now survives. But other parts of the remarkable interior remain to be explored. 





The rear of Ely House’s groundfloor is given over to the double-height stair hall, the steps of which are of Portland Stone, while the panelled balustrade is made of wrought iron and carved gilt-wood. At the base can be seen a life-size figure of Hercules, resting from his Labours. The latter are then depicted as one ascends the staircase, although not in the correct narrative order: shown here is the eagle killed with an arrow by the mythical hero. The inspiration for this work is believed to have been a substantially larger staircase in the Palace of Charles of Lorraine in Brussels – now a museum – created by the Flemish sculptor Laurent Delvaux in 1769. The stuccodore Barthelemy Cremillion, who had been employed in Ireland in the second half of the 1750s, was responsible for the Brussels palace plasterwork and is therefore thought to have been behind the similar scheme in Ely House since by this date he had returned to Dublin. On the other hand, Professor Christine Casey has pointed out that the stoneyard of sculptor John van Nost adjoined Lord Ely’s property and that both he and Cremillion had worked at the same time on the decoration of the city’s Lying-in Hospital (otherwise known as the Rotunda Hospital), so he may also have been involved here. 




Many of the reception rooms in Ely House, Dublin, are rather plain, although it retains some splendid chimneypieces again thought to have been the work of John van Nost. One of the ground floor reception rooms features a series of figurative ovals and roundels depicting a variety of scenes and surrounded by pendants and swirls that look like strings of pearls. It used to be judged that this plasterwork was part of the house’s 18th century decoration but more recently the scheme is considered to date from the late 19th/early 20th century when the building was occupied by the wealthy surgeon and collector Sir Thornley Stoker (incidentally, the elder brother of Bram Stoker, author of Dracula): he lived here from 1890 to 1911 and filled the building with his valuable collection of art and furniture, alas all auctioned before his death in 1912. The room directly above certainly suggests a relatively recent vintage, the figures here looking as though they had stepped out of the work of an Edwardian illustrator like Kate Greenaway. Since 1923, Ely House has been owned by the Knights of St Columbanus, an Irish Roman Catholic society which uses the building as its national headquarters. 

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Astonished at the Splendour


The former House of Lords in what is now the Bank of Ireland, College Green, Dublin was discussed here some time ago (see Where Turkeys Voted for Christmas « The Irish Aesthete). As is well known, after the building ceased to be used as the Irish Houses of Parliament and had been purchased by the bank, Francis Johnston was invited to make alterations, including the creation of a central Cash Office behind Edward Lovett Pearce’s south front. This five bay, double-height space rises to a richly decorated coved ceiling, the centre of which supports a clerestory concluding in a coffered ceiling. When George IV visited the bank during his visit to Ireland, he was reportedly ‘astonished at the splendour’ of the hall.

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A Most Singular Act of Architectural Vandalism



After last month’s post about the Museum Building in Trinity College Dublin (see A Remarkable Building « The Irish Aesthete), here is another property designed by the same architectural team of Deane & Woodward. Dating from 1859-61, the former Kildare Street Club replaced a number of other buildings on the same site. The club was founded in 1782, when William Burton Conyngham (1733–96), having been blackballed by Daly’s Club in Dame Street, established a rival organisation at 6 Kildare Street. By the middle of the following century, and although the club had taken on adjacent premises, the members felt the need for further expansion and therefore commissioned Deane & Woodward to come up with an entirely fresh scheme. Unlike the typical London clubhouse, which was inclined to be designed in the style of a classical Italianate palazzo, the Kildare Street Club is more Italo-Byzantine in manner, the red brick facade relieved by large window openings and abundant use of grey and white stone. The grand interior had a double-height staircase hall, and equally capacious reception rooms, as well as a racquet court with dressing rooms, smaller games rooms and, in the attic storey, members’ bedrooms. 



In what Professor Christine Casey has rightly described as ‘the most singular act of architectural vandalism in recent Dublin history’ (although this title could be keenly contested), the interior of the Kildare Street Club was ruthlessly gutted in 1971, after its members had moved out of the premises prior to joining forces with another club. Thereafter a development company applied to convert the building into offices, and received permission from the local authority to do so. While certain features remain in situ, such as some of the chimneypieces and cornicing, the rooms today bear little resemblance to their original state. The exterior, on the other hand, still looks much as it always did, and includes a series of densely carved columnar capitals and bases, the work here attributed to the Cork-born O’Shea brothers, as well as Charles Harrison and Charles William Purdy: one of the bases famously represents a number of monkeys engaged in a game of billiards. Today the former club houses both the Alliance française and the manuscripts department of the National Library of Ireland.



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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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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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