Tag Archives: Georgian Architecture

Having No Equal in the Three Kingdoms


Visiting Kilkenny Castle in 1699, English bookseller John Dunton enthused over the building’s gallery, writing that ‘for length, variety of gilded chairs, and the curious pictures that adorn it, has no equal in the three kingdoms, and perhaps not in Europe; so that this castle may properly be called the Elisium of Ireland.’ Were Dunton somehow to return to Kilkenny today, he would likely find the place unrecognisable, but would still judge the castle gallery as having no equal, certainly not in this country. 





The origins of Kilkenny Castle date back to the late-12th century when a defensive structure was erected on a site high above an important fording point on the river Nore. Likely of wood, it was replaced by a stone building around 1260, a square-shaped castle with a tower at each corner, three of which remain. Passing through various hands, it was seized by the English crown and sold to the Butlers in 1391: hitherto the family’s main base had been at Gowran, some ten miles to the east. Thereafter, Kilkenny became the centre of Butler operations, although the castle went through several periods of neglect. In the second half of the 16th century, for example, Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond, preferred to concentrate his energies on enhancing another Butler property in Carrick-on-Suir (see All that is Fantastically Eccentric in Architecture « The Irish Aesthete). However, his great-nephew James Butler, first Duke of Ormond and the latter’s wife Elizabeth Preston, lavished attention on Kilkenny Castle, creating the building so admired by Dunton at the end of the 17th century. 




An ardent royalist, James Butler went into exile in France with Charles II. Following the latter’s restoration in 1660, Butler was created Duke of Ormond, recovered his Irish estates and became the country’s Lord Lieutenant. While he and his wife spent much time in Dublin, they also turned their attention to the ancestral castle in Kilkenny where, inspired by what they had seen during their time in mainland Europe, they transformed the building and its grounds in the style of a French château. The garden was laid out in the fashionable Baroque manner, with serried lines of trees, statuary and fountains, and a classical banqueting house. Inside, an inventory made for the couple’s heir, the second duke, reveals that the castle held sets of tapestries, Turkey rugs and looking glasses, Dutch and Indian furniture and a huge collection of more than 500 paintings, the largest in the country with work by Dutch, French, Italian and English artists. Some of these items survive to the present day: six 17th century Dutch tapestries, part of a larger series telling the story of Decius Mus, a Roman Consul, can be seen in one of the rooms, while elsewhere several painted wooden panels carved with ribands and pomegranates are on display. While many visitors to the castle were awed by this display, not everyone felt the same way. In November 1709 Dr Thomas Molyneux arrived in the town and went to look at the building. While acknowledging that it was handsomely situated above the Nore, Molyneux declared that inside ‘there is not one handsome or noble apartment. The Rooms are Darke and the stairs mighty ugly.’ He was also critical of recent alterations to the main structure, thinking the handsome classical entrance from the Parade, along with a new range of buildings all ‘mighty ugly, crooked, and very expensive.’ 





Kilkenny Castle, as seen today, is primarily a 19th century construct. For much of the previous century, it had, once more, been little used and allowed to fall into a poor condition: by 1747, it was described as being like that of ‘a weather-beaten ship in a storm after a long voyage with all her cargo thrown overboard.’ Around 1770, the south wall of the old castle, which had already been badly damaged during the Confederate Wars of the early 1650s, was demolished, thereby breaking the previously enclosed courtyard and opening views to the parkland. Internally, other radical changes took place. The present Picture Gallery, 150 feet long and the finest surviving example of its kind in Ireland, was commissioned in 1826 by James Butler, first Marquess of Ormonde from local architect William Robertson, with further changes made in the 1860s by the firm of Deane and Woodward. Elsewhere, a suite of reception rooms on the first floor continues to reflect their mid-19th century decoration, with walls covered in French silk poplin originally made by Prelle of Lyons, on which are hanging paintings many of which are part of the original Butler family collection. The decoration here is based on photographs showing how the rooms looked in the 1890s. The Butler Marquesses of Ormonde remained in ownership, if not in occupation, of Kilkenny Castle until 1967 when the seventh and last holder of the title sold it for a nominal sum; many of the contents had already been dispersed at auction some 30 years earlier. Today the castle and grounds are owned by the Irish State and managed by the Office of Public Works which has gradually been restoring more of the interior which can be viewed by visitors. 


The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

Farewell to a Polymath


Last November, the Financial Times published an extensive feature on Alec Cobbe, chronicling some, although by no means all, of his many achievements. Alec, who after a few months ill health died last week, could rightly be described as a polymath, the FT summarising his various skills as an art restorer, historian, author, re-hanger, interior designer and painter who also happened to be a fine pianist. But this is to understate his profusion of talents. To take the last on that list, Alec not only played the piano, he also collected historic keyboard instruments, more than 50 of them which are on display at Hatchlands Park, a National Trust property in Surrey leased by Alec and his wife Isabel since 1984. On display there are two grand pianos which had once belonged to Chopin, as well as Haydn’s grand piano, Liszt’s Italian upright piano, Bizet’s composing table-piano, Mahler’s Viennese piano, Johann Christian Bach’s piano, on which Mozart may also have played, and instruments which formerly belonged to George IV and Marie Antoinette: anyone who visited the recently-ended exhibition devoted to the French queen at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum would have seen her piano there. But as mentioned above, this was just one of Alec’s many skills, of which he had an abundance. He was a highly talented painter (particularly of country house interiors), and separately an illustrator whose work was much in demand for the design of invitations to all sorts of smart events. In addition, he was a restorer who over the course of his life identified more than one lost old master picture, and an interior designer much in demand for his ability to hang picture collections, most recently those at Castle Howard; other houses in which he worked included Harewood, Hatfield, Hillsborough Castle, Knole and Petworth. Extraordinarily well-read and well-informed, he brought a keen and critical eye to every enterprise. But although a well-known and widely admired figure in Britain, Alec’s achievements were perhaps less appreciated in his native Ireland. 





Alec Cobbe was born in Dublin in 1945 and spent much of his childhood at Newbridge, the house some short distance north of the city where his widowed mother lived with her bachelor brother-in-law. Newbridge had been commissioned by the family’s forebear, Charles Cobbe, Archbishop of Dublin, in the late 1740s and designed by James Gibbs, seemingly the architect’s only work in Ireland (for more on Newbridge, see The Glory of the House « The Irish Aesthete). Without question, Alec’s eye received its earliest training at Newbridge, a house to which he remained thereafter devoted despite being based on the other side of the Irish Sea for the greater part of his professional life. After school, initially he studied medicine at Oxford (and won a prize for anatomical drawing) but then moved into the field of art restoration, training at the Tate Gallery before he established a conservation studio at Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, and then worked at the Hamilton Kerr Institute in Cambridge. Eventually he opened his own studio in 1981. As he explained in the FT article, the move into interior decoration and specifically picture hanging was a natural evolution: having taken care of a painting’s restoration, he would often see it hung unsympathetically. As he explained, ‘I’d think, “Why the hell did I spend all that time on the picture for it to be killed by the hanging of the thing”?’ Alec was always a man of strong opinions and with few qualms about expressing them. When the members of the public visit Newbridge today, they are seeing a house that represents his vision of its history and evolution. Yet this almost didn’t happen. When Alec’s uncle Thomas died in 1985, the house and estate were acquired by the local authority and it looked as though the family’s link with the property would be irreparably broken. Instead, just as the building’s contents were about to be removed, an agreement was made whereby they would remain on the premises and, in return, the Cobbes would be able to live in Newbridge from time to time. Although such arrangements are common in England, this is highly unusual in Ireland but proved to be an enormous blessing not least because Alec, passionate about the place, did much to improve it by driving various restoration projects and adding to the existing furnishings and works of art. He also loved to entertain in the house, and those of us fortunate to have been invited will have fond memories of convivial meals, either eaten in the main dining room or upstairs in the family flat, followed by a sound night’s sleep in one of the guest bedrooms. 





The pictures shown here reflect two rooms in Newbridge that particularly engaged Alec’s attention. The first is a cabinet of curiosities. Incorporating items collected by Archbishop Cobbe, this was essentially the creation of his son Thomas and daughter-in-law Lady Betty Cobbe who lived there from the time of their marriage in 1755 to their respective deaths in the early 19th century. Originally referred to as ‘ye Ark’, the cabinet takes up an entire room in the house, its walls lined with hand-painted sheets depicting oriental scenes and held in place by faux bamboo découpage trellising. A suite of specially made cases and display cabinets were filled with a typically diverse range of items, shells, exotica, curios, much of it from other countries. In 1758, for example, the Cobbes bought some coral, as well as a nest of vipers and a ‘Solar Microscope.’  Eventually, the collection came to include a stuffed crocodile, an ostrich egg mounted in a bog oak stand, a set of ivory chess pieces from China and a depiction of the coronation of George III (1761) carved in bone and placed inside a glass bottle. Over time, the room in Newbridge began to suffer neglect: even by 1858 it was being described as ‘the poor old museum.’ In the 1960s the paper on the walls was taken down and sold, the cases and cabinets moved first to the basement and then an attic lumber room, and the space converted into a sitting room. While many of the surviving contents are now in Hatchlands Park, the Newbridge cabinet of curiosities was recreated, a replica of the wallpaper produced from memory by Alec, the cases brought down from the attic, and a replica sample of the collection once more on display. Meanwhile, at the far end of the house stands the red drawing room, another addition made by Thomas and Lady Betty Cobbe, working with local architect George Semple. Some 45 feet long, the room has a ceiling featuring ‘a sea of scrolling leaves and floral garlands encircled by dragons and birds fighting over baskets of fruit,’ believed to have been undertaken by stuccodore Richard Williams, a pupil of Robert West. Two hundred years ago, payments for furniture were made to Woods & Son, and to Mack, Williams & Gibton of Dublin, who were also paid for curtains in 1828. The carpet, by Beck & Co. of Bath was supplied in March 1823 for £64 and 18 shillings, while the crimson flock wallpaper and matching border came from the Dublin firm of Patrick Boylan. The present arrangement of paintings, the greater part of them collected during the previous century by Archbishop Cobbe and his son and daughter-in-law, dates from the same period. Some of the collection had been sold in Dublin in 1812, and in 1839 two key paintings – by Hobbema and Dughet – were sold to pay to fund the construction of some 80 estate workers’ cottages. In November of that year, then owner Charles Cobbe wrote in his diary, ‘I have filled up the vacancies on my walls occasioned by the loss of the two pictures which have been sold, and I felt some satisfaction in thinking that my room (by the new arrangement) looks even more furnished than before.’ Such is still the case today, thanks to Alec. Over many years, he undertook successive projects to preserve and conserve the drawing room, so that today it is a rare example of late Irish Georgian taste. There were several other projects in this country with which Alec was closely associated, not least the redecoration of the drawing room at Russborough, County Wicklow (see A Room Reborn « The Irish Aesthete). Having served alongside him as trustee of a charitable foundation, the Irish Aesthete can testify to his indefatigable enthusiasm and diverse range of interests. Sadly, he has not lived to see the publication of his latest book, Inside the Country Houses of Britain & Ireland, due to be published by Rizzoli in September. Let it serve as a lasting memorial to the polymath that was Alec Cobbe. 


Richard Alexander Charles Cobbe, January 9th 1945 – March 31st 2026

The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

In No Way Averse to the Magnificence of Life 


Born in 1695, Robert Clayton followed the example of his father and became a Church of Ireland clergyman, rising to become Bishop first of Killala and Achonry, then Cork and Ross and finally of Clogher. His personal wealth allowed him to undertake a Grand Tour, which left a lasting impression not just on Clayton but also on his contemporaries. Following his appointment to Cork in 1735, the Earl of Orrery wrote, ‘We have a Bishop, who, as He has travel’d beyond the Alps, has brought home with him, to the amazement of our merchantile Fraternity, the Arts and Sciences that are the Ornament of Italy and the Admiration of the European World. He eats, drinks and sleeps in Taste. He has Pictures by Carlo, Morat, Music by Corelli, Castles in the Air by Vitruvius ; and on High-Days and Holidays We have the Honour of catching Cold at a Venetian door.’ Lord Orrery’s colourful account of the impression made by Clayton proposes a striking contrast with the episcopacy of his predecessor, Peter Browne, during which ‘We were as silent and melancholy as Captives, and We were Strangers to Mirth even by Analogy.’ Clayton seems to have appreciated not just Corelli but also Handel, since he facilitated the first performance of ‘The Messiah’ in St Fin Barre’s Cathedral in December 1744. He was a Fellow of both the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries of London, as well as supporting various cultural organisations in Ireland.




Robert Clayton’s wealth meant that when in 1728 he married Katherine Donnellan, a daughter of Lord Chief Baron Nehemiah Donnellan, he could afford to give his wife’s fortune to her sister Anne. The latter was a close friend of Mary Delany, which is one reason why we know so much about the Claytons and their social life. In June 1732, while still the widowed Mrs Pendarves, she spent some time in Killala, staying with the couple in the episcopal palace, known as the Castle, which she described as ‘old and indifferent enough.’ However, ‘the garden, which is laid out entirely for use, is pretty – a great many shady walks and full-grown forest trees.’ Furthermore, Bishop Clayton had added another field to the property, ‘and planted it in very good taste.’ While in Killala, Mrs Pendarves and Anne Donnellan created what may have been the first shell house in Ireland. This was installed inside a natural grotto at the top of a hill close to Killala, the shells coming from a large collection assembled by the bishop as well as those collected on the shores of County Mayo. In mid-August, there was a local fair, with races on the strand and then, to mark Mrs Clayton’s birthday, she and her guests ‘all attired in our best apparel,’ sat in front of the house to watch ‘dancing, singing, grinning, accompanied with an excellent bagpipe, the whole concluded with a ball, bonfire and illuminations.’ ‘Pray,’ she asked her sister, ‘does your Bishop promote such entertainments at Gloster as ours does at Killala?’ Fifteen years later and by now married to Dr Patrick Delany, she described another such birthday party, this time in Clogher, where musicians played for eight pairs of dances, a ‘sumptuous cold collation’ was served at 11pm, after which the fiddlers struck up again and the dancing continued until after two o’clock (the Delanys sensibly crept away to their own sleeping quarters after supper). Writing to her family in England in February 1746, Mrs Delany noted ‘On Monday we dine at the Bishop of Clogher’s. Mrs Clayton is to have a drum in the evening and we are invited to it. Their house is very proper for such an entertainment, and Mrs Clayton very fit for the undertaking. She loves the show and homage of a rout, has a very good address and is still as well inclined to all the gaieties of life as she was at five-and-twenty; the Bishop loves to please and indulge her, and is himself no way averse to the magnificence of life.’ 




The Claytons undoubtedly liked to live well and could afford to do so. On one of her early visits to Dublin, in September 1731 Mrs Pendarves stayed with the couple in their townhouse on St Stephen’s Green. Writing to her sister in England, the Claytons’ guest declared the building to be ‘magnifique’, the chief front of it looking like Devonshire House in London and the rooms filled with objects, busts and pictures which the bishop had brought back from a tour he had made of France and Italy after graduating from Trinity College Dublin. In a second letter, Mrs Pendarves provided her sibling with a meticulous description of the main reception rooms: ‘First there is a very good hall well filled with servants, then a room of eighteen foot square, wainscoated with oak, the panels all carved, and the doors and chimney finished with very fine high carving, the ceiling stucco, the window-curtains and chairs yellow Genoa damask, portraits and landscapes, very well done, round the room, marble tables between the windows, and looking glasses with gilt frames.’ Mrs Pendarves continues her account with information on the next room, which measured 28 by 22 feet, ‘and is as finely adorned as damask, pictures and busts can make it, besides the floor being entirely covered with the finest Persian carpet that ever was seen. The bedchamber is large and handsome, all furnished with the same damask.’ Despite its evident splendour, this was not the house, 80 St Stephen’s Green designed for Clayton by architect Richard Castle (and seen in these pictures), since work on that property only began five years later in 1736.  




The Claytons’ new Dublin townhouse was still a work in progress when visited in December 1736 by the aforementioned Earl of Orrery, who shortly afterwards wrote to Clayton. Lord Orrery was much impressed by what he had seen, even though, ‘as your Lordps Commands did not extend so far as to order me to break my Neck or my Limbs, I ventur’d no further than the Hall Door, from whence my Prospect was much confin’d, except when I look’d upwards to the Sky.’ Calling the house a palace, Orrery went on to say that its first floor Great Room would probably bring his cousin, the architect Earl of Burlington, over to Ireland from London. However, while he was confident that the bishop’s hearing and sight should be satisfied with the finished building, the same might not be the case for his sense of smell, owing to the proximity of the stables. Orrery therefore suggested these could be located further behind the house if a little more land were purchased, although he observed that as long as the stables had a beautiful cornice, ‘Signor Cassels [Castle] does not seem to care where it stands.’ From the exterior, it’s difficult to gain a sense of what the building looked like because, after being bought in 1858 by Benjamin Lee Guinness, it was joined to its immediate neighbour to the right and the two properties given a unified  seven-bay façade in Portland stone. However, inside the house, some of the original interiors survive on both the ground and first floors, not least the Saloon or ‘Great Room’ which spans the full three-bay width of the Clayton building and is notable for its coved and coffered ceiling, based on a Serlio plate of the Temple of Bacchus in Rome) which rises up to the attic. Behind this lies the Music Room, the ceiling of which conveniently indicates its function. Alas, the Claytons’ happy, sociable existence ended in tears, due to the prelate’s insistence on putting into print his somewhat unorthodox views on Christianity in a work called A Vindication of the Histories of the Old and New Testament. Espousing Arianism, he subsequently proposed in the Irish House of Lords that the Nicene and Athanasian creeds be removed from the prayer book. As a result, he was summoned for trial on a charge of heresy before an ecclesiastical commission. However, before the trial began, in February 1758 the bishop died of a fever in his Dublin residence. Horace Walpole, with his customary sharpness of tongue, claimed Clayton’s death was due to panic at the thought of having to defend his idiosyncratic religious beliefs. Presented by the second Earl of Iveagh to the Irish State, the building has since served as the headquarters of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Below, a portrait of Robert and Katherine Clayton painted in happier times (c.1740) by James Latham, now in the National Gallery of Ireland. 


The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

And Speaking of Ruins



At Coola, a mile to the north of Kilbeggan, County Westmeath and beside the river Brosna stand the remains of a once very substantial corn mill complex. Seemingly, it was initially started c.1770 by the Fitzpatrick family, who also had another such enterprise not far away at Ballynagore. The property was sold in 1781 to the Connollys who greatly expanded both the business and the buildings: by 1790 more flour was being produced here than at any other mill in Westmeath, sending 4,693 tonnes to Dublin.  Further development occurred in the early decades of the 19th century when oatmeal and barley were also milled on the site. Although predominantly utilitarian in design, there are some decorative flourishes such as the brick crenellations on one five storey block, at the base of which is the shell of a cottage with arched door and windows and hooded mouldings. The mill remained in operation until the 1970s, since when it has fallen into its present condition.



The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

In the Gallery


‘Over the Supper Room is the Picture Gallery, of the same dimensions, containing many fine Paintings by the first masters, with other great Ornaments, chosen and displayed with great elegance; the Ceiling is arched, and highly enriched and painted, from designs by Mr WYATT. The most distinguished Pictures are, a Student drawing from a Bust by REMBRANDT; the Rape of Europa by CLAUDE LORRAINE; the Triumph of Amphitrite, by LUCCA GIORDANO; two capital pictures of Rubens and his two Wives, by VAN DYCK; Dogs killing a Stag; a fine Picture of Saint Catharine; a Landscape by Barratt; with many others. In a bow in the middle of one side, is a marble Statue, an Adonis, executed by PONCET; a fine bust of Niobe, and of Apollo, are placed on each side. In the Windows of the Bow, are some specimens of modern stained Glass, by Jervis.’
James Malton, c.1795





Today occupied by Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann (the two houses of Ireland’s parliament), Leinster House was originally commissioned in 1745 by James FitzGerald, 20th Earl of Kildare, and future first Duke of Leinster, as his Dublin townhouse, the largest and grandest such residence built in the city during the 18th century. Designed by Richard Castle, the house was intended to hold a picture gallery on the first floor, but this work was not undertaken before the architect’s death in 1751 and towards the end of that decade a second proposal for the room was produced by Isaac Ware. Based on a scheme published by Ware in Designs of Inigo Jones and others (1731), this was likewise unexecuted. The gallery remained an empty shell until 1775 when the second Duke of Leinster commissioned fresh designs from James Wyatt, and these are what can still be seen today. In that year, the duke married Emilia Olivia St George, only daughter and heiress of Usher St George, first Baron St George. The new duchess brought a substantial art collection with her, and the need to have a space in which these could be shown to best advantage gave a certain urgency to the matter. As executed, Wyatt’s proposals included inserting additional windows into the north side of an existing bow window (above which is a shallow half-dome) and dividing the shallow elliptical vault into three sections, all of which are decorated with elaborate neo-classical plasterwork. As described by Professor Christine Casey, the ceiling’s centre holds a chamfered octagon within a square and at each end a diaper within a square, each flanked by broad figurative lunette panels at the base of the coving and bracketed by husk garlands and garlands of leafy ovals. Between are ribs with attenuated tripods, urns and arabesque finials.’ The scheme’s coherence is illustrated by the inclusion of a pair of white marble chimneypieces with high-relief female figures on the uprights and putti marking the division between beaded spandrels enclosing urns and griffins, and then similar motifs being employed in pewter and gesso on the doors.





Following the Act of Union in 1800 and the death of the second duke four years later, Leinster House was scarcely used by the family and so in 1815 the third duke sold the property to the Dublin Society (later Royal Dublin Society). Many of the picture gallery’s contents were moved to the family’s country house, Carton House, County Kildare where alterations to accommodate the collection were made by Richard Morrison; many of the artworks were subsequently sold as the fortunes of the FitzGerald family declined in the last century. Meanwhile, the Dublin Society converted the room in which they were once displayed into a library, Francis Johnston inserting a gallery above the line of the window heads, although this was removed in the late 19th century. Following the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, the Dail was housed – temporarily, it was thought – in the RDS’s lecture theatre, a large hall which had been completed a quarter century earlier. In 1924, the society sold the entire property to the government for £68,000 and moved permanently to the site it still occupies in Ballsbridge. Leinster House’s former picture gallery was then adapted with virtually no structural alterations to accommodate the Seanad, which it has continued to do ever since.


Text here…

The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

Commemorating the Living



Rather unusually, this monument was erected while the person to whom it paid honour was still very much alive. In 1829, the Barrington family decided to put up a free-standing limestone column in Limerick city celebrating its popular MP, Thomas Spring Rice, future first Lord Monteagle (he would only die in 1866). On a plain limestone ashlar cylindrical base approached by three steps, the fluted Doric column designed by Henry Aaron Baker carries a statue carved by Thomas KIrk (also responsible for the figure of Admiral Nelson that once stood atop his own column in Dublin) showing the subject dressed in robes and looking towards a terrace of six houses, the only part of the scheme for a splendid square in this part of Limerick that was completed as intended in the 1830s.



The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

Disrobed



Tucked away in an eastern corner of a garden behind the former bishop’s palace in Kilkenny is this charming little pavilion. Its construction is attributed to the writer and antiquarian Richard Pococke who lived in the main house 1756-65 while serving as Bishop of Ossory (although some sources attribute it to Charles Este, who held the same office 1735-40, and then went on to commission a new episcopal palace in Waterford). Inside the single room pavilion is a chimneypiece flanked by arched plaster recesses, the walls on either side panelled in wood. A door on the south side formerly opened into a Doric colonnade which in turn led to a door in the north transept of St Canice’s Cathedral, thereby allowing the prelate to move from one building to the other without stepping outdoors: in the early 19th century, architectural purists decried the colonnade as being out of keeping with the medieval site and it was removed. As for the pavilion, it has long been called the Robing Room, suggesting this was where the bishop donned the appropriate garments before taking a service in the cathedral. More likely it was simply intended to be a summerhouse and indeed this was how the building was described by a later Bishop of Ossory, William Newcome who in 17775 wrote that it was ‘of a very good size with a fireplace, fit for drinking tea or a glass of wine.’ The Robing Room underwent restoration some 20 years ago when the palace, vacated by the Church of Ireland, was being prepared for its current occupant, the Irish Heritage Council.  


The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

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. 


The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

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



The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

Pathetic Residue




A gate lodge, almost all that remains of Ballywilliam, a former estate in County Limerick owned by the Maunsell family from the mid-18th century onwards. The main house here has long gone but this pathetic residue serves as a memory of what was once here. In his guide to the lodges of Munster, J.A.K. Dean ascribes the building’s design to Charles Frederick Anderson, and suggests a date after 1824 when Ballywilliam was inherited by George Meares Maunsell. A wonderful example of neo-classical design, the building has a pedimented breakfront supported by Doric columns, all in crisp cut limestone. Flanked by a curtain wall, pedimented projections extend the single-storey lodge to accommodate three rooms, that in the centre having a brick-vaulted ceiling, the floor below now covered in detritus.




The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by