Marvellous Mariga

Derek Hill’s portrait of Mariga which perfectly captures her shyness sometimes misconstrued as hauteur

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the death on May 8th 1989 of Mariga Guinness at the age of only 56. It seems an opportune moment to celebrate her life, especially since an entire generation has since grown up without having had the opportunity to meet Mariga and to benefit in person from her influence.
For those unfamiliar with her story, Marie-Gabrielle von Urach was born in September 1932, the only child of Prince Albrecht von Urach and Rosemary Blackadder. Her mother’s family were from the Scottish borders, her father’s a junior branch of the royal house of Württemberg in southern Germany; her grandfather was briefly King of Lithuania, a great-aunt Queen of Belgium and a great-grandaunt the Empress Elizabeth of Austria. Although her father had been expected to succeed to the principality of Monaco (an extraordinary story in itself), in the aftermath of the First World War this arrangement was abandoned and so he came of age with little money and no prospects. Both Mariga’s parents were artists and in the mid-1930s they and their daughter moved to Japan where Prince Albrecht was attached to the German embassy as a government photographer. However in 1937 Rosemary von Urach decided the Japanese Emperor was being misled into aggression by his generals, and taking Mariga with her somehow gained admission into the imperial palace to offer him advice. Arrested and sedated by security guards, she was sent back to Britain where she had a breakdown followed by a lobotomy and spent the rest of her life in a Scottish mental hospital. Meanwhile Mariga’s father continued working for the German government throughout the Second World War and did not see his daughter again until she was sixteen and he had remarried (when they reunited he did not tell her this himself and she only found out indirectly). In the intervening years Mariga had been raised in England by a septuagenarian unmarried friend of her grandmother’s who died in 1951, leaving her charge possessed of little other than great intelligence and beauty. That same year she was introduced to the Hon Desmond Guinness by her cousin Prince Rupert Löwenstein. The couple married in June 1954 and moved to Ireland the following year.

Desmond and Mariga on their honeymoon photographed by Anthony Armstrong-Jones (later Earl of Snowdon); these pictures courtesy, and property, of their son Patrick Guinness.

Mariga first visited Ireland (at the invitation of the late Mark Bence-Jones) in 1953. He later remembered that she arrived in a ball dress having gone straight from a dance in London to catch an early flight. ‘The first thing they asked me when I got off the ‘plane was “Have you been on a farm?”’ she said with her unerring sense of the incongruous (there had recently been an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in England). Afterwards she wrote, ‘Ireland is HEAVEN, everyone is so dotty and delicious and no one dreams of taking anything seriously; except, perhaps the Horse Show.’ Of course, after moving here Mariga took the country very seriously, not least in her ceaseless campaigns to preserve its architectural heritage and her founding with Desmond of the Irish Georgian Society in 1958.
The society was run from the couple’s home at Leixlip Castle, County Kildare which they had bought and restored after looking at countless other houses around Ireland. Leixlip represented Mariga’s highly distinctive and influential taste. As architectural historian Mark Girouard has written, ‘In the 1960s Mariga Guinness made Leixlip Castle an unforgettable place: a solid, four-towered mediaeval castle converted in the early 18th century with huge, thick-barred windows and spacious, simple rooms looking down to the Liffey; a massive front door that was never locked; and inside an inspired assembly of mainly Irish 18th-century furniture and pictures, put together and set off with a sense of color and occasion, a mixture of informality and showmanship, to make a setting in which it seemed that anything could happen and anyone might turn up.
One would turn up oneself, pull open the front door and wander into empty rooms with log fires smoldering, until people would, perhaps, begin to appear: millionaires, Irish professors, Anglo-Irish lordlings, pop stars, German princes, architects, priests, art historians, students, all revolving around Mariga, with her drawling voice and mischievous smile, and Desmond, with his charm and blazing blue eyes.
A party might develop or a picnic, or both or neither; intrigues and dramas would get under way, champagne might or might not flow, and the whole charade was given point by the crusade for Irish Georgian architecture, to save or rediscover which forays would be made from the castle all over Ireland.’

Two photographs of Mariga taken by Horst P. Horst when he visited Leixlip Castle in 1968

Many people can testify, and have done so, to the abiding impact of Mariga’s exceptional taste. Interior designer John Stefanidis has remembered her ‘A wit, a tease, an intelligent and enchanting beauty, gifted with impeccable taste. She had panache…whether in a fur hat and muff, or in fancy dress with a large hat and feather boa, she always looked marvellous. A wonderful hostess, Leixlip Castle was an example on how to live in an historic house – despite it being freezing cold in winter (she longed for central heating).’
It was thrilling to stay there surrounded by marvellous furniture she had found and not an ugly thing in sight. She was the inspiration behind the founding of the Irish Georgian Society – not only did she find houses and restore them but also doggedly charmed her way through bureaucratic red tape in Dublin.’
Likewise in his 1985 book The Inspiration of the Past, architectural historian John Cornforth described Leixlip as ‘the key country house in the British Isles in the late 1950s and 1960s,’ before going on to write that ‘The process of restoring, decorating and furnishing the house was very much a shared enthusiasm, with complementary contributions from two remarkable people; but it always seemed to me that the overall look of the house owed more to Mrs Guinness, who has a rare gift for composing objects and rooms in a stimulating way and combining unlikely, and occasionally uncompromising, objects to create memorable effects…Ultimately it was the feeling for scale in the house and the combination of the Irish pictures and furniture with the simple decoration supported by prints, piles of books and quantities of shells that made it such a complete and convincing Irish country house, very carefully thought out but achieved with such brio and confidence that it seemed natural and not contrived. It managed to be stylish and unfussy; quite grand and yet informal and cut-back; and everywhere there was both a vivid historical air and a sense of fantasy.’ In this context, Cornforth referenced Nancy Lancaster before recalling an observation made by Christopher Gibbs that while Mrs Lancaster’s taste had been ‘patrician’ that of Mariga was ‘princely.’

Two sides of Mariga: up a ladder painting in Castletown, and modelling in Leixlip Castle at a fund-raising fashion show for the Irish Georgian Society

Although less actively involved with the Irish Georgian Society during the last years of her life, Mariga’s commitment and engagement with the organisation during its early decades was of vital importance. After her death, the late Professor Kevin B Nowlan noted how, ‘In the 1960s and 1970s Mariga Guinness gave a sparkle to the grim struggle to save our heritage of 18th century architecture.’ Indeed, it was her crusading spirit and her exceptional ability to inspire other people that deserve to be forever remembered. As the Knight of Glin commented, ‘She had that vital talent of leading every sort of person into the then often unappreciated world of Irish architecture, decoration, furniture and paintings.’ The society’s membership swelled as a direct result of her passionate advocacy of conservationism; she was a force of persuasive charm impossible to resist. ‘Not a painter, not a writer, not a musician,’ wrote her great friend Maureen Charlton while Mariga was still alive, ‘what she does is to transform life itself into a work of art, to make each passing day a new creation.’
Mariga was always especially good at inspiring the young, who would quickly be beguiled into voluntarily working for the Irish Georgian Society, and in a thoroughly practical way too. During the course of an interview given less than two months before her death, she spoke of the restoration, indeed the salvation of Castletown, County Kildare in 1967 when students were at the top of ladders painting cornices, children scrubbed floors, ‘and even the oldest of the old were able to polish the beautiful door handles and do something to help.’ Mariga too threw herself into activity and led by example, being prepared to climb a ladder with a pot of paint, or wield a banner during a protest against the threatened demolition of an historically important building. A feature in the Irish Independent during this period noted of Mariga that when not in Leixlip ‘dispensing informal hospitality and discussing current such finds as a document-packed sealskin trunk or an ancient set of stocks in a Meath courthouse, she’s paint-stripping or picture hanging at Castletown.’ Although she could sometimes give the impression of being rather vague – she was notorious for introducing even relatively close friends as ‘Mr Thingummy’ – a strong core of practicality ran through her character. And there was a streak of seriousness too. As she told a reporter from the Irish Times shortly before her death, when speaking of the Irish Georgian Society, ‘It was definitely very serious, what we were doing.’

Mariga showing Castletown to Jacqueline Kennedy who visited the house in 1967, and wearing one of the many historical costumes she collected

Although we met in passing on a couple of occasions when I was still a student, it was only after she had divorced and I had graduated that Mariga and I came to know each other. By then she had perforce moved out of Leixlip Castle and was living in Tullynisk, the dower house of Birr, County Offaly. It was definitely a house of contrasts, on the one hand a grim little kitchen (out of which surprisingly delicious meals were produced) and on the other the main rooms which were decorated with Mariga’s customary flair and discernment. Despite chaos forever appearing imminent, life at Tullynisk was actually rather well-ordered: overnight guests found their rooms perfectly prepared, logs neatly piled beside the grate (the house was always cold), fresh linen on the beds, and carefully chosen reading matter on an adjacent stand. No matter how late we had all scattered – and it was often very late – the followed morning Mariga would be the first to rise, moving about the house with trays laden for the breakfast table.
At the same time, disorder reigned behind the scenes: Mariga’s unparalleled collection of historical costume, for example, remained heaped in a tempting Everest on one bedroom floor, periodically raided for dressing-up on her instruction during parties. And her wonderful library, although the majority of books were eventually shelved, never had any real order put on it. Meanwhile she continued to drive a battered old Citroen, which periodically refused to move and would sometimes spend months outside the house. I remember Mariga’s bafflement when she was summoned to appear in court in Birr for failing to tax the vehicle, her logic being that since it was immobile no taxation ought to be required.
The truth was that during those final years Mariga was deeply unhappy, the melancholia to which I suspect she had always been vulnerable threatening to overwhelm her. Although she tried to keep herself busy and organised regular house parties and outings – a caravan of cars driving slowly down pot-holed laneways in pursuit of an alleged architectural gem that more often turned out to be an undistinguished farmhouse, its owners baffled by the spectacle of this troupe of eccentric gawkers – she was often alone. At such times she must have felt the world of which she had once been so vital a part had moved on and forgotten her. Of course it hadn’t, and more importantly it still hasn’t. All of us remained heavily indebted to Mariga Guinness and her inspirational leadership. Through her dynamism and commitment, Ireland’s architectural heritage became better known and appreciated, and preserved, than would otherwise have been the case. This week’s anniversary of her untimely death allows us an opportunity once more to pay due acknowledgement to a remarkable woman.

The Conolly Folly beneath which Mariga is buried

Mariga Guinness, 21st September 1932 – 8th May 1989

A Reflection of the Past

Apr30

An engraving showing a cross-section of the interior of the Irish House of Commons in Dublin. Work on this, part of the world’s first purpose-built parliament, began in 1729 to designs by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce. The engraving was made in 1767 by the artist Peter Mazell after a drawing by architect Rowland Omer. It is a valuable source of information about how the House of Commons looked since the original domed chamber was destroyed by fire in 1792 and, for the last years of the Irish parliament’s life prior to the 1800 Act of Union, replaced by a simpler structure. The engraving hangs on the stairs of Furness, County Kildare (the upper landing window can be seen reflected in the glass): appropriate because in the second half of the 18th century the house was owned by Richard Nevill who, like his father and grandfather before him, sat as an M.P. in the Irish House of Commons.

Mr Speaker

Apr28

Most visitors to Collon, County Louth are likely to pass swiftly on their way, unaware the house on the north-east corner of the village’s crossroads has powerful links with a pivotal moment in our history when the country likewise stood at a crossroad: the 1800 Act of Union. This building, known as Collon House, was the birthplace and lifelong residence of John Foster, last speaker of the Irish House of Commons.
The Fosters are believed to have been of English origin, coming from Cumberland to settle in this country sometime around the time of Charles II’s Restoration: the name of a Samuel Foster appears in the Hearth Money return (by which one shilling was paid for every firehearth or stove in a dwelling) for the parish of Dunleer, County Louth in 1666. Samuel Foster’s son Anthony, named as a burgess of Dunleer in 1683, seems to have been a small tenant farmer in the area but his son John studied law, married well and started to acquire land, much of it formerly belonging to an impecunious branch of the Moore family. By the time of his death in 1747 he had built up an estate of some 6,000 acres. This property included Collon where around 1740 John Foster’s son, another Anthony, built the family residence. Land ownership conveyed power and thus with his election as an M.P. in 1737 Anthony Foster was able to wrest control of the Dunleer borough over which he and his son thereafter retained until the abolition of the Irish parliament. Trained as a barrister, from 1760 to 1766 Anthony Foster held the Office of First Counsel to the Commissioners of the Revenue, before being appointed Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer, retiring from this position a year before his death in 1778.

John Foster’s biographer Anthony Malcolmson describes Anthony Foster as ‘an able man whose misfortune it has been to be overshadowed by an even abler son.’ This is evident in his enterprises in Collon and surrounding areas. Finding the land here in poor condition – he recalled it had been ‘a waste sheep walk, covered chiefly with heath, with some dwarf furze and fern’ – he carried out many improvements, not least through drainage. When the English agriculturalist Arthur Young published his Tour of Ireland in 1780 he called Anthony Foster a ‘great improver, a title more deserving estimation than that of a great general or a great minister,’ someone who had ‘made a barren wilderness smile with cultivation, planted it with people and made those people happy,’ altogether a man whose work on his estate was ‘of a magnitude I have never heard of before.’
Anthony Foster gained a patent to hold a weekly market in Collon as well as two annual fairs, and the grounds of his house, in which he built greenhouses in 1763 for the production of exotic fruits, became renowned for their variety of trees and shrubs: this interest in botany would be inherited by his son who is credited with introducing the copper beech to Ireland. However, all this land acquisition and improvement came at a price, and as early as 1740 John Foster the elder was concerned over his level of indebtedness. The family never managed to become solvent and by 1810 his grandson John was estimated to have debts of £72,000. As we shall see, this helps to explain the relative modesty of Collon House.

John Foster was born in 1740, on other words precisely around the time Collon House was being built by his father. Like the latter, he sought to improve the family estate, developing a linen industry in the area, building mills and encouraging Protestant weavers to settle in Collon. Also following the example of Anthony Foster he studied law and was first elected to parliament in 1761. Noted for his interest in the economic and commercial betterment of this country, he was involved in successfully ‘regulating Ireland’s external trade with Great Britain, with other parts of the Empire, with the United States, and with France’. In 1777 he served as Chairman of the Committee of Supply and Ways and Means before succeeding his cousin and brother-in-law Walter Hussey de Burgh as Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1784. In that year parliament passed his corn law, ‘granting large bounties on the exportation of corn and imposing heavy duties on its importation.’ According to the 19th century historian William Lecky, ‘This law is one of the capital facts in Irish history. In a few years it changed the face of the land and made Ireland to a great extent an arable instead of a pasture country.’
Foster only remained in the Exchequer a year before becoming Speaker of the Irish House of Commons in 1785, the final man to hold this position. His understanding of Ireland and her particular circumstances made him a leading opponent of the Act of Union. ‘I declare from my soul,’ he declared when the abolition of the Irish parliament was first proposed, ‘that if England were to give us all her revenues, I could not barter for them the free constitution of my country.’ He was forced to preside over the debate in the Commons for its own eradication, an occasion later recalled by Sir Jonah Barrington who wrote, ‘The Speaker rose slowly from that chair which had been the proud source of his honours and of his high character; for a moment he resumed his seat, but the strength of his mind sustained him in his duty, though his struggle was apparent.’ However, Foster refused to surrender the Speaker’s mace, declaring that “until the body that intrusted it to his keeping demanded it, he would preserve it for them.’ The mace was eventually offered for sale by his descendants in 1937 and bought by the Bank of Ireland. It has ever since remained in that organisation’s premises, the former Irish parliament building.

It is often proposed as evidence of the Fosters’ prudence that they did not indulge in building a lavish country mansion. But the fact that they remained in Collon might just be due as much to ongoing indebtedness as to financial sagacity. And they were not without other properties, having a residence in central Dublin (essential for any member of Parliament) as well as one on the outskirts of the capital (Merville, now part of the University College Dublin campus, but its original owners remembered in the name of adjacent Foster Avenue). Furthermore in the 1770s a short distance from Collon they would build themselves a pleasure pavilion called Oriel Temple and John Foster leased in perpetuity another house in the county, Rathescar Lodge which likewise still stands although much enlarged.
Nevertheless, the principal Foster residence remained that in Collon which, as built by Anthony c.1740 was a exceptionally extended version of the traditional Irish ‘long house’, in this case running two storeys and eighteen bays. It seems to have comprised a series of long, low rooms, none very substantial. Many of these survive, as can be seen in the photographs above and testify to the determinedly modest condition of the family’s living conditions: when Anthony Foster invited a cousin to stay around 1766 he warned that a shared room should be expected, presumably due to the number of other guests due at the same time. Inside the design is determinedly simple, with surviving chimneypieces and cornicing almost devoid of decoration. The want of ostentation was not necessarily to everyone’s taste. Indeed John Foster’s own daughter Anna, Lady Dufferin later wrote that arrangements in Collon House were ‘so uncomfortable as soon to banish all visitors, even of our own family.’ This would change somewhat after Anthony Foster’s death when his son inherited the house and embarked on a programme of aggrandisement.

The original Collon House ran east-west facing onto what is now the main road from Drogheda to Kells, County Meath but was then open countryside. Around the late 1770s John Foster enlarged the building at its western end, adding an additional storey to the final five bays and then to the immediate north creating a substantial entrance hall, high-ceilinged saloon and, behind these two, a stairhall lit by two big round-headed windows as it turns upon itself to climb to the upper floors. These windows look out on a courtyard around which run the various original outbuildings and service quarters. The proportions in John Foster’s addition are more generous, the cornicing and chimneypieces more elaborate but at the same time the earlier element of cautious restraint has not been forsaken: even in its late 18th century adjunct the house holds onto a certain self-effacement, all the more surprising since first Mrs Foster and then her husband were granted peerages.
The Fosters likewise held on to Collon House and its estate, although later generations, who became Viscounts Massereene, tended to spend the greater part of their time in County Antrim. Thus Collon House was neglected and indeed the more easterly part of the property internally separated from the main part of the building, hence today it runs to seven bays. In his biography of John Foster Anthony Malcolmson records that when he first visited the house in 1977 it was in ‘a fairly ruinous state.’ Having since changed residents a couple of times, Collon House has in recent years undergone extensive and meticulous restoration and, one suspects, now looks better than it did even when occupied by the Fosters. To give just one example the present owners panelled the dining room and thereby greatly improved its appearance; they have also created rather splendid gardens, a recollection of those made by Anthony Foster, as can be seen below. Today Collon House is in splendid shape. Visitors ought not to rush through the village but consider lingering there in order to experience the abiding spirit of the last Speaker of the Irish House of Commons.

Collon House is now open for guests. Further information can be found at: http://www.collonhouse.com/index.html

Down Memory Lane

Apr26

An early 20th century house party photographed on the steps of Moore Abbey, County Kildare. On the site of a mediaeval abbey and from c.1699 home to successive generations of the Moore family, Earls (and for a period Marquesses) of Drogheda, the building is significant for being one of the earliest examples of the gothick style in Ireland: at the request of the sixth earl, in 1767 Christopher Myers ‘beautifully repaired the ancient abbey by enlarging the windows, placing a new roof, and recompartitioning the whole; preserving however the external walls and original form, except somewhat lengthening the eastern front.’ (Anthologia Hibernica III, February 1794) It underwent further alterations in the 19th century before being sold by the Moores in 1945 to the Sisters of Charity and subjected to much redevelopment. In this group photograph taken with the garden front as backdrop, the moustachioed gentleman sitting on the steps and holding a dog is the dealer and art collector Sir Hugh Lane. Next Tuesday, April 29th at 10.30 am I shall be giving a talk on Lane at the National Gallery of Ireland, focussing on his too-brief tenure as Director of that institution. Admission is free.

When an Irishman’s Home is by Castle

Apr21

Although now considered central Dublin, St Stephen’s Green originally stood outside the city walls, its name deriving from a church and leper hospital founded at the end of the 12th century a short distance to the west (at the junction of what are now Mercer and Stephen’s Streets). During the following centuries, the green comprised marshy ground with an area of around sixty acres used for common grazing land (hence anyone presented with the Freedom of the City of Dublin acquires the right to graze sheep in St Stephen’s Green).
In 1635 the City Corporation passed legislation stating ‘That no parsel of the Greenes or commons of the city shall henceforth be lett, but wholie kept for the use of the citizens and others to walke and take open aire, by this reason this cittie is at present groweing very populous.’ However, in 1663 the same city fathers decided that, given Dublin’s expansion, this plot of common land should be exploited for its commercial potential. A survey was conducted of the site and the following year a central green area of twenty-seven acres marked out, with the surrounding ground divided along four sides into ninety-six building plots; on average these had a frontage of sixty feet and a depth of 200 feet. The ground rent generated by this scheme was used to construct the park’s walls and paving. Owners of sites had to build properties at least two storeys high and with roofs of either slate or tile. Furthermore they were each obliged to plant six sycamore trees near the park wall so as to improve its appearance.

Progress on building around the green was initially slow, and not helped by the disruptions of the later 17th century. Charles Brooking’s 1728 map of Dublin shows many vacant plots but thereafter development was rapid and within a few decades all four sides were filled with some of the grandest private residences in the city. As with similar developments elsewhere in the city, because the owner of each site served as his own developer, there was often considerable difference in appearance between one building and its neighbours: the English travel writer Richard Twiss, in his controversial 1775 book A Tour of Ireland, observed that the houses in St Stephen’s Green were ‘so extremely irregular, that they are scarcely two of the same height, breadth, materials or architecture.’ To our eyes this lack of regularity is precisely what lends the place its charm, but Twiss’ rational 18th century mind felt otherwise.
We do not know who was responsible for the design of the majority of the original houses in St Stephen’s Green, possibly in many cases no architect was employed. However on some occasions the client did hire a professional, as was the case at no.80 on the south side of the green. This was built 1736-7 for Robert Clayton, then Bishop of Cork and Orrery (and subsequently transferred to the diocese of Clogher). A wealthy man, Clayton employed Richard Castle to design his new townhouse at no.80. Of three storeys over basement, it was fronted in brick on the upper levels but the ground floor had a stone portico similar to that of Inigo Jones’ church of St Paul in Covent Garden, London. The first floor saloon overlooking St Stephen’s Green was especially admired: even before the house was complete, John Boyle, fifth Earl of Orrery was writing to Bishop Clayton that he had visited the property in the company of its architect and commenting ‘This comes to congratulate your Lordp upon your new House in Stevens-Green. Felices quorum iam maria surgunt! [Happy those whose seas rise]…Your Palace, my Lord, appears finely upon Paper, and to shew you that the whole pleases me, I even admire your Coal Cellars. Your great Room will probably bring the Earl of Burlington over to this Kingdom…’ Unfortunately towards the end of his life, Bishop Clayton succumbed to the heresy of Arianism for which at the time of his death in 1758 he was due to be prosecuted by his fellow clerics. His residence meanwhile was from the 1860s onwards subsumed into what today is known as Iveagh House although parts of it, including the saloon, remain.

As mentioned, the heretically-inclined Bishop Clayton employed Richard Castle to design his townhouse on St Stephen’s Green and so too in 1738 Captain Hugh Montgomery for a residence at no.85 just a few doors to the immediate west: this building is now part of the Newman House complex. By this date, Castle was the most successful and fashionable architect in the country and his services much in demand. Until recently little was known of his origins, since he only comes to public attention after arriving here in 1728 at the behest of Sir Gustavus Hume to design a house on the latter’s County Fermanagh estate.
However, research conducted by Loreto Calderón and Konrad Dechant (and published in The Eighteenth-Century Dublin Town House, ed. Christine Casey, 2010) has revealed much more about Castle’s background.
Since he came from Germany, and his name was often spelled Cassels, it was assumed that his family originated in Hesse-Kassel. In fact, he was one of four sons of an English-born Jewish merchant, Joseph Riccardo and his second, Bombay-born, wife Rachel Burges who by 1699 were settled in Saxony where Joseph became Director of Munitions and Mines to the Elector Frederick Augustus I, the ruler first responsible for beautifying Dresden where the Riccardo family eventually came to live. Presumably thanks to his father’s involvement in mining, the young Richard Castle developed an interest in engineering and in the early 1720s spent time in France and the Netherlands studying canals and fortifications. In 1725 he was in London, calling himself ‘Richard Castle, gentleman’ and subscribing to the third volume of Colen Campbell’s Vitruvius Britannicus, from which it is possible to deduce he was in some way associated with Lord Burlington’s circle of neo-Palladians. Following his move to Ireland, and his work for Sir Gustavus Hume, he came to Dublin and was engaged as a draughtsman by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce, then engaged to design a new Parliament House in College Green. Ultimately Castle would become Pearce’s successor as Ireland’s premier architect.

Today Richard Castle is primarily remembered as the architect responsible for some of the country’s most splendid country houses such as Russborough and Powerscourt, both County Wicklow, Carton in County Kildare and Summerhill, County Meath (for the last of these, see My Name is Ozymandias, April 1st 2013). But his services were also in demand for aristocratic town houses in Dublin where he designed not just the two in St Stephen’s Green already mentioned, but also Tyrone House on Marlborough Street (dating from 1740 and now part of the Department of Education) and of course Leinster House on Kildare Street (1745-48) which since 1922 has been the seat of the Oireachtas.
Less familiar is the building featured today which he designed towards the end of his life. This stands on the west side of St Stephen’s Green, an area which suffered particular damage in the final quarter of the last century with this pair of houses being the only survivors from the 18th century (the nearby College of Surgeons dates from 1805 and the Unitarian Church further south from 1861). Otherwise the entire west side was cleared of its history, to be replaced by the long stretches of the lacklustre office and retail development one now sees. For this reason, the survival of Castle’s design, which constitute 119 and 120 St Stephen’s Green, is all the more precious. The site was acquired by the architect himself and it would seem that, following the example of other craftsmen of the period, he undertook the scheme in a personal capacity. But building work could hardly have progressed far prior to his death in 1751, after which a decade passed before two of his brothers (who were beneficiaries of his will) travelled from Saxony to liquidate the dead man’s assets. The property then passed into the possession of a Richard Thwaites who was able to lease the completed houses in 1764.

As can be seen from the topmost picture, Castle’s plan for 119-120 St Stephen’s Green provides a single red-brick facade for the two properties, as though it were one very large house. Although each building is of two bays, they share a first-floor blind Venetian window above which are respectively a likewise blank oculus and carved tablet, a string course on the first floor and a heavy stone cornice below the attic storey being likewise communal. These devices were borrowed from Pearce who used them first at Bellamont Forest, County Cavan (see (La Belle au Bois Dormant, January 21st 2013), the blind Venetian window on the house’s side elevations and the oculus in the entrance hall (where until 2012 the succession of oculi held 18th century busts, see The Bellamont Busts, March 18th 2013). Castle had a limited repertoire of motifs which he was inclined to repeat, and here are two of his favourites, found in both exterior and interior of several country houses he designed. And in turn his deployment of them inspired others to do likewise, not least amateur architect Frances Bindon who is believed to have worked with Castle at both Russborough and Belan, County Kildare (see Splendours and Follies, September 30th 2013). Bindon’s design for John Square, Limerick contains the same blind Venetian windows, lined in brick, with oval blind oculi above (see When New Becomes Old, March 24th last). Unfortunately today it is hard to appreciate the effect of Castle’s once-unified facade for 119-120 St Stephen’s Green since the ground floor of no.119 has been so badly compromised. No.120 however is better preserved and retains its rusticated doorcase.
Likewise, as these photographs show, the interior of no.120 has undergone relatively little change although one wonders whether the design was by Castle or someone else after his death. Here the staircase is not facing the entrance but at right angles and set back between front parlour and ground floor dining room, light being provided by large round-headed windows on the south wall (which faces onto a laneway). Both the ground and first floor have kept their late rococo plasterwork ceilings, in every case an effervescence of trailing garlands and floral motifs. The neo-classical chimney pieces are clearly of later date but of sufficient quality to justify their presence. One other curious feature is a gilded wooden relief panel set above the door of the former dining room and depicting drunk Bacchus being led away by his followers: its basic frame leads one to ask did this come from somewhere else?
From the late 18th century onwards the west side of St Stephen’s Green was susceptible to commercial use and by the early 1800s houses began ceasing to serve as private residences: thus the preservation of no.120 is especially welcome. Today the building is occupied by a financial group, the staff of which understand their good fortune to work in such agreeable and historic surroundings – as opposed to the anaemic office blocks found on either side.

With thanks to Sarasin & Partners for permitting me to visit the building

Rise Above It All

Apr19

Part of the coved ceiling in the drawing room of Somerville, County Meath. The house dates from c.1730 when it was built for Sir James Somerville, Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1736 and also sometime M.P. for the city. Towards the end of the century, further work was carried out by Sir James’ grandson and it appears the neo-classical plasterwork was added at that time into a space then serving as entrance hall (the entire building was subsequently turned back to front, thereby making this the drawing room). The result is an extravagance of floral garlands and arabesques, ostrich plumes and decorative flourishes together with the family coat of arms, all set inside a sequence of panels. The exceptional quality of the workmanship has led to suggestions the ceiling may have been executed by Dublin stuccodore Michael Stapleton (1747-1801).

All Washed Up

Apr14

Irish landlords, that small band of men who once owned the greater part of the country, do not enjoy a good reputation here. Judged to have been rapacious and, still worse in the popular imagination, foreign, it cannot be denied that many of their number often put personal interest ahead of concern for the condition of tenants, with disastrous results following the onset of the potato blight in the mid-1840s. However, it would be wrong to tar all landlords with the same blackening brush, since there were a few of them who sought to improve circumstances on their property. Among this unusual group, none was more out of the ordinary than Joseph Henry Blake, third Lord Wallscourt, of Ardfry, County Galway.
The Blakes were one of the Tribes of Galway, fourteen merchant families who dominated life in the western city from the 13th century onwards. They liked to claim descent from Ap-Lake, one of the knight’s of King Arthur’s round table, but in fact they were originally called Caddell, the first of them coming to Ireland in the 12th century with Strongbow: in the early 14th century Richard Caddell, Sheriff of Connacht in 1303, was known as Niger or Black, from which the name Blake evolved.
Like others among the Galway Tribes, the Blakes soon began to acquire land in the surrounding area, a process that accelerated from the late 1500s onwards. Thus in May 1612 Robert Blake of Galway received a grant by letters patent from James I of Ballinacourt (later Wallscourt) and Ardfry, both in County Galway, as well as additional property in County Mayo. His eldest son Richard Blake, a lawyer by training, was knighted in 1624, served as Mayor of Galway 1627-28, and M.P. for the County of Galway in 1639 before becoming Speaker or Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Irish Confederation which sat at Kilkenny from 1647 to 1649. Although the Blakes subsequently lost their lands during the Cromwellian confiscations, they received them back after the Restoration and remained in possession thereafter, basing themselves at Ardfry which lies on the southern shores of Galway Bay.

Sir Richard Blake’s direct descendants died out in 1744 but a kinsman, Joseph Blake bought the estates from trustees and moved to Ardfry where around 1770 he built a house on the site of an old castle. The new property was long and low, at least nine bays wide and of two storeys over basement, with pyramidal pavilions at either end. Here in 1787 came the Hon Martha Herbert, wife of the rector of Cashel-on-Suir, County Tipperary, together with her daughter Dorothea (author of the celebrated Retrospections published a century after her death). On arrival they found ‘a large party of grandees’ whom Dorothea judged to be a ‘formidable set’ and were informed by their hostess that at Ardfry ‘they seldom or ever sat down to a meal with less than a hundred in family’, the latter term being used more loosely then than would now be the case.
Hitherto the Blakes had remained Roman Catholic but Joseph’s son, Joseph Henry Blake conformed to established church and was thus able to stand for election to the Irish parliament, to which he was elected in 1790. He retained his seat until the Act of Union a decade later and having voted in favour of this legislation was rewarded with a peerage, becoming Baron Wallscourt of Ardfry. However, his marriage to an heiress, Lady Louisa Bermingham, daughter of the first Earl of Louth, did not produce a son and so it was arranged that the title would devolve by special remainder to one of his nephews. Thus following his death in 1803 at the age of 37, Joseph Blake, son of the first Baron’s younger brother, became second Lord Wallscourt. The latter in turn dying in 1816 aged 19, his cousin Joseph Henry Blake (son of another of the first Baron’s brothers) became third Lord Wallscourt.

Although he had grown up at Ardfry where his father served as land agent, the new Lord Wallscourt had not expected to inherit the estate. At the time of his cousin’s death he was just eighteen and serving as a lieutenant in the army which he had joined after leaving Eton three years earlier. It is often stated that on coming into the title he immediately indulged in reckless spending but one must wonder how much there was to squander: Dorothea Herbert’s observations indicate that the late 18th century Blakes were already living beyond their means, and around 1795 more than 1,500 acres of the original estate (including the townland of Wallscourt) was offered for sale, while another parcel of land was also put on the market. What remained was some 2,834 statute acres (the greater part of it at Ardfry) yielding a notional annual rental of £3,200, although this always depended on the ability and preparedness of tenants to pay what was expected. Lord Wallscourt had financial obligations to meet regardless of actual revenue: various family members and retainers were entitled to an income for the duration of their respective lifetimes to an annual total of £800, and there was a further £7,000 owing, mostly to relatives. Thus the young peer would have found he had little enough to fritter away, especially after 1820 when creditors had the estate placed in trust so as to maximise income and pay off all debts. Under the new arrangement Lord Wallscourt was permitted a yearly allowance of £500.
Thankfully a couple of years later he married a 17-year old English heiress, Elizabeth Lock who was beautiful as well as rich and who would be painted by a family friend, Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1825: this portrait hung in Ardfry until the last century. That same year she and her husband, who had now regained control of his estate, came to look at Ardfry which had been sadly neglected and required extensive renovation. ‘The woods and the walks are certainly very pretty,’ Lady Wallscourt wrote to her mother, ‘and some of the trees very old and remind me of those poor dear old woods at Norbury, but the house is even in a worse state than I had expected, and you know I was not prepared to find grand chose. The building at a distance looks very well and is very handsome, but it seems to me impossible anything can be done to it. There is so much to do, repairing and building, to make it all inhabitable, that I am sure Wallscourt will not attempt it.’ Contrary to expectations, her husband did undertake the necessary work and by the end of the following year, after the building had been given some of the gothic flourishes it retains to this day, the couple moved in with their young children, the occasion marked by a ball given for the servants and tenants. At this event, after some initial hesitancy on the part of the guests, ‘the great decorum and silence gave place to the most violent noise and rioting as they grew merrier, and they danced incessantly to a piper till five. They had enormous suppers of a whole sheep and two or three rounds of beef, and all went home mad drunk with drinking Henry’s health in “the cratur”, as they call whisky.’ Lady Wallscourt soon retired upstairs and allowed the nurse in charge of the children to join the throng where she became ‘quite the life of the party…springing and capering about in a most ludicrous way.’

And now let us touch briefly on efforts by Lord Wallscourt to improve the circumstances of his tenants. When travelling about Europe as a young man and through meeting sundry liberal thinkers of the period, he had become impressed by ‘some of the theories, then much debated, for lifting the labourer into the position of a partner with the capitalist.’ Following his return to Ireland, in 1831 he was interested to hear how the County Clare landlord and founder of the Hibernian Philanthropic Society John Scott Vandeleur had invited Manchester-born journalist and proto-socialist Edward Thomas Craig to establish a co-operative community on his own estate at Ralahine. This was duly visited by Lord Wallscourt who found much to engage him and having sent his overseer to study the system in more detail he set aside 100 acres at Ardfry for his own socialist experiment. Even if begun on a smaller scale, the scheme fared better and lasted longer than that at Ralahine (which Vandeleur, who was addicted to gambling, managed to lose in a bet in 1833, after which he fled to America leaving his poor former tenants to fend for themselves against unmerciless creditors).
Lord Wallscourt also embarked on other philanthropic enterprises seeking to establish both a national school and an agricultural school as well as sponsoring the education of a number of boys in England and even as far away as Switzerland. He sought to improve the living conditions of tenants, building a two-storey slate-roofed house built as a model to replace the existing thatched cabins of the area. However it proved impossible to find anyone prepared to move into the new property, tenants apparently explaining ‘it would be mighty cold, and my Lord would be expecting me to keep it too clean.’ Eventually after standing empty for five years, a newly-wed couple took the place, on the grounds that it was ‘better than nothing at all.’
During the terrible years of the famine, Lord Wallscourt worked to ensure the well-being of his own tenants, and those on other estates in the area. He sat on a number of relief committees and on the Galway Board of Guardians, where he was critical of the operation of the poor law system and of his fellow guardians, who, he said, seemed ‘little disposed to transact the business for the discharge of which they were elected’. In 1847 he actively associated himself for the first time with the campaign for tenant rights and employed the distinguished agriculturalist Thomas Skilling (later first Professor of Agriculture at Queen’s University, Galway) to create a new tillage project employing labourers and tenants at Ardfry. He even started to establish an agricultural college on the estate.

One suspects that Lord Wallscourt, however well-intentioned, did not tolerate opposition from his tenants or indeed from anyone else. Evidence for this was provided by his wife when she sought a divorce in 1846 ‘by reason of his cruelty and adultery,’ citing several instances when her husband had assaulted her. He was known to be a man of considerable strength and when young had been a keen boxer (more peculiarly he liked to walk about his house wearing no clothes: eventually Lady Wallscourt persuaded him carry a cowbell in his hand when nude so maidservants had notice of his imminent arrival). The couple suffered the loss of their two elder sons, and it was only during a brief rapprochement in late 1840 that an eventual heir was conceived. It may be that Lady Wallscourt did not care for her husband’s humanitarian enterprises. What, one wonders, must she have made for the welcome he gave to the 1848 Paris insurrection that led to the final overthrow of the French monarchy: he even presided at a celebratory public rally in Dublin. The following year he visited Paris with his young son and while there died after contracting cholera.
His estranged wife now regained control, since the boy Erroll Augustus Blake was then aged only seven. The co-operative projects at Ardfry were abandoned and more familiar methods of estate management re-instated. On the other hand, upon reaching maturity the fourth Lord Wallscourt followed the parental example and undertook diverse improvements, most notably the establishment of an oyster fishery in Galway Bay which provided local employment. In other respects however, he could not be compared with his father, being so small in stature that he was known in the vicinity as ‘the lordeen’: Nationalist politician T.P. O’Connor later remembered meeting ‘a tiny little man, sad, deprecatory, almost timid in manner.’ This may have been because he was oppressed by money worries, especially after his second marriage. His new wife turned out to be a hopeless gambler: in the early years of the last century the lead was stripped from Ardfry’s roof to pay her debts and the contents – including that lovely portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence – sold. Nor did the Wallscourt peerage survive much longer: the fourth lord was succeeded in 1918 by his only son who died without children just two years later.
And so we see Ardfry as it stands today, a shell of a monument to an abandoned social and agricultural experiment. Who knows what might yet have happened here had the third Lord Wallscourt not died in Paris in 1849, and what example it might have given to other landlords in Ireland. The shame is that his efforts to improve the lives of the country’s tenants are today so little known, and the estate on which he carried out his endeavours has been allowed to fall into such disrepair, the trees and hedges cut down, the walls tumbled, the outbuildings and estate cottages gone or, the the main house, little more than four walls. Dorothea Herbert called Ardfry ‘a beautiful place’ and Griffith’s Valuation of 1857 refers to a ‘beautiful and picturesque demesne, well planted with forest and ornamental timber.’ There’s little enough beauty here now.

For more information on the third Lord Wallscourt, I recommend John Cunningham’s truly excellent essay (to which I am much indebted) ‘Lord Wallscourt of Ardfry (1797-1849)’ in Vol. LVII (2005) of the Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society.

One of a Pear

Apr12

A chimneypiece in the entrance hall of Furness, County Kildare. The name of 18th century amateur architect Francis Bindon has occurred here several times before (most recently When New Becomes Old, March 24th), and this is another house attributed to him. The core of the building is believed to date from c.1730, and some of the decoration from that period survives, not least this chimneypiece which is carved from pearwood, a material often used for wind instruments and of dark hue: in this instance, it has been painted to imitate stone.
More on Furness to follow in the coming weeks.

Common Entrance

Apr9

The shared carriage gates for a pair of houses on English Street, Downpatrick, County Down. The three-storey over basement buildings were designed c.1835-36 by the English-born John Lynn seemingly for himself. He is believed to have come to this country as clerk of works for the building of Rockingham, County Roscommon, designed by John Nash for Robert, 1st Viscount Lorton. According to Thomas Bell in his Rambles Northwards in Ireland (1827) Lynn ‘was originally a Carpenter by trade, but the Patronage of the noble Lord has it would appear transfused into his mind the theory of his profession, and converted him into an Architect.’ Evidently he did well in his new career because there are a large number of buildings, several of them gaols (including that in Downpatrick) for which he was responsible. With their prominent bows this pretty pair of houses would not look out of place in Cheltenham. That on the right is known as the Judges’ Lodgings since it was formerly used for that purpose by Assize judges presiding at the nearby courthouse.

In Praise of Narcissism

Apr7

Although undoubtedly a great humanitarian, Jonathan Swift was also capable of outbursts of spite. As evidence of which one cites his short essay Character of Primate Marsh, believed to have been written around 1710 (although only published thirty-five years later). In this piece of invective against the then-Archbishop of Armagh, Swift wrote ‘Marsh has the reputation of the most profound and universal learning; this is the general opinion, neither can it be easily disproved. An old rusty iron-chest in a banker’s shop, strongly lockt, and wonderful heavy, is full of gold; this is the general opinion, neither can it be disproved, provided the key be lost, and what is in it be wedged so close that it will not by any motion discover the metal by the clinking…No man will either be glad or sorry at his death, except his successor.’ Certainly following Marsh’s elevation to the primacy his successor in the archdiocese of Dublin William King was equally unkind, describing him as being ‘very dextrous at doing nothing.’ Of course unlike Swift and King, and despite being a Lord Justice of Ireland on six occasions, Marsh does not appear to have been particularly interested in politics and this could explain the two men’s dismissive remarks. Because despite what they might have thought and did write, Archbishop Marsh was far from being an ineffectual cleric and left a lasting and generous legacy through the establishment of the first public library in Ireland.

Narcissus Marsh was born in Wiltshire in 1638 ‘of honest parents,’ as he wrote in his diary. His name, while unusual, was not so distinctive as that given to either of his two brothers who were christened Epaphroditus and Onesiphorus: all three derive from persons mentioned in St Paul’s Epistles. While an undergraduate at Oxford Marsh decided to take orders and soon after was offered a living in Swindon, only subsequently discovering that he was expected to marry a friend of the people responsible for his preferment. This he refused, having determined never to marry since he believed he could only serve the church while a bachelor.
Returning to Oxford he continued his studies until appointed Principal of St Alban Hall in Oxford by the first Duke of Ormond who was Chancellor of the University; it was presumably through this connection that in 1679 he came to Ireland to take up the Provostship of Trinity College in Dublin. One of his greatest achievements during this time was arranging for an Irish translation of the Old Testament (the New Testament having already been translated earlier in the century). He also employed, at his own expense, a former Catholic priest, Paul Higgins, to teach Irish to the students at Trinity College and to preach an Irish sermon once a month; seemingly both sermons and lectures were extremely popular.
Marsh was appointed Bishop of Ferns and Leighlin in 1683 but following the accession of James II found himself much harassed and eventually retreated to England, only returning to this country after the Battle of the Boyne. In 1690 he was made Archbishop of Cashel and four years later moved to Dublin. Finally in 1703 he became Archbishop of Armagh and remained there until his death ten years later.

It was while Provost of Trinity College that Marsh conceived the notion of establishing a new public library in Dublin. He had already undertaken work to improve the college’s own facilities, revising the library regulations, and insisting that when a keeper was appointed all the books in his care must be accounted for, either replacing or paying for any that had been lost. But Marsh also noticed how hard it was for potential scholars to use the college library, remarking that what rendered it inaccessible to the greater part of the population was that according to the institution’s statutes ‘no man, besides the Provost and Fellows is permitted to study there, unless carry’d up thither by one of them, who is bound to be present all the time the other stays in the library: and ‘twas this, and this consideration alone that at first mov’d me to think of building a library in some other place (than in the college) for public use, where all might have free access, seeing they cannot have it in the College; nor are our booksellers’ shops furnished anything tolerably with other books than new trifles and pamphlets, and not well with them also.’
Hence following his appointment to Dublin Marsh embarked on the creating a library which, while a place of scholarship, would also be open to everyone. To ensure its legal status, he wished the new foundation to be incorporated through an Act of Parliament. However, the bill he drew up for this purpose met with severe opposition from some of his fellow clerics, including Jonathan Swift. Because the new library was within the grounds of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Marsh proposed that its keeper also be the cathedral’s Precentor (that is, the clergyman in charge of organising liturgy and worship). Those against this move were concerned that property belonging to the Church of Ireland might be lost to the library, the board of which could come to exercise authority over the Precentor. A second point of complaint arose from Marsh’s intention to appoint as keeper a Huguenot refugee, Elias Bouhéreau (of whom more below) based on the latter’s commitment to donate his own collection of books to the library, a requirement allowing the opposition to claim the Archbishop had engaged in simony through what was effectively the sale of an ecclesiastical office. These matters may seem of small importance to us today, but they caused a great deal of trouble at the time and delayed the official establishment of the library. Ultimately Marsh was forced to abandon the link between Keeper and Precentor (although Elias Bouhéreau did take up his duties) and in 1707, by which time he had transferred to Armagh, he was able to see passed an act ‘for settling and preserving a Publick Library for ever.’

One of the few 18th century buildings in Ireland still used for its original purpose, Marsh’s Library holds a collection of over 25,000 books and 300 manuscripts. There are eighty books printed before 1501, 430 books printed in Italy before 1600, 1,200 books printed in England before 1640 and 5,000 books printed in England before 1700. At the heart of all this material is the library assembled by Edward Stillingfleet, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, London and from 1689 Bishop of Worcester. Following his death in 1699, there was much public interest in what would happen to Stillingfeet’s books, deemed to constitute the best private library in the British Isles. Efforts were made to keep it in England but in 1705 the entire printed collection of almost 10,000 books was purchased by Marsh for just over £2,000 and brought to Dublin where it has remained ever since. It contains works on diverse subjects including theology, history, the classics, law, medicine and travel, whereas Marsh’s own collection reflects his interest in oriental studies including Arabic and Hebrew books as well as his engagement with the Irish language: in 1695 he had bought a number of manuscripts belonging to the distinguished jurist and orientalist, Dudley Loftus (of whom Marsh wrote that he ‘never knew so much Learning in the Keeping of a Fool,’ although this did not stop him acquiring Loftus’ collection).
Then there are the books that originally belonged to the institution’s first librarian, Dr Elias Bouhéreau, a Huguenot doctor from La Rochelle who had left France following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Bouhéreau’s collection contains many works relating to his native country and to the various religious controversies of the 17th century as well as medical texts. Finally a fourth major collection was bequeathed to Marsh’s library in 1745 by John Stearne, former Bishop of Clogher (who left his manuscripts to Trinity College, Dublin where he had earlier provided £1,000 to build a printing house). As former Keeper Muriel McCarthy has noted, ‘It is easy to forget that in the early eighteenth century Marsh’s would have been regarded as a modern library with the latest books and a modern classification system. To study and examine the books in Marsh’s is to explore a world which has been one of the hallmarks of Europe’s great cultural heritage.’

Not only have the contents of Marsh’s library scarcely altered since originally assembled by its founder, but so too has its appearance remained much the same. Built at a cost of £5,000 the core of the building was designed 1701-3 by Sir William Robinson who for the previous three decades had acted as Surveyor General of Ireland and whose other extant works include the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham. In 1710 Thomas Burgh, who had succeeded Robinson as Surveyor General, extended the library by adding another wing and also designed its entrance porch. Thereafter little happened structurally until the mid-19th century when, as part of the restoration work to St Patrick’s Cathedral underwritten by Benjamin Lee Guinness, a new entrance front and stair hall was built, as well as a Gothic gateway. At the same time the easterly churchyard elevation was clad in limestone, but the 18th century brick courtyard on the other side of the library survives, as do the original interiors.
The library proper is primarily composed of two first-floor galleries, the earlier (designed by Robinson) running sixty feet south-north, while that added by Burgh at right-angles to the north corner is linked by a librarian’s room and runs seventy-six feet west-east. At the latter end is a short further extension which originally provided direct access to the former Archbishop of Dublin’s Palace of St Sepulchre. This stretch is distinguished by having three enclosed alcoves known as ‘cages’, their carved timber tympana decorated with gothick tracery and finials: these spaces were intended to ensure the safety of the smaller, more valuable books since users could be locked inside. The main galleries are indebted for their appearance to Oxford’s 17th century Bodleian Library, with which Marsh was familiar from his time at that university, and which he cited in correspondence when discussing his own intentions; he wrote to a friend and fellow cleric Dr Thomas Smith that the Dublin building’s upper part ‘is contrived like the cross part of the Bodleyan Library.’ On either side of both galleries and at right angles to the windows are a succession of dark oak bookcases, the stack end of each treated as a pedimented pier with painted and gilded cartouches bearing classmarks while the top is surmounted by carved cartouches with mitre and stole finials. The uniformity of this design, and the fact that it has not been subject to alteration, helps to give the galleries their special character and to link today’s users to their 18th century precursors.
Marsh’s Library remains dedicated to its original purpose but in addition welcomes visitors and hosts temporary exhibitions (the next of which, Imagining Japan, 1570-1750, opens to the public on April 16th). It is one of our best and least changed bonds with the dynamism of Georgian Dublin, an era more often honoured in the breach than in observance of due respect for its achievements. But by remaining true to the founder’s original wishes Marsh’s Library both honours the past and bears witness to the erroneousness of Swift’s unkind remarks.

With thanks to the staff, Governors and Guardians of Marsh’s Library. For more information, see: http://www.marshlibrary.ie

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