Things Are Looking Up

Nov20

Two of the ceilings in Townley Hall, County Louth, that of the drawing room (above) and the entrance hall (below). Dating from the late 1790s Townley has been discussed here before, not least its rotunda stairhall (see Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté, June 10th) but amply repays further visits. The neo-classical masterpiece of Francis Johnston, the house owes as much to the couple responsible for its commissioning – Blayney Townley and Lady Florence Balfour – as to the architect. As these photographs show, the purity of decoration throughout is flawless.

Colour Burst

Nov13

A blue and white Wedgwood jasper ware disc inserted into a marble chimneypiece on the first floor rear drawing room of 45 Merrion Square, Dublin now the offices of the Irish Architectural Archive. This hard stoneware pottery developed by Josiah Wedgwood in 1775 was soon used not for making cups or vases but to produce such items as plaques and discs which could be used in the decoration of rooms. So it is in two rooms at 45 Merrion Square where the plain white of the chimneypiece is relieved by bursts of vivid colour.

When Nature Imitates Art

Nov11

It is said that above his drawing board, the great French landscape architect André Le Nôtre hung a sign on which was written ‘To improve nature and reveal true beauty, at the lowest possible cost.’ Today we would consider the Le Nôtre style of gardening so to interfere with nature that its true beauty is impossible to discern and at very considerable cost: the jardin à la française, exemplified by those created by Le Nôtre for Louis XIV at Versailles, is a thing of wondrous artifice.
While the taste for such gardens reigned across Europe for at least a century, as always a reaction against them emerged, inspired at least in part by philosophical speculation on the character of man’s interaction with nature. Thus in 1757, Edmund Burke published his treatise on aesthetics, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful which sought to explain our emotional and aesthetic responses to natural phenomenon such as mountain ranges. As proposed by Burke and his followers the sublime induces extreme passion, most notably terror. This differs from the simultaneously powerful but gentler feelings induced by another aesthetic experience which was first analysed in the 18th century and would have a profound effect on taste in gardening: that of the picturesque.
As the word implies, the picturesque is associated with painting (it derives from the Italian term ‘pittoresco’ meaning ‘in the manner of a painter’). It was thus used by a key figure in the evolution of the concept William Gilpin who in his 1768 Essay on Prints defined picturesque as being ‘expressive of that peculiar kind of beauty, which is agreeable in a picture.’ Essentially the picturesque as proposed by Gilpin and others offers an aesthetic experience between the extremes of the sublime (which induces an emotion akin to terror) and the beautiful which relies on symmetry and a calm-inducing order. The inspiration for landscapes that might be classified as picturesque came from artists of the previous century, most notably Claude Lorrain and Gaspard Poussin. In Ireland one of the most perfect expressions of this kind of landscape design can be found at Kilfane, County Kilkenny where theories of the picturesque were put into practice with enchanting results.

The Cantwells were Lords of Kilfane until the 17th century when they were banished to Connaught. Then their lands passed into the hands of Colonel John Bushe who was granted Kilfane in 1670 and whose descendants remained there for the following century. In the late 1700s, a certain John Power came to live in the country at Ballynahinch and soon after married Harriet Bushe whose brother Henry Amias Bushe then lived at Kilfane. Eventually John Power took a lease in perpetuity on the property from his brother-in-law, and carried out many improvements on the estate, as we shall see.
John Power, known as Captain Power after he held that position in the local yeomanry during the 1798 Rebellion (he would be created a baronet in 1836) was the son of a County Tipperary landowner who had served with the British army in India where he had been aide-de-camp to Clive during the Battle of Plassey. It would appear at least one explanation for his move to County Kilkenny was because of his interest in hunting: he constructed kennels at Ballynahinch for his pack of hounds and in 1797 established the Kilkenny Hunt Club. It was said at the time that the land in this part of Ireland was so unenclosed that Captain could follow his hounds all the way to the bridge at Waterford without jumping a single fence. The first of its kind in Ireland, the Kilkenny Hunt Club would meet in the evenings in Kilkenny City at what had hitherto been called Rice’s Hotel (James Rice having been house steward to Captain Power) but soon became known as the Club House, as it is to this day
The Club House was also much frequented by participants and supporters of the amateur theatricals organised by members of local families, not least Captain Power’s brother Richard who was an ardent thespian. So ardent indeed that he was the driving force behind the founding in 1802 of a theatre in Kilkenny called The Athenaeum which thereafter hosted annual seasons of plays until 1819, in all of which Richard Power took a leading role.

It will be apparent from the above that the Powers were an exceptionally enterprising family, and this is further demonstrated by the creation at Kilfane of a romantic private garden embodying the picturesque ideals of the period. As is so often the case in Ireland, we do not know the precise date for the site’s creation or indeed who was responsible for its design (perhaps the Powers themselves, since the main house contained a famed library and they were likely to be familiar with the theories of Gilpin, along with those of other proponents of the picturesque such as Sir Uvedale Price and Richard Payne Knight). In any case, Kilfane possessed certain natural advantages: on the edge of the estate there existed an area of woodland where the land dropped away to reveal a rock face thirty feet high descending to an open vale dramatically strewn with boulders. Imbued with potential this spot was greatly enhanced by the Powers’ intervention, not least a waterfall which was fed by a mile-long canal specially created for the purpose.
At the base of the cliff, the water drops into a pool before winding its way across a wide grassy lawn and from thence flowing along a stream that tumbles hither and thither beneath a dense blanket of trees and that can be crossed by a number of mossy stone bridges. The effect is picturesque in the extreme, and was greatly enhanced within the natural amphitheatre at the base of the waterfall by the construction of a thatched cottage orné. The building was essential for the success of the enterprise, not just because it gave a focus to the scene, and a destination for visitors, but also because advocates of the picturesque argued that such landscapes needed a humanising focus in the same way as did the paintings which had inspired them. There had to be a central point to which the eye was drawn, in this instance a charming cottage which might be ‘discovered’ and explored.

A description of the waterfall and glen at Kilfane in their original state has come down to us in a letter written in 1819 by the botanist and antiquarian Louisa Beaufort to Sophy Edgeworth (whose father Richard Lovell Edgeworth had married Louisa’s sister as his fourth wife) in which she reported, ‘Wednesday Mr. B, Pa Ma and I in the inside jaunting car and Richard on horseback all went to Kilfayne, Mr. Power’s, a very pretty place…All the beginning of the walk very ugly, latter part very pretty by a stream …rushing over large beds of rocks, the beeches high and well planted and the ground blue with harebells the cottage is prettyish, somewhat of a has-been but stands in a tiny lawn near the stream and opposite to a cataract which rushes down the opposite rock…’
So it continued to look for some time thereafter, but later generations of the Power family lost interest in maintaining the site, or perhaps did not have the funds to do so. Gradually the whole place fell into decay, the cottage becoming a ruin, the grassy lawn and surrounding paths overgrown, the woodlands surrendered to laurel and rhododendron (with consequent loss of more delicate ground cover) and the waterfall dried up as the canal was breached and broken. Such might have remained the case to the present but for the discovery and rescue of this delightful spot by its present owners who more than twenty years ago embarked on a complete restoration of the place. Thanks to their admirable diligence the grounds today look much as they did when first created over two centuries ago.
Reverting to Le Nôtre’s maxim – ‘To improve nature and reveal true beauty, at the lowest possible cost’ – one can see how applicable are those words to the glen and waterfall at Kilfane. Here is a landscape every bit as artificial as any designed by the Frenchman. In this instance, however, thanks to theories on the picturesque artifice has been concealed and nature encouraged to imitate art rather than the other way around.

For more information on the Kilfane Glen and Waterfall, see: http://www.kilfane.com

The Gates to Nowhere

Nov6

A gateway arch looking rather desolate on the side of the road at Northbrook, Aughrim, County Galway. This was not its original location, since the arch came from an estate in neighbouring County Roscommon, possibly Mote Park. The house there, belonging to the Crofton family, was demolished in the 1960s, its contents sold two decades earlier. Little now remains except another entrance gate, a much more substantial Doric triumphal arch surmounted by a lion which dates from c.1800 and is sometimes attributed to James Gandon. If the gateway shown here did come from Mote, it presumably marked a secondary entrance into the demesne.

An Arthurian Legend

Nov4

In a diary entry dated 27th February 1853 Elizabeth Smith of Baltiboys, County Wicklow (known to her many posthumous admirers as the Highland Lady since she was of Scottish origin) wrote, ‘Mr Kavanagh has been burned to death, his fine old name and large fortune fall to that poor object, his brother, a poor cripple without either arms or legs only stumps. In this miserable condition he hunts! tied to his basket saddle, holding the reins between his mouth and shoulder, and he rides hard! He draws, writes, is really accomplished and intelligent. An old prophesy, it seems, foretold that the house of Borris would end with a cripple. Strange if true.’
An entire post could be written about Arthur MacMurrough Kavanagh, and indeed he has been the subject of more than one book. As Mrs Smith notes he was born without full limbs, both his arms and legs stopping well short of the flexible joint. Yet neither he nor his family allowed this impediment to hinder him: in his teens he set off with his eldest brother – who suffered from tuberculosis – on a journey through Russia, Persia and India (where he got a job as a dispatch rider) and although the older sibling died, Arthur survived and indeed returned to Ireland when his middle brother was killed in a fire in 1853 and he thus unexpectedly became heir to the family estate of Borris, County Carlow.
Once there, he led a full life: he hunted, he fished, he shot, he sailed, he sat as an M.P. in Westminster for many years. He also did much to improve his lands and the condition of his tenants, not least by bringing a railway line to Borris at his own expense. An amusing story indicates how little attention he paid to his physical handicap. Having caught a train to Abbeyleix to visit Lady de Vesci, he commented to his hostess, ‘It is quite extraordinary. I have not been here for over ten years and yet the station-master still remembered me.’

The MacMurrough Kavanaghs are an extremely old Irish family: in 1814 its then-head commissioned an illustrated book called ‘The pedigree of the ancient illustrious noble and princely house of Kavanagh in ancient times monarchs of Ireland and at the period of the invasion of Ireland by Henry the second, Kings of Leinster.’ This volume, which cost the considerable sum of £615 and two shillings, and took four years to complete, traced the family’s origins back to 1670 BC.
It is notable that while the book’s title referenced the arrival of the Normans in Ireland, it did not mention the part played by an ancestor in bringing about this occurrence. In the mid-12th century Diarmait mac Murchadha was King of Leinster until dispossessed of his title by the High King of Ireland for having abducted Derbforgaill, wife of Tiernan O’Rourke, King of Breifne. In order to regain his kingdom, mac Murchadha pledged an oath of allegiance to Henry II and received the support of Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, better known as Strongbow who married mac Murchadha’s daughter Aoife. Thus the MacMurrough Kavanaghs’ forebear was responsible for first encouraging the original Norman invasion of Ireland. Subsequent members of the family were not always so willing to bow to overseas authority: in the late 14th/early 15th century Art Mac Murchadha Caomhánach proved a formidable King of Leinster who regained full authority and control of territory. Yet in November 1550 Cahir mac Art Kavanagh appeared before the Lord Lieutenant Sir Anthony St Leger in Dublin where he ‘submitted himself, and publicly renounced the title and dignity of Mac Morough, as borne by his ancestors.’

Borris has long been part of the MacMurrough Kavanaghs’ lands. It is believed that the core of the present house was built by Brian Kavanagh enclosing at least parts of a 15th century castle on the site. A date stone over the front entrance carries the inscription AD MDCCXXXI and thereby proposes that part of the building was completed by that year. It is likewise assumed that this house was classical in style, a reflection of what was happening elsewhere in the country as a result of changing architectural tastes and a more settled environment.
During this period the Kavanaghs made a series of advantageous marriages and by the end of the 18th century they owned some 30,000 acres spread over three counties: three successive generations married daughters of the well-connected and wealthy Butler family. In 1778 Thomas Kavanagh assumed responsibility at Borris for his sister-in-law Lady Eleanor Butler after she attempted to run away with Sarah Ponsonby. His efforts, however, proved futile and eventually the two women were allowed to move to Wales where as the Ladies of Llangollen they lived for over fifty years (for some more on this, see Of Wondrous Beauty Did the Vision Seem, May 13th).
During the uprising of 1798 Borris was subject to assault by the rebels and buildings were burnt but not, it would seem, the main house. Walter MacMurrough Kavanagh wrote to his brother-in-law that although a turf and coal house were set on fire and efforts made to bring ‘fire up to the front door under cover of a car on which were raised feather beds and mattresses’ yet these were unsuccessful.
It has sometimes been asserted that the reason why Borris was comprehensively remodelled in the second decade of the 19th century to the designs of those indefatigable architects the Morrisons père et fils, was because of damage inflicted in 1798 but an admirable new book* on the design and furnishing of the house pours doubt on this notion. Instead it would appear that Walter MacMurrough Kavanagh, who was also responsible for commissioning the illustrated volume tracing his pedigree, wished to give more tangible evidence of the family’s long history than did a classical house.

Superbly located on a raised site with views across to the Blackstairs Mountains Borris as we now see it displays signs of stylistic schizophrenia, not least in differences between the house’s exterior and interior. The former is cloaked in Tudoresque mannerisms with symmetrical battlements and finials, a central entrance portico with pointed arches and four corner turrets which until the middle of the last century were topped with octagonal lanterns. Each side of the window mouldings is finished with the head of a king or queen indicating the ancestry of the MacMurrough Kavanagh family. John Preston Neale included an engraving of the newly-completed Borris in his 1822 work Views of the seats of noblemen and gentlemen in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland and then described the house as being ‘of the period of Henry the Eighth, of which period, though so many beautiful examples are extant in England, yet in this country, Borris may be considered as unique.’
When Samuel Lewis wrote of the house in 1837 he observed that Borris ‘exhibits the appearance of an English baronial residence of the 16th century, while every advantage of convenience and splendour is secured within.’ Those advantages apparently included the ornate classicism which reigns internally. This is especially so in the entrance hall which although a square was given a circular ceiling by the Morrisons who treated it as a rotunda with extremely ornate plasterwork incorporating garlands, masks, shells and wonderfully three-dimensional eagles, the whole coming to rest on a series of scagliola columns around the walls. Likewise one end of the dining room has a recess containing service doors this space created by another pair of Ionic scagliola columns. The treatment of the stairs and landing reverts somewhat to an earlier era, not least thanks to a large arched window, the upper portion of which is filled with stained glass featuring the family coat of arms.

Borris today is not as was designed by the Morrisons in the early 19th century. In the 1950s the service wing which connected the main building with the chapel was demolished, leaving the latter looking somewhat forlorn to one side. And the lanterns that topped the corner turrets were also removed. The greater part of the family land had gone, and with it much of the wealth. For a while the very future of the house looked perilous: for one of the very first Irish Georgian Society bulletins published in 1958 Lady Rosemary FitzGerald who had grown up in the place (her mother was a Kavanagh) wrote a piece called ‘A Valediction to Borris House’ in which she predicted ‘the house will soon be empty and roofless. The daws which possess the chimneys of every traditional Irish house will have the walls as well. This is inevitable. The house has been so rebuilt, altered, enlarged and generally muddled since the original keep was built in the ninth century that it is now impossible to maintain. It still needs the battalions of servants and unlimited cheap fuel that poured into the house until the First World War left so many big houses in reduced circumstances.’ Thankfully she was proven wrong and Borris still stands, a testimony to the staunchness of the MacMurrough Kavanaghs, the latest generation of which has this year assumed responsibility for the place. Borris may not be as big as was once the case, nor able to rely on the income of a large estate but there are now other ways of making a house pay for itself and all of these are being put to use.
And Mrs Smith’s citing of an old prophesy ‘that the house of Borris would end with a cripple’ also proved incorrect because Arthur MacMurrough Kavanagh married and had seven children. Below is a portrait of the redoubtable character that still hangs in Borris, like the house itself a testimony to the triumph of will over circumstances.
*Borris House, County Carlow and Elite Regency Patronage by Edmund Joyce (Four Courts Press)

For more information on Borris, see http://www.borrishouse.com

Music has Charms

Oct30

One of the glories of Beaulieu, County Louth is its early 18th century double-height entrance hall. This features elaborate baroque carving in each of the spandrels above the hall’s doorcases. In their guide to the Buildings of North Leinster Casey and Rowan write that the carving represents ‘arms and weaponry’ but as the photographs above and below show, this is not always the case: these two arches are filled with musical instruments and with open sheets of instrumentation. In the peace that followed the end of the Williamite Wars, these carvings declare the moment had come to acknowledge, as William Congreve wrote around this time, that ‘music has charms to sooth a savage breast.’

It’s Downhill All the Way

Oct28

It was the intrepid Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who first proposed that ‘the world consists of men, women, and Herveys.’ So it has remained ever since, although the inspiration for Lady Mary’s remark was, of course, that most mercurial creature of early 18th century England and confidante of George II’s spouse Caroline, John, Lord Hervey. The queen found him ‘particularly agreeable, as he helped to enliven the uniformity of a Court with sprightly repartees and lively sallies of wit.’ Speaking of which, if Hervey’s memoirs (which were only first published over a century after his death) are not quite up to the mark of those by his French near-contemporary the Duc de Saint-Simon, nevertheless they offer an insight into the intrigues of political and social life at the time, and also explain why he inspired as much loathing as love.
Among those who felt the former emotion was Alexander Pope who in his satiric poem of 1735 The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot mockingly called the sexually-ambiguous Hervey ‘Sporus’ (the name of the Emperor Nero’s catamite) and wrote of him, ‘His wit all see-saw between that and this/Now high, now low, now master, up now miss/And he himself one vile Antithesis/Amphibious thing! that acting either part/The trifling head, or the corrupted heart/Fop at the toilet, flatt’rer at the board/Now trips a Lady, and now struts a Lord.’
Despite his innumerable affairs with women and men alike, and his general weak health (for which his father blamed ‘that detestable and poisonous plant, tea, which had once brought him to death’s door, and if persisted in would carry him through it’) Hervey and his loyal wife nevertheless managed to have eight children, among them Frederick Augustus Hervey, Bishop of Derry and Earl of Bristol.

Frederick Augustus Hervey was born in August 1730 and as the third of Lord Hervey’s four sons was not expected to inherit either the family title or lands. He therefore needed to find an alternative career (two of his brothers joined the armed forces, one becoming an admiral, the other a general) and so became a Church of England clergyman. Thanks to the intervention of his eldest brother George who as second Earl of Bristol in 1766 was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (although he never visited the country), Frederick Augustus – already a royal chaplain – was appointed Bishop of Cloyne. A year later, aged only 38 he became Bishop of Derry and thus responsible for one of the richest Irish sees. Judicious management of diocesan funds allowed him not only to increase his wealth but also to ensure that some portion of the Bishop of Derry’s estates in would pass to his own heir.
It is difficult to discern the depth of Bishop Hervey’s personal religious beliefs, but there can be no doubt about his tolerance: he was a proponent of religious equality and dedicated himself to improving the lot of Roman Catholics and Presbyterians within his diocese, and further afield. He campaigned to place on the statute book an oath of allegiance which would permit loyal and well-disposed Irish Catholics to disavow the more extreme papal doctrines – such as the teaching that heads of government excommunicated by the Pope could be deposed or murdered by their subjects. In 1774 an oath along the lines he had been suggesting since 1767 was incorporated in an act of the Irish parliament (it was then spurned by the Papacy). But he was also somewhat eccentric – he was, after all, a Hervey – and on one occasion he organised a curates’ race along the sands of Downhill, the winners being awarded benefices then vacant in the Derry diocese.

Lord Charlemont declared of Bishop Hervey, ‘his genius is like a shallow stream, rapid, noisy, diverting, but useless. Such is his head, and I fear it is much superior to his heart. He is proud and to the last degree vindictive; vain to excess, inconsistant in his friendships… fond of intrigue in gallantry as well as politics, and sticking at nothing to gain his ends in either… A bad father, both from caprice and avarice; a worse husband to the best and most amiable of wives; a determined deist, though a bishop, and at times so indecently inpious in his conversations as to shock the most reprobate… His ambition and his lust can alone get the better of his avarice.’
Meanwhile Sir Jonah Barrington in his own highly entertaining memoirs described the bishop as ‘a man of elegant erudition, extensive learning, and an enlightened and classical, but eccentric mind:—bold, ardent, and versatile; he dazzled the vulgar by ostentatious state, and worked upon the gentry by ease and condescension:—he affected public candour and practised private cabal.’
One of the ways Hervey practised private cabal was by becoming over-involved with Irish politics. His sympathy for the plight of Catholics led him to take an interest in parliamentary reform and even, it has been suggested, in the notion of independence for Ireland as would be attempted before the end of the century. However, by that time, following the death of two brothers he had inherited the Earldom of Bristol and with it considerable estates in England that increased his already great wealth.

Even before becoming Earl of Bristol in 1779, the Bishop had been a great traveller on mainland Europe: it is often said the reason so many Hotels Bristol exist is that they were named after him. In particular he loved Italy, a country in which he spent more and more time as he grew older (he would die in Albano in July 1803). Here he collected the many artworks intended to fill great houses built for him in these islands. So all consuming was his passion for translating architectural ideas into reality that he became known as the ‘Edifying Bishop.’ He was responsible for two new residences in Ireland, the first and more conservative being Downhill, County Derry. It dates from the mid-1770s when work started under the supervision of a Cork-born stone-mason Michael Shanahan, perhaps to a design by James Wyatt. Located close to a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, the house is long and narrow and of two storeys over basement, its granite ashlar exterior relieved by a series of bows and giant fluted Corinthian pilasters. Long wings on either side (originally concluding in domes) flank a central courtyard and this in turn leads to a further extensive range at the rear, allowing all services to be kept on the one site. Downhill is highly exposed to harsh winds whipping off the nearby seas and was always cold but at the time of its construction Hervey wrote enthusiastically to one of his daughters that the place ‘is becoming elegance itself, with 300,000 trees…and almost as many pictures and statues within doors.’ Indeed the interiors were said to be magnificent, the principal stone staircase having a balustrade of gilded ironwork beneath a frescoed dome while the main rooms were a library and double-height picture gallery, at one end of which were pairs of Corinthian columns supporting an entablature above which were the arms of the bishopric and earldom.

As can be seen from these photographs, little remains today of the Earl-Bishop’s splendid residence at Downhill. On his death he left the Irish estates to the Rev. Henry Hervey Bruce, brother of a deceased cousin – Mrs Frideswide Mussenden – to whose memory the Earl-Bishop had built an exquisite domed rotunda in the grounds of Downhill, known as the Mussenden Temple. The Rev. Bruce, who became a baronet soon after coming into his considerable inheritance, had looked after both his benefactor’s property and diocese during the Earl-Bishop’s long absences from Ireland. Generations of the Bruce family remained in possession of Downhill for the next 150 years but the house was seriously damaged by fire in 1851 when many of the most valuable contents, including its library and collection of statuary, were lost.
In the early 1870s a programme of restoration was carried out to the designs of John Lanyon, which involved a new entrance being created on the west side of the house and the installation of plate-glass windows as well as a new heating system since Downhill had hitherto been notoriously cold. But even these improvements could not save the house after a sequence of deaths led to heavy duties and sales. During the Second World War Downhill was used as a billet by the RAF and a few years into peacetime it was unroofed and permitted to fall into ruin. Now under the care of the National Trust, Downhill stands as a handsome if gaunt shell through which those harsh Atlantic winds continue to whistle.

I shall at some future date be writing about both the Mussenden Temple and the Earl-Bishop’s other Irish house, Ballyscullion.

The Lonely Sentinel

Oct26

A solitary obelisk standing on raised ground in what was once the parkland of Dangan Castle, County Meath. Dangan was the seat of Richard Wesley, created first Baron Mornington in 1746. He spent a great deal of money improving his house and grounds, and Bishop Pococke in his 1752 Tour in Ireland described the former as being ‘situated on a most beautiful flat, with an Amphitheater of hills rising round it, one over another, in a most beautiful manner; at the lower end is a very large piece of water, at one corner of which is an Island, it is a regular fortification, there is a ship a sloop and boats on the water, and a yard for building; the hill beyond it, is improved into a beautiful wilderness: on a round hill near the house is a Temple, and the hills round are adorned with obelisks: Pillars and some buildings, altogether the most beautiful thing I ever saw.’ Mrs Delany also visited Dangan several times, being godmother to Mornington’s heir Garret, future first Earl of Mornington and, in turn, the father of Arthur Wellesley, future Duke of Wellington who likewise spent much of his childhood here. Yet before the end of the century the family had sold the estate, the house was accidentally destroyed by fire and in 1841 J. Stirling Coyne could write ‘The noble woods, too, which adorned the demesne, have shared in the general destruction; and all the giants of the sylvan scene have been prostrated by the ruthless axe.’ Today there remain few signs of Dangan’s former splendour other than this obelisk rising in the midst of a field, and another not far away, the latter restored of late with help from the Meath branch of An Taisce.

Building Up and Tearing Down

Oct21

Ten days ago the state’s Electricity Supply Board announced plans to pull down its existing premises on Dublin’s Lower Fitzwilliam Street and build anew on the site. Since then there has been much discussion about what the replacement should look like. In order to assist in that dialogue, here follows a synopsis of how the present office block came into being.
In 1952 the late Maurice Craig wrote with rapture of this street and those on either end, describing how down its length, ‘the light ripples in gay vertical streaks, varied within modest limits, and disappearing, as cheerful as ever, into the anonymous distance.’ So it might have remained to the present but for the ESB which in 1927 had arrived in the area to occupy just the drawing room of a single building (No. 28 Lr Fitzwilliam Street). However, as the company grew and its duties and staff swelled, additional buildings were acquired along the same block until almost its entirety had come into the organisation’s possession. It was in December 1961 that the ESB first announced the intention to demolish sixteen houses on the street, Nos.13-28, and to replace the terrace with a purpose-built office block designed by the winner of a proposed architectural competition. Although this would mean the destruction of Europe’s longest unbroken line of Georgian houses (the ‘Georgian Mile’ actually somewhat less but running unbroken from the northern end of Merrion Square to the top of Fitzwilliam Place) various arguments were presented as justification for the demolition. These ranged from declaring the buildings ‘structurally unsound’ to claims that dry rot had been discovered in their roof timbers. Yet, as the Irish Georgian Society’s Bulletin noted at the time, if structural problems did exist then ‘the ESB, having used these buildings for 20 years cannot entirely disclaim responsibility for this.’ More significantly, in an interview carried by the IGS’s Bulletin in 1962 the ESB’s chairman Thomas Murray admitted his organisation had in fact envisaged rebuilding the terrace more than twenty years earlier: ‘Rules for an architectural competition to provide a replacement were drawn up in 1938, but the competition was abandoned because of the war.’

The ESB’s plans attracted widespread opposition, both at home and abroad, with The Manchester Guardian‘s correspondent asking ‘Is there a public opinion in Ireland sufficiently concerned to put a stop to this vandalism; and if not, why not?’ In an editorial on the same subject The Irish Times invited readers to ‘stand outside Holles Street hospital and look towards the Dublin Mountains. What would Canaletto have made of the view?’ A public meeting called at Dublin’s Mansion House attracted some 900 people, with 300 more having to be turned away at the door and therefore being denied the opportunity to hear the ESB denounced by the likes of actor Mícheál MacLiammóir and artist Sean Keating, then President of the Royal Hibernian Academy who warned that if Fitzwilliam Street’s destruction went ahead, ‘the next move will be to feed the books in the Library of Trinity College to the boilers of the Pigeon House.’ (Similarly in a report written by Dublin City Architect Daithi Hanly the question was posed ‘How important is the Book of Kells? At what price and for what convenience would we divide it and allow 16 pages of it to be destroyed?’). The audience at the Mansion House meeting also heard read the contents of a telegram of objection to the ESB’s scheme sent by the ground landlord of Fitzwilliam Street, the Earl of Pembroke whose forbears were responsible for the original development of the area. In an attempt to preserve the Fitzwilliam Street buildings, he now offered the ESB an alternative site nearby on James Street East. This proposal was not only declined but a compulsory purchase order was served on the Fitzwilliam Street houses, for which Lord Pembroke was paid a derisory £1,000; he immediately donated half the sum to the Irish Georgian Society to help its campaign.

On the other hand there were voices heard in favour of the terrace’s destruction. For example, two groups of architectural students attended the Mansion House meeting to demonstrate their support of the ESB’s intentions and in February 1962 the council of the Royal Institute of Architects in Ireland declared itself ‘satisfied that a new building need not destroy the beauty of the existing environment’ – despite the fact that the design of the new building had yet to be seen. (One wonders if the RIAI would still stand over that declaration). It was only in November 1962 that the winner of the ESB’s architectural competition was announced: Stephenson Gibney and Associates in which Sam Stephenson – who would write to The Irish Times the following summer denouncing Georgian buildings’ general shoddiness of construction – was a partner. The distinguished architectural historian Sir John Summerson was now hired by the ESB to champion the company’s cause. Having already pronounced that the only reasonable course was ‘to build to an entirely new design,’ in an interview carried by the Irish Georgian Society’s spring 1962 Bulletin (which was entirely devoted to the subject of the Fitzwilliam Street houses) in his report for the ESB he went further, calling the existing houses ‘a sloppy, uneven series’ and declaring ‘It is nearly always wrong to preserve rubbish, and by Georgian standards these houses are rubbish.’ In doing so, of course, he was viewing the houses individually and not as part of a greater – and more architecturally important – whole. The IGS retaliated by inviting an expert of its own, another architectural knight, Sir Albert Richardson. His retort to Summerson’s dismissal of Fitzwilliam Street was to argue that ‘no eighteenth century houses were substantially built – does that lessen their merit?’

The battle went on for more than two years. Both the IGS and the Old Dublin Society organised meetings and petitions against the ESB’s plans but no matter how much support they mustered or how vocal their objections it made no difference, not least because the Government of the day had no objections to the buildings’ demolition but instead gave support to the proposal. In late September 1964 on the very day before a new Planning Act – which could have provided salvation for the old houses – came into effect, then-Minister for Local Government Neil Blaney signed an order granting full planning permission for the new office development on Lower Fitzwilliam Street. The timing was surely no accident, and sealed the buildings’ fate. The following summer the sixteen houses were knocked down and work began on their replacement which ever since has continued to disrupt the unity of the area’s layout.
Thus we come to the present situation where the block commissioned by the ESB half a century ago has now been deemed unfit for purpose and only good for demolition. There was no need for the ESB to remain in this location in the 1960s and there is no need for it to do so today. On the contrary this is an ideal opportunity for the company to move out, allowing proper redevelopment of the terrace as a series of residential units. Instead, it has continued to acquire property in the area and commissioned a replacement of the Lr Fitzwilliam Street block from Grafton Architects and O’Mahony Pike. In no circumstances can the current building be declared an object of beauty but nor is its proposed proposed successor. The design is, quite frankly, a piece of poor pastiche: it acknowledges the authority of the original streetscape but then insists on fiddling with details of the buildings in a facile manner by playing around with window and door heights. The result suggests the architects, while accepting the power of the past, are nevertheless desperate that their interpretation, no matter how weak, receive some notice.
At the time of the old buildings’ demolition, Build magazine predicted, ‘If the ESB’s victory fires the starting gun for a wholesale onslaught on the remaining splendours of the eighteenth century, then it will be a victory most Pyrrhic indeed for the city of Dublin.’ And so it came to pass: where the ESB led, dozens of other state and private organisations followed and terrible destruction was wrought across the capital. It is surely telling that today Dublin City Council wants the lost facades to be reinstated, a huge change in attitudes over the past half-century. But one thing remains the same: the inability of corporations and individuals in Ireland ever to admit a mistake has been made. The ESB wouldn’t accept it was wrong then, and it won’t accept it is wrong now. Instead the company has declared its hand and shown the course intended to take: no matter how fierce the opposition, be prepared for the ESB to resist any change to announced plans.

Today’s photographs show Lr Fitzwilliam Street as it was in the early 1960s and as it looks today. Immediately above is a picture of the proposed Grafton Architects and O’Mahony Pike replacement. A facebook page has been established to campaign for the restoration of the original streetscape, see: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Restore-Fitzwilliam-Street-Dublins-Georgian-Mile/303073159831331

A Plucky Survivor

Oct16

The entrance to the last remaining 18th century house on O’Connell Street, Dublin. Set in the red brick façade, No. 42’s limestone door case has a handsome carved tablet centred on a lion mask not unlike those one finds on Irish mahogany tables of the period; the lintel above has been damaged for as long as I can remember. On a site leased in 1752 to Robert Robinson, State Physician and Professor of Anatomy at Trinity College, the building appeared four years later on Roque’s map of the city. The first floor contains a fine room to the front with very pretty rococo decoration on its ceiling.
At the time of the house’s construction, O’Connell Street (then called Sackville Street) was the city’s finest residential thoroughfare and not the grubby strip of fast-food outlets and slot-machine arcades the local authority has of late encouraged it to become. Yet one wonders whether this building can survive when it has suffered such sore neglect for years. The site to the immediate north, for example, formerly occupied by the decidedly mediocre Royal Dublin Hotel is now an vacant plot with obvious consequences for this structure. Somehow it still stands but for how much longer…

The Irish Aesthete

This is not an Oxymoron

Tag Archives: Georgian Architecture