Tag Archives: Georgian Architecture

Knight and Day

At the end of last week Castletown, County Kildare hosted a day-long conference in memory of Desmond FitzGerald, the Knight of Glin who died a year ago. It was an occasion for many of us who knew Desmond to gather together and, between listening to scholarly papers, exchange anecdotes and reminiscences about this most memorable man.
Desmond, the Black Knight, the Knight of the Valley, 29th and last Knight of Glin, was born in 1937, only son of fractious, unhappy parents. As noted by Christopher Gibbs, one of his oldest friends, Desmond grew up ‘a handsome, lonely boy in a rather threadbare castle on the Shannon.’ This is Glin, an 18th century Adam-esque house later tricked out in gothic flummery. The Knight’s ancestors never had much money and in his teens the family place was offered for rental, threatened with dereliction and then saved thanks to the generosity of a wealthy Canadian step-father who paid for the roof and walls to be made secure.
After time spent at the University of British Columbia followed by Harvard, Desmond returned to Ireland, living in the early 1960s in the little house tucked to the rear of Leixlip Castle. His landlords were Desmond and Mariga Guinness, from whom he – an eager student – learnt a great deal about Irish art and architecture. This knowledge provided the foundations for his own extensive research into the same subjects, subsequently published in a series of books written with collaborators such as Anne Crookshank and James Peill. Mariga was one of the great influences on Desmond’s life, as she was for many other young men and women, myself included, who crossed her path.

Here is a photograph of Desmond from those early days at Leixlip, with Mariga to the left splendid in a tartan skirt and 18th century military coat. She always had what used to be called good carriage, as well as a splendid profile. Desmond is on the right of the picture, also in costume and looking not unlike a young Cecil Beaton. Next to him can be seen his then-girlfriend Talitha Pol, one of the great beauties of the period; she went on to marry John Paul Getty.
Desmond meanwhile, had moved to London and taken a job at the Victoria & Albert Museum in what was then called the Department of Woodwork. Here he was able to continue his research into Irish decorative arts while also becoming part of a rather smart set that included not just Christopher Gibbs but also the likes of David Mlinaric, Mark Palmer, Jane and Victoria Ormsby-Gore and Nicholas Gormanston. As Christopher commented, Desmond’s scholarly life tended to be hidden from his London friends who remembered him ‘as the wildest of dancers in a chinoiserie jacket.’

In 1966 Desmond married Loulou de la Falaise, then still in her teens but already displaying the flair that would soon make her Yves St Laurent’s muse. Here is the couple in Desmond’s flat on Pont Street which he decorated (with the help of David Mlinaric) with Irish pictures and furniture discovered in London’s antique shops. The distance between Desmond and his wife in this picture, and their respective expressions, indicate all was not well with the marriage and indeed it lasted barely 18 months but they always remained friends and kept in contact, and Loulou was to die just a month after Desmond.
Fortunately within a few years he had met and married Olda Willes and this union proved much happier, producing three beautiful daughters, Catherine, Nesta and Honor, the Sirens of the Shannon. Speaking at the end of last week’s proceedings, Olda observed that in many ways Desmond had been an 18th century man mysteriously transposed into the 20th, ‘as ready to fight a duel as to negotiate a settlement.’
In the mid-1970s Desmond, throughout his life plagued by extreme mood swings, suffered a complete collapse, left the V&A and settled to Ireland where he was soon appointed representative for Christie’s. It was an ideal job, encouraging him to travel throughout the country looking at houses and their contents, work that enhanced his own research. Soon he began producing the books that have done so much to improve Irish scholarship and encourage further investigation into areas hitherto rather neglected. Today so much work is written and published on Irish architecture and decorative arts, one can easily forget that when Desmond began his enquiries this was unexplored territory.
Desmond’s enthusiasm for these topics never waned. Visiting him in hospital about a month before his death, I mentioned a newly published book of essays on Irish houses. A week later I returned to discover he had since ordered, received and read the book. At supper the evening prior to the Castletown gathering, Penny Guinness recalled also visiting Desmond and hearing him say that throughout his life he had been very lucky. So were those of us fortunate to have known him.

The Fashionable Side

This year Dublin’s foremost Georgian space, Merrion Square, marks the 250th anniversary of its creation. Actually that’s not altogether true: as early as 1752 there are references in the rent rolls of Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion to his landholding in this area being called ‘Merryon Sq.’ However the square only assumed its present form a decade later when Lord Fitzwilliam laid out the large central space. In March 1762 the estate leased five plots on the western end of the development’ north side, hence this year’s anniversary.
Jonathan Barker’s survey drawn in the same year indicates a number of houses had already been built along what would become the square’s west side, with a large space in the middle offering views of Kildare House. This splendid building, today the seat of Dáil Éireann, the Irish parliament, was designed by Richard Castle in 1745 as a town residence for James FitzGerald, 20th Earl of Kildare who in 1766 became first Duke of Leinster (thus the building has thereafter been known as Leinster House). At the time of Kildare House’s construction, fashionable Dublin congregated on the opposite side of the Liffey and Lord Kildare was advised that he had settled in the wrong area of the city. To which he is supposed to have retorted ‘They will follow me wherever I go.’

As elsewhere in Dublin, building around the square was ‘encouraged’ rather than actually undertaken by its owner. In other European cities the design of new squares and terraces was usually prepared by either a single owner or developer. This means spaces such Queen Square in Bath or Nancy’s sublime Place Stanislas present a uniformity of facades. Such an approach never occurred in Dublin, in part because no landowner was ever sufficiently wealthy, or perhaps confident of commercial success, to embark on such an enterprise. A superb scheme of this kind, for example, was proposed towards the end of the 18th century by the Gardiners for Mountjoy Square but never realised.
Instead landlords would sell off individual plots of land on long leases and then require the purchaser to be responsible for the building’s construction subject to certain conditions. Hence even in the 18th century Dublin was rife with speculators and developers many of whom, like their more recent successors, were over-ambitious and ran into financial trouble: the unfinished building site is not a new phenomenon in the city.
What gives Merrion Square and its ilk distinctive appeal is the fact that the original builders each took a different approach to their plots; even the size of sites differed, although the majority were for houses of three bays. Notice the variation in roofline height because although the standard was for four storeys over basement, proportions of each floor varied from one property to the next. Then there is the subtle variation in colour of brick depending on its source, and the way in which some but by no means all houses were fronted in granite on the ground floor. Look at the way in which each house has mellowed in a different way from that of its neighbours. Also, since the square was developed over a period of more than thirty years, changes in taste are evident in the proportions of doors and windows, and the inclusion of decorative ironwork, whether a first-floor balcony or an entrance lantern. While the interior was, and still is, private space, the exterior represented a public arena offering opportunities to display wealth and discernment.

Never having fallen from favour, Merrion Square survived better than most other parts of 18th century Dublin. All four sides are intact, although rather cluttered with street signage and, at the moment, a daunting quantity of For Sale and To Let notices. The largest extant property is no.45 at the centre of the square’s eastern side. More than 18 metres long and of five bays, it was begun in 1785 by Gustavus Hume, a man who somehow combined a career as a medical surgeon with property development: among his other schemes, he was responsible for laying out Ely Place and Hume Street to the south-west of Merrion Square. Because it was one of the later sections of the square to be built, both inside and out no.45 conforms to neo-classical principles and accordingly is more plainly decorated than some other houses in the immediate environs. Around 1829 the building, by then deemed too big for single occupancy, was divided into two properties and so it remained until ten years ago when restored by the Office of Public Works to its original state. Today no.45 is home to that invaluable resource, the Irish Architectural Archive. The IAA’s gallery is hosting an exhibition on the history of Merrion Square until 12th October.

Irish Architectural Archive, 45 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, http://www.iarc.ie