Tag Archives: Historic townhouse

A Ducal Birthplace


There has sometimes been confusion over the likely birthplace in Dublin of the Hon Arthur Wellesley, future Duke of Wellington, since the location was given as Antrim House. The property known by this name stood at the junction of north Merrion Square and Lower Mount Street, a vast residence erected for the Earl of Antrim, often considered the most impressive such property in the area after Leinster House: although vacated after just a couple of decades by the Antrims and later turned into an hotel, it survived until 1938 when demolished to make way for an expansion of the National Maternity Hospital. More importantly, the house was only built in 1775, six years after Wellesley’s birth. The confusion arises because the aforementioned earl had previously been responsible for the construction of a previous house not far away on Merrion Street, and this building had been leased by the Earl of Mornington, Arthur Wellesley’s father, in 1765, meaning it might still be thought of in some quarters as Antrim House.





Garret Wellesley – created first Earl of Mornington in 1760 – was born in 1735 in his family seat in County Meath, the now-ruinous Dangan, which has featured here before (see Once One of the Grandest Places in Meath « The Irish Aesthete). From an early age, he demonstrated both interest and aptitude in music, with a particular facility for the violin and for composition: when he was aged 13, his godmother, Mary Delany, wrote that he was ‘a most extraordinary boy. . . [with] more knowledge than I ever met with in one so young.’ Seemingly when he asked composers Francesco Geminiani and Thomas Roseingrave for lessons, they both said he already knew everything they could teach him. So passionate was he about music that on the day of his wedding in February 1759 he also conducted a charity performance of Handel’s oratorio Acis and Galatea for Mercer’s Hospital. After receiving an MA in 1757, along with two other amateur composers, Kane O’Hara and Francis Hutcheson, Wellesley founded an Academy of Music in Dublin. Combining concerts with charitable fundraising, this was the first musical institution in Britain and Ireland to admit women members, its patrons including the Countesses of Tyrone, Charleville and Mornington. Lady Freke, Miss Cavendish and Miss Nichols were listed as harpsichord players, and there were five aristocratic female vocal performers. In 1764 Trinity College Dublin conferred Lord Mornington with a Doctor of Music before being appointed Professor of Music there later that year. He held this post for the next decade and when he resigned, the professorship lapsed and was only revived in the following century. Lord Mornington’s compositions are almost all vocal, including a five-act opera, Caractacus, which was performed at The Theatre Royal, Smock Alley in Dublin in 1764. Seemingly only one completely instrumental work by him survives, a march he wrote for the installation of the Duke of Bedford as Chancellor of Dublin University in 1768. This then was the man who was responsible for Mornington House.




Now part of the Merrion Hotel, Mornington House was not the earl’s first Dublin residence: he had previously occupied a property on Grafton Street. But with the move east following the completion of Leinster House in … he decided to find a new home for himself and his family. Initially, he intended to acquire a plot 100 feet wide on Merrion Square itself, the proposed house being flanked by a carriage arch on either side. However, Lord FitzWilliam, who owned the land here, turned down this scheme, hence Mornington opted to move around the corner and take the lease on Lord Antrim’s recently completed Merrion Street house. As seen today, the building is of five bays and three storeys over basement, faced in brick like its neighbours and with a pedimented stone doorcase flanked by Doric columns; it is thought to have been designed by architect Christopher Myers (he had previously been the architect of Lord Mornington’s Grafton Street house). Again, as is so often the case with Dublin townhouses, the plain exterior conceals a rich interior decorative scheme, although the entrance hall is largely unornamented. On the other hand, two reception rooms to the right of this have elaborate plasterwork ceilings are heavily ornamented with scallop shells, floral festoons and acanthus scrolls, as well as flower baskets and birds. While much in the style of Robert West, Professor Christine Casey attributes all this to the Dublin stuccodore James Byrne, who was similarly responsible around the same period for the decoration of 12 Merrion Square, where his client was William Brownlow, MP for Lurgan, Co. Armagh, who was a friend of Mornington and, like him, a keen amateur musician (he was reputed to have played the harpsichord at the first performance of Handel’s Messiah in Fishamble Street, Dublin in 1742). In May 1766 Brownlow paid a gratuity of £7-13s-6d to Byrne as a ‘present for doing his work well’. Back on Merrion Street, the most interesting space is the stair hall, lit by a large round headed window on the return. In contrast to the somewhat mean joinery of the stairs and dado rail, the plasterwork is most engaging, the wall panels containing garlands and festoons of fruit and flowers, while above them is an exceptionally deep coved cornice with a double row of ovals composed of scrolling acanthus leaves with flowers at their intersections. This was the house in which the future Duke of Wellington spent at least part of his childhood.


The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by

A Good Fry


In his Dictionary of British 18th Century Painters, Ellis Waterhouse describes Thomas Frye (1710-62) as ‘one of the most original and least standardised portrait painters of his generation.’ Frye was born in Edenderry, County Offaly, a younger son of one John Fry whose father, born in Holland of English parents, appears to have settled in Ireland in the 17th century. Little is known of Frye’s training, although in their book on Ireland’s Painters, Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin note that his earliest signed work, dated 1732, ‘seems to have silvery echoes of James Latham’ so perhaps he spent time in the latter’s studio. Around this time, or even earlier, Frye left Ireland and by 1736 had settled in London where he was sufficiently well-known to be commissioned to paint the portrait of Frederick, Prince of Wales for the Company of Saddlers. While Frye specialised in portraiture, from the mid-1740s onwards, he became involved in the manufacture of fine porcelain and from around 1747 onwards he managed a factory producing this ware which he had co-founded in Bow on the outskirts of London. Due to ill-health, he had to retire from the business in 1759 but then concentrated on creating mezzotints, in which medium he again displayed both imagination and  innovation. Today Frye is best-remembered for two series of mezzotints issued in the years immediately prior to his death; these show a fondness for dramatic chiaroscuro and what has been called a ‘Gothic intensity.’ As is widely known, these pictures would have a considerable influence on Joseph Wright of Derby and other later artists. Published in 1760 and 1761, the two series are all of heads, almost life-size, and although the sitters were unnamed, they are believed to have been taken from life: Strickland, in his Dictionary of Irish Artists (1913) reports that Frye had difficulty persuading ladies to sit for these pictures, as they were uncertain of the company in which their portraits would appear.  Strickland also recorded that having been very corpulent and prone to gout, Frye adopted a spare diet, in consequence of which he ‘fell into consumption’ and died in April 1762. 





For a long time, two of Thomas Frye’s portraits hung in a house called Frybrook, in Boyle, County Roscommon. This property dates from some time after 1742 when the Edenderry merchant Henry Fry (older brother of the aforementioned Thomas Frye) was invited to move to Boyle by James King, fourth Baron Kingston whose family owned the town and, when there, lived in King House. As with many other large landowners of the time, King was keen to improve the economic circumstances of his estate, and thereby increase his own income, so Fry was expected not just to settle in Boyle but also to establish a weaving business there. The Frys appear to have prospered; in  1835, Henry Fry of Frybrook and his relative, also called Henry Fry, of another house in the vicinity, Fairyhill, were founding members of the Boyle branch of the Agricultural and Commercial Bank (although this venture failed nationally after only a couple of years). Successive generations of Frys continued to live in the family home until the 1980s when, for the first time, it was offered for sale. Thereafter the house somehow survived but slowly fell into decline and appeared at risk of being lost forever until purchased by the present owners five years ago. 





Frybrook is located in the centre of Boyle, on land immediately north of the river (also called Boyle) with its gate lodge – now a cafe – standing immediately beside the town’s main bridge. Found at the end of a short drive, the house is of five bays and three storeys, the absence of a basement explained by the proximity of the river, with its threat of flooding. Frybrook is rather more grand than the usual urban residence, its facade suggesting a country house, with a pedimented limestone doorcase with sidelights below a Venetian window above which is an oculus window. Inside, the ground floor has an entrance hall with main staircase to the rear, and reception rooms to the right and left; behind these, and down a few steps are the former servants’ quarters. The stairs climb to the first floor where additional large reception rooms, with fine cornices and handsome architraves above the windows, can be found; originally the main bedrooms were on the floor above. On the way up to this level, unusually the return is semi-elliptical with a door in its centre giving access to the service areas to the rear of the house. As mentioned, Frybrook was at risk of being lost before being bought by the present owners five years ago. Since acquiring the building, they have undertaken extensive restoration and plan to open Frybrook as a guest house in 2024. 

An Octagonal Square


In the centre of Slane, County Meath stands the Square, which is actually an octagon and was laid out by the Conyngham family in the mid-18th century. Four of the sides are occupied by almost identical houses dating from c.1760, all  being of three bays and three storeys over basement and fronted in the same limestone, with brick chimneystacks at either gable and hipped roof. Only the doorcases display modest differences in design, that above (on the north-east corner) featuring engaged columns while that below (south-east) corner has pilasters. The latter house is currently for sale.

Two in One II


Inside its own courtyard and therefore well set back from Main Street in Celbridge, County Kildare, this is Kildrought House. Dating from c.1720, it was built by Robert Baillie, a tapestry maker who also acted as land agent for William Conolly of nearby Castletown, the design attributed to Thomas Burgh. The house has had a complex history, serving not just as a private residence (which is now the case) but also from 1782 as an academy and then in 1830 as a cholera hospital. The building was restored thirty years ago by the present owner and offers an excellent example of how to preserve the best features of our towns, an example too rarely followed.

Two in One I


Caught in a (very) momentary lull in traffic, this is Jasmine Lodge, located at the northern end of Main Street in Celbridge, County Kildare. The house is thought to date from c.1750 when built by Charles Davis, then acting as land agent for the Conolly family of nearby Castletown. Its most distinctive feature is the floating pediment at the top of the building, inset with a small Diocletian window. The present doorcase with its wide fanlight and sidelights was, it seems, installed around 1800 while the decorative iron archway was reportedly made using material salvaged from Dublin’s General Post Office after the 1916 Rising.

A Study in Contrasts


The doorcase of a house standing on the north side of The Square in Durrow, County Laois. It is one of a number of properties developed here in the late 18th century by the Flower family, Viscounts Ashbrook, the entrance to whose estate lies to the immediate west of the terrace, adjacent to the Church of Ireland church. This house, of five bays and three storeys, has the finest doorcase, with carved limestone pilasters and entablature below the fanlight. Another in the same group can be seen below with its contrasting Gibbsian doorcase approached via charming wrought iron railings.

Neighbours II




Coote Terrace is a row of three late Georgian three-bay, two-storey over basement villas in Mountrath, County Laois, the name derived from the Coote family who lived nearby in Ballyfin. They are in diverse condition, this one being well-maintained and with a handsome front garden. Its neighbour, on the other hand, looks in need of serious attention if the house is to survive.



Mellowed by Time

IMG_9631

An arched niche on one of the quadrants of Powerscourt House, Dublin. Dating from 1771-74 and designed by stone-cutter Robert Mack, the building’s front is entirely faced in granite from the 3rd Viscount Powerscourt’s Wicklow estate. Since 1981 Powerscourt House has been a shopping centre and while the interior is currently a mess of signage, at least the exterior remains relatively clear, allowing us to enjoy what Christine Casey has described as an example of ‘last-gasp Palladianism.’