Georgian Dublin
Photos taken in August 2011
Georgian Dublin is a phrase used in the History of Dublin that has two interwoven meanings, to describe a historic period in the development of the city of Dublin, Ireland, from 1714 (the beginning of the reign of King George I of Great Britain and of Ireland) to the death in 1830 of King George IV. During this period, the reign of the four Georges, hence the word Georgian, covers a particular and unified style, derived from Palladian Architecture, which was used in erecting public and private buildings; to describe the modern day surviving buildings in Dublin erected in that period and which share that architectural style.
Though strictly speaking, Georgian architecture could only exist during the
reigns of the four Georges, it had its antecedents prior to 1714 and its style
of building continued to be erected after 1830, until replaced by later styles
named after the then monarch, Queen Victoria, i.e. Victorian.
Dublin was for much of its existence a medieval city, marked by the existence of
a particular style of buildings, built on narrow winding medieval streets. The
first major changes to this pattern occurred during the reign of King Charles II
when the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Ormonde (later made Duke
of Ormonde) issued an instruction which was to have dramatic repercussions for
the city as it exists today. Though the city over the century had grown around
the River Liffey, its buildings as in many other mediæval centres backed onto
the river, often allowing for the dumping of household waste directly into the
river, it being a form of collective sewer. As Dublin's quays underwent
development, Ormonde insisted that the frontages of the houses, not their rears,
should face the quay sides, with a street to run along each quay. By this one
development, Ormond changed the face of the city. No longer would the river be a
sewer hidden between buildings. Instead it became a central feature of the city,
with its quays lined by large three and four storey houses and public buildings,
such as the Four Courts, the old Custom House and, later and grander, The Custom
House designed, as was the Four Courts, by master architect James Gandon. For
his initiative, Ormonde's name is now given to one of the city quays.
It was however only one of a number of crucial developments. As the city grew in
size, stature, population and wealth, two changes were needed. (1) The existing
narrow-streeted mediæval city required major redevelopment, and (2) major new
development of residential areas was required.
A new body called the Wide Streets Commission was created to remodel the old
mediæval city. It created a network of main thoroughfares by wholescale
demolition or widening of old streets or the creation of entirely new ones. On
the northside of the city, a series of narrow streets were merged together and
widened enormously to create a new street, called Sackville Street (now called
O'Connell Street). At its lower end, a new bridge (now called O'Connell Bridge)
was erected, beyond which two new streets in the form of a 'V' appeared, known
as Westmoreland Street and D'Olier Street. Westmoreland Street in turn led to a
renamed Hoggen Green, which became College Green because it faced unto Trinity
College Dublin. The new Irish Houses of Parliament, designed by Edward Lovett
Pearce, also faced onto College Green, while from College Green a new widened
Dame Street led directly down to the mediæval Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin,
past Dublin Castle and the Royal Exchange, the latter a new building, the former
in the process of rebuilding, turning it from a mediæval castle to a Georgian
palace.
While the rebuilding by the Wide Streets Commission fundamentally changed the
streetscape in Dublin, a property boom led to additional building outside the
central core. Unlike twentieth century building booms in Dublin the eighteenth
century developments were carefully controlled. The developing areas were
divided into precincts, each of which was given to a different developer. The
scope of their developments were restricted, however, with strict controls
imposed on style of residential building, design of buildings and location, so
producing a cohesive unity that came to be called Georgian Dublin.
Initially developments were focused on the city's northside. Among the earliest
developments was Henrietta Street, a wide street lined on both sides by massive
Georgian houses built on a palatial scale. At the top end of the street, a new
James Gandon building, the King's Inns, was erected between 1795 and 1816. In
this building, barristers were trained and earned their academic qualifications.
Such was the prestige of the street that many of the most senior figures in
Irish 'establishment' society, peers of the realm, judges, barristers, bishops
bought houses here. Under the anti-Catholic Penal Laws, Roman Catholics, though
the overwhelming majority in Ireland, were harshly discriminated against, barred
from holding property rights or from voting in parliamentary elections until
1793. Thus the houses of Georgian Dublin, particularly in the early phase before
Catholic Emancipation was granted in 1829, were almost invariably owned by a
small Church of Ireland Anglican elite, with Catholics only gaining admittance
to the houses as skivvies and servants. Ultimately the northside was laid out
centred on two major squares, Ruthland Square (now called Parnell Square for
Charles Stewart Parnell), at the top end of Sackville Street, and Mountjoy
Square. Such was the prestige of the latter square that among its many prominent
residents was the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin. Many of the streets in
the new areas were named after the property developers, often with developers
commemorated both in their name and by their peerage when the received one.
Among the streets named after developers are Capel Street, Mountjoy Square and
Aungier Street.
For the initial years of the Georgian era, the northside was the place to live.
However, when the Earl of Kildare chose to move to a new large ducal palace
built for him on what up to that point was seen as the inferior southside, he
caused shock. When his Dublin townhouse, Kildare House (renamed Leinster House
when he was made Duke of Leinster) was finished, it was by far the biggest
aristocratic residence other than Dublin Castle, and it was greeted with envy.
The Earl had predicted that his move would be followed, and it was. Three new
residential squares appeared on the southside, Merrion Square (facing his
residence's garden front), St Stephen's Green and the smallest and last of
Dublin's five Georgian squares to be built, Fitzwilliam Square. Aristocrats,
bishops and the wealthy sold their northside townhouses and migrated to the new
southside developments, even though many of the developments, particularly in
Fitzwilliam Square, were smaller and less impressive than the buildings in
Henrietta Street. While the wealthier people lived in houses on the squares,
those with lesser means and lesser titles lived in smaller, less grand but still
impressive developments off the main squares, such as Upper and Lower Mount
Street and Leeson Street.
Although the Irish Parliament was composed exclusively of representatives of the
minority Protestant community in Ireland, it did show sparks of independence,
most notably the achievement of full legislative independence in 1782, where all
the restrictions previously surrounding the parliament in College Green, notably
Poyning's Law were repealed. This period of legislative freedom however was
short-lived. In 1800, under pressure from the Dublin Castle administration of
the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and amid mass bribery, both the House of Commons
and the House of Lords passed the Irish Act of Union, uniting both the Kingdom
of Ireland and its parliament with the Kingdom of Great Britain and its
parliament in London. As a result, from 1 January 1801 Dublin found itself
without a parliament with which to draw hundreds of peers and bishops, along
with their thousands of servants. While many did come to Dublin still for the
Social Season, where the Lord Lieutenant hosted debutantes balls, state balls
and drawing rooms in a period from January until St. Patrick's Day (17 March)
every year, many found them less appealing than in the days when they could sit
in parliament for a session in College Green. Many of the leading peers,
including the Duke of Leinster and Viscount Powerscourt, almost immediately sold
their palatial Dublin townhouses, Powerscourt House and Leinster House. Though
many still flocked to Dublin every social season, many didn't or went to London.
The loss of their revenue and that of their extensive staff hurt the Dublin
economy severely. While the 'new' Georgian centres southside continued to
flourish, the northside Georgian squares soon fell into squalor, as new owners
of the buildings crammed in massive numbers of poor into the former residences
of earls and bishops, in some cases cramming an entire family into one old
drawing room. Mountjoy Square in particular became run-down, until such was its
state and degree of dereliction in the 1980s that it was used as a film set for
stories set in post-blitz London and post-war Berlin. The empty shells of the
graceful houses, reduced to unsanitary tenements before being demolished in the
1980s, were used as a backdrop for a U2 rock video.
In the years after independence in 1922, independent Ireland had little sympathy
for Georgian Dublin, seeing it as a symbol of British rule and of the unionist
identity that was alien to Irish identity. By that stage, many of the gentry who
had lived in them had moved elsewhere; some to the wealthy Victorian suburbs of
Rathmines and Rathgar, Killiney and Ballsbridge, where Victorian residences were
built on larger plots of land, allowing for gardens, rather that the lack of
space of the Georgian eras. Those that had not moved in many cases had by the
early twentieth century sold their mansions in Dublin. The abolition of the
Dublin Castle administration and the Lord Lieutenant in 1922 saw an end to
Dublin's traditional "Social Season" or masked balls, drawing rooms and court
functions in the Castle. Many of the aristocratic families lost their heirs in
the First World War, their homes in the country to IRA burnings (during the
Irish War of Independence) and their townhouses to the Stock Market Crash of
1929. Daisy, the Countess of Fingall, in her regularly republished memoirs
Seventy Years Young, wrote in the 1920s of the disappearance of that world and
of her change from a big townhouse in Dublin, full of servants to a small flat
with one maid. By the 1920s and certainly by the 1930s, many of the previous
homes in Merrion Square had become business addresses of companies, with only
Fitzwilliam Square of all the five squares having any residents at all.
(Curiously, in the 1990s, new wealthy businessmen such as Sir Tony O'Reilly and
Dermot Desmond began returning to live in former offices they had bought and
converted back into homes.) By the 1930s, plans were discussed in Éamon de
Valera's government to demolish all of Merrion Square, perhaps the most intact
of the five squares, on the basis that the houses were "old fashioned" and
"un-national". They were only saved by Adolf Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939
and a general lack of capital and investment; the plans were put on hold in 1939
and forgotten about by 1945.
Though that did not stop the destruction of some of Georgian Dublin. Dublin's
most perfectly planned square, Mountjoy Square, was under serious threat with
almost all of the south side demolished by property speculators during the 1960s
and 70s; even so, buildings with facsimile facades were subsequently built in
place, re-completing the square's uniform external appearance as it stands
today. The world's longest row of Georgian houses, running from the corner of
Merrion Square down to Lesson Street Bridge, was sliced in two by the decision
of the Irish government in the early 1960s to demolish part of the row and
replace them by a modern office block.
These buildings were refronted in the 19th century and later used as shops. The
grey house of the right was bought by an Irish gay resource centre, Outhouse in
early 21st century. On restoration, the building which had been used as a
warehouse turned out to have 18th century ceiling decoration and a large tiled
hall floor, all of which had been obscured over the previous two centuries.
The decision in the late 1950s to demolish a row of Georgian houses in Kildare
Place and replace them with a brick wall was greeted with jubilation by a
republican minister at the time, Kevin Boland, who said they stood for
everything he opposed. He described members of the fledgling Irish Georgian
Society, newly formed to seek to protect Georgian buildings, of being "belted
earls". The Society also restored the "Tailors' Hall" in Back Lane in the 1960s,
which had been the venue for the republican convention in 1792; it was helped by
members of Sinn Féin led by Maire Comerford whose republicanism was even more
pronounced than Boland's.
By the 1990s, attitudes had changed dramatically. Strict new planning guidelines
sought to protect the remaining Georgian buildings, though some property owners
still found their way around the restrictions. A surprising number of old houses
in poor repair, if an owner wished to demolish them but had been refused
planning permission, just happened mysteriously to go on fire and be burnt to
the ground, facilitating 'development'.[citation needed] However, in contrast
with the lax development controls applied in Ireland for many decades, by the
1990s a whole new mindset among politicians, planners and the leaders of Dublin
City Council (formerly Dublin Corporation) produced a determination to preserve
as much as possible of the remaining Georgian buildings, with prosecutions for
unauthorised developments becoming more regular (see An Bord Pleanála and An
Taisce). However there are once again renewed fears for areas such as James'
Street and Thomas Street, with a church on Jones's Road illegally demolished in
2008. Further, with the consent of Dublin City Council, illuminated advertising
billboards are currently being erected on Parnell Square. The war to preserve
Georgian Dublin has not yet been won.
Perhaps the biggest irony for some is that residence that marked the move of the
aristocrats from the northside to the southside (where the wealthier Dubliners
have remained to this day), and that in some ways embodied Georgian Dublin,
Leinster House, home of the Duke of Leinster, ended up as the parliament of
independent republican Ireland; but his family also produced the republican
leader Lord Edward Fitzgerald.
Text from Wikipedia
Shelbourne Hotel
Georgian on the Main Street
chimney pots
behind the Georgian homes
The Mews
tower over kitchen
closed gate
lost kitten