29 December 2016

Visiting four favourite buildings in Dublin
by Sir Thomas Newenham Deane (3)

No 46-47 Dame Street was designed by Sir Thomas Newenham Deane in 1869-1871 for the Crown Life Assurance Co (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

During this week, I am visiting some of my favourite buildings in Dublin designed by the architect Sir Thomas Newenham Deane (1828-1899), who worked in a Dublin-based partnership with Benjamin Woodward (1816-1861).

In October 1853, Woodward and Deane set up an office at No 3 Upper Merrion Street, Dublin. They developed a Gothic style based on the naturalistic principles laid down by John Ruskin, and their practice also played an important role in the Gothic revival in England. Their two most important buildings are the Museum in Trinity College Dublin (1854-1857) and the Oxford Museum (1854-1860).

When Deane died in 1899, his practice was continued by his son, Thomas Manly Deane.

Deane’s best known works in Dublin include the National Library and the National Museum in Kildare Street, bookending Leinster House. However, this week I am looking at four of his buildings that are among my favourite works of architecture in Dublin:

1, The Museum Building in Trinity College, Dublin;

2, No 46-47 Dame Street, which was built in 1869-1871 for the Crown Life Assurance Co;

3, The Allied Irish Bank, formerly the Munster and Leinster Bank, at 7-10 Dame Street Dublin;

4, the former Kildare Street Club on Kildare Street.

Join me this week as I visit the four buildings I have selected, all within walking distance of each other.

No 46-47 Dame Street, Dublin (Crown Life Assurance Co):

Sir Thomas Newenham Deane designed No 46-47 Dame Street in the Lombardo-Romanesque style (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

On the corner of Fownes Street and Dame Street, No 46-47 Dame Street was built in 1869-1871 for the Crown Life Assurance Co. The building was designed by Sir Thomas Newenham Deane in 1868 and was modelled on the London head office of Crown Life, which was designed in 1858 by his former partner, Benjamin Woodward.

This part of Dame Street is along a busy traffic route and on the edges of the Temple Bar area. For tourists it is a pedestrian thoroughfare, linking Christ Church Cathedral with the Bank of Ireland Trinity College Dublin or leading into the Temple Bar area.

These factors mean it is generally difficult to catch a view that offers opportunities to appreciate the Dame Street façade of this building. It is often easier to appreciate the building around the corner, beside the ‘Foggy Dew’ pub, where the Fownes Street façade faces the Central Bank Plaza.

Venetian-style arched windows and balconies on the Dame Street side of the building (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Like the Museum Building in Trinity College Dublin, Deane designed this building was built in Portland stone in the style of a Lombardo-Romanesque palazzo, drawing on the principals set out a decade earlier by John Ruskin in The Stones of Venice.

The builder was Gilbert Cockburn was the builder, who also built the Museum Building in TCD, and the total cost was £4,000.

On the Dame Street façade, there are Venetian-style arched windows and balconies. On the ground floor, we can see stilted segment-headed openings to the former public offices on the ground floor. The main entrance originally stood at the east end of this façade, on the viewer’s right.

The romantic features on the Fownes Street façade include stepped, round-headed windows (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The romantic features on pretty side elevation on the east or Fownes Street façade include five Ruskin-influenced stepped, round-headed windows, three grouped together in an ascending arcade, on the staircase.

Slender colonnettes frame the angle of the building, and deep bracketed cornices create strong horizontals at the piano nobile and eaves levels.

The Portland stone used by Deane is offset by a granite plinth, a frieze, still and impost courses of red sandstone, polished pink granite colonnettes to the windows, and capitals of grey and white limestone.

This building was rebuilt by James Franklin Fuller in 1917, and the builders for this renovation were Farmer Brothers of Nottingham Street, Dublin.

Venetian-style balconies on the Dame Street side of the building (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

I first got to appreciate the exterior of this building and to know the interior when I was training as a Chartered Surveyor, because at the time the building housed the Dublin Corporation Planning Office.

This was an ironic use of the building in the late 1960s and early 1970s, for the planners almost allowed it to be lost to Dublin. It was saved from demolition because Skidmore Owings Merrill, in the masterplan for the area they submitted to CIE in the 1970s, identified it as one of two buildings worth saving in the Temple Bar area.

Since then, this building has been renovated, the interior has been greatly remodelled, and this is now part of a larger hotel.

The Crown Life Building was almost lost to Dublin due to planners’ decisions in the 1970s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Tomorrow: The Allied Irish Bank, 7-10 Dame Street Dublin.

Winter sunshine at Farmleigh House,
rebuilt by Fuller for the Guinnesses

Farmleigh House in the winter sunshine … rebuilt for Lord Iveagh by James Franklin Fuller (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

In recent weeks, in my architectural postings, I have written about a number of works in Dublin by the architect James Franklin Fuller (1835-1924), including the Superintendent’s Gate Lodge in Saint Stephen’s Green, Dublin, Saint Mary’s Church, Julianstown, Co Meath, and D’Olier Chambers or the Gallaher Building, a landmark building on the corner of D’Olier Street and Hawkins Street, Dublin.

I spent some of Wednesday afternoon [28 December 2016] in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, at another Fuller building, Farmleigh House.

This was originally a two-storey Georgian house, belonging first to the Coote family, and then passed to the Trench family. It was bought by Edward Cecil Guinness (1847-1927),1st Earl of Iveagh, on his marriage to his cousin, Adelaide Guinness.

Lord Iveagh was a great-grandson of Arthur Guinness, founder of the brewery, and in 1919 he became Baron Iveagh in 1891 and the 1st Earl of Iveagh in 1919. He extended Farmeligh Hpuse twice, first in the 1870s to designs by Fuller, and later by the Scottish architect William Young (1843-1900).

Winter colours at Farmleigh House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Fuller extended the house to the west, refurbished the existing house, and added a third storey. Fuller also designed the under-gardener’s lodge, farm buildings, the conservatory, the Liffey Road lodge, the dairy, and other buildings on the Farmleigh estate.

In 1896, the ballroom wing was added, designed by the Scottish architect William Young (1843-1900), who also worked on the Guinness family’s English country seat Elveden in Surrey.

The portico at Farmleigh House, designed by James Franklin Fuller (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

With the addition of a new conservatory adjoining the ballroom in 1901, and the increased planting of broadleaves and exotic plants in the gardens, Farmleigh had, by the early years of the 20th century, became synonymous with gracious Victorian and Edwardian living and entertainment.

Walking around the former boating lake at Farmleigh House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Set in rolling countryside, the exterior of Farmleigh is restrained, with a sumptuous interior. The most obvious elaborate feature of the exterior is the fine conservatory which adjoins the drawing room and ballroom.

The interiors of the house are of two idioms. The older interiors are ‘a cheerful Baroque with much exposed honey-coloured panelling.’ The best of these is the library with its balcony level around the book shelves.

At the top-lit stairwell, Fuller introduced natural light into the heart of the building. The immediate front hallway is also top-lit by roundels set in the ceiling of the hallway or porte cochere.

Sunset at Farmleigh House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Farmleigh and its 78-acre estate was bought from the Guinness family by the Irish Government in 1999 for €29.2 million. The Office of Public Works has refurbished the house as the accommodation for visiting heads of state and guests of the nation and for Government meetings, and for public enjoyment.

Later, after coffee in the Boathouse Café, two of us went for a walk around the former boating lake created by the Guinness family, and later went for a walk along the banks of the Royal Canal at the Twelfth Lock, between Castleknock and Blanchardstown.

The sun was setting and casting long shadows. It had been another crisp, bright winter’s day.

A winter scene at the Twelfth Lock on the Royal Canal (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Praying at Christmas with USPG,
(5): 29 December 2016

Two plaques on a street corner in London recall that Saint Thomas Becket was born in Cheapside (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

The Christmas season continues, and today [29 December 2016] the Church of England recalls Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, who was martyred on this day in 1170, with a lesser festival in Common Worship. It is one of those important links between the Christmas message and the cost of discipleship.

Each morning throughout the Twelve Days of Christmas I am using the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency, USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), for my morning prayers and reflections.

This week, the prayers in the USPG Prayer Diary focus on the needs of mothers and children in Palestine and Israel.

The USPG Prayer Diary:

Thursday 29 December 2016:


Pray for God’s care for the mothers of disabled children in Palestine, many of whom face discrimination in their communities.

Readings (Revised Common Lectionary, the Church of Ireland, Holy Communion):

I John 2: 3-11; Psalm 96: 1-4; Luke 2: 22-35.

The Collect of the Day (Common Worship):

Lord God,
who gave grace to your servant Thomas Becket
to put aside all earthly fear
and be faithful even to death:
grant that we, disregarding worldly esteem,
may fight all wrong,
uphold your rule,
and serve you to our life’s end;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Continued tomorrow

‘If you didn’t get to see the Baby Jesus
in the Crib, I’m sorry, it was me’

A crib without the Baby Jesus (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This is not my story. I came across it on a closed group on social media that I am not a member of and that I should not have access to. But it is such a good story I thought it was worth retelling. I have changed it slightly, when it comes to spelling, punctuation and grammar, and I have changed the location and some of the details to disguise the original storyteller. If it did not happen in Wexford, it happened in another Irish town, and it is worth retelling.

For years, I have hidden my secret.

The shame of it.

My mother always hoped that nobody would find out. She wouldn’t be able to show her face in public if anybody ever knew.

I didn’t see it as a big deal, but I promised never to tell anyone as it would embarrass her.

Well, here goes and I hope you can forgive me.

In 1969, I stole the Baby Jesus from the Friars’ Crib.

There was panic when it was noticed that the Baby Jesus was missing from the Crib.

Two friars knocked on all the doors in Davitt Road, while a third friar knocked at all the houses on Saint John’s Road and the streets and avenues off it, looking for the missing Baby Jesus.

I think something like that had happened around the time of his birth – men in uniforms knocking on doors, looking for him.

The Guards were sent for and two policemen and a Special Branch man came knocking on our door. They said: ‘Are you the boy who took the child?’

A woman down John Street had said she thought she saw a little blond-haired boy with a baby on the crossbar of his bike pedaling around Mannix Place and Menapia Avenue. So, the Guards knocked on the doors of all the kids with blond hair.

When they knocked at our house I was out on my new bike that I got from Santa. My mother told them I was out playing, that she would ask me when I got in, and she would let them know.

It was about 3.30 when I came in to go to the toilet. I put my new bike in the sitting room so it would not get robbed. I was having a tinkle when I heard my mother scream.

I ran out of the toilet, wetting my leg, to see if she was alright. As I ran into the kitchen, I got the hardest ‘larrap’ of a wooden spoon any child ever survived.

‘What do you think you are up to?’ the Ma screamed at me.

‘What is the Baby Jesus doing on the crossbar of your bike? The priests and the police are looking everywhere for him. What sort of child are you, stealing the Baby Jesus from the crib?’

My mother was a very rational, logical cool-headed woman, not prone to over-exaggeration or embellishment. So, when she said I could go to jail for kidnapping the Baby Jesus from the Friary Crib I was really scared.

I said I was sorry.

‘Sorry isn’t good enough, you little brat. You stole the figure of the Baby Jesus.’

I was still crying from the slap of the wooden spoon while I tried to explain to my mother that I had been praying to God every night for nearly two months for a new bike for Christmas.

‘I told him I would be good and share it with my sisters. I even promised that if he gave me a new bike for Christmas that I would give the baby Jesus a go. So, when I went around to the Crib I remembered my promise and took the Baby Jesus from the crib and put him on the crossbar and brought him for a go on my bike.’

My Ma had to sneak the Baby Jesus back into the Crib without being noticed.

So, if you were one of the people who visited the Crib in the Friary on 5 January 1969 and didn’t get to see the Baby Jesus, I’m sorry.