Patrick Comerford
My eldest brother found it entertaining to point out that Leinster Road West is not to the west but to the south of Leinster Road in Rathmines. Leinster Road West is an interesting street off Harold’s Cross Road, between Leinster Road and Kenilworth Square.
Although the residents of Leinster Road West probably feel more at home in Rathmines, this street runs immediately behind the Roman Catholic parish church of Harold’s Cross and two of its most interesting buildings are associated with the Church of Ireland parish of Harold’s Cross.
I went back to look again at these two buildings one morning last week during my brief pre-Christmas visit to Dublin.
No 13 Leinster Road West is now known as Marleigh House, but it was built in 1871-1872 as the glebe house for Harold’s Cross Church, then a trustee church.
The glebe house was built while the Revd William Booker Askin (1822-1907) was the chaplain in Harold’s Cross from 1857 to 1901. When Harold’s Cross was transferred to the Church of Ireland and became a parish, the glebe house became the rectory.
The house at 13 Leinster Road West, was designed by the Dublin-born architect and engineer Joseph Maguire (1820-1904), who was then living nearby in Kenilworth Square.
In his design of Harold’s Cross Rectory, Maguire was inspired by Irish monastic and cathedral buildings, with their Romanesque arches and decorated columns. Some of this inspiration can still be detected in details of the house, including the porch, arches, columns, capitals and pillars.
Maguire may have drawn his inspiration from the original shopfront at Nos 24-25 Grafton Street, designed in the ‘Celtic revival’ style for William Longfield by Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt (1820-1877), a descendant of John Wyatt (1675-1742), of Weeford near Lichfield, and a member of an outstanding family of architects.
In his Grafton Street shopfront design in 1863, Wyatt combined details from many churches and cathedrals, including the doorway in Saint Lachtain’s Church, Freshford, Co Kilkenny, crosses from Monasterboice, Co Louth, and the chancel arch and crosses from Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Tuam, Co Galway.
The Irish Builder at the time hoped Wyatt would ‘stimulate many an Irish architect to ... recreate a national style,’ and praised it for being ‘at once novel and successful.’ It seems to have inspired Maguire, who designed the rectory for Harold’s Cross in the decade that followed.
Joseph Maguire was born at 5 Saint Patrick’s Close South, Dublin, on 26 February 1820, a triplet and the tenth of the 16 children of William Maguire, inspector of taxes for the Paving Board, and his wife Mary (Vickers). He was baptised the following day in Saint Patrick's Cathedral, where his father was sexton. After his father died in 1844, Maguire moved with his mother to 9 Peter Place, and he lived until he married Mary Hayes in Rathfarnham in 1845.
Maguire was an active architect by the 1860s and 1870s, with an interest in the design of proper artisan and labourers houses and in church architecture. He was also a district agent to the Royal Insurance Company, the Dublin architect and valuator of the Royal Land, Building and Investment Company of Belfast, and architect and executive sanitary officer to the North and South Dublin Unions.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (FRIAI) in 1867 on the proposal of James Higgins Owen and Sir Thomas Drew, seconded by Edward Henry Carson, but resigned in 1869. He was a founding member of the Architectural Association of Ireland in 1872.
Maguire worked mainly from addresses in Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street), although at times he also had offices in D’Olier Street, Grafton Street and Middle Abbey Street. For most of that working life, Maguire lived in Rathgar at addresses in Kenilworth Square, including No 2 (1858), No 4 (1859), No 8 (1860-1864), No 14 (1862-1865), No 57 (1867-1881), No 50 (1882), No 59 (1883-1892). He also lived on Garville Avenue (1846-1853, 1893), Leicester Avenue (1853-1857), Rathgar Avenue (1894-1896), and Grosvenor Square. He was living at 84 Rathgar Road when he died on 2 December 1904.
The grounds of the rectory at the corner of Harold’s Cross Road and Leinster Road West were originally more extensive. Parts of the grounds were acquired from the Church of Ireland Representative Church Body by the Rathmines and Rathgar town council for road-widening in 1929.
Within a decade of the new rectory being built on Leinster Road West, a parish hall was built in 1882-1883 for Harold’s Cross opposite the rectory, on the corner of Harold’s Cross Road and Leinster Road West. It was designed by Alfred Gresham Jones (1824-1915) and his pupil Thomas Phillips Figgis (1858-1948).
The parish hall was converted into offices in 1992 and is now called Century House.
