A Precentor of Limerick who moved to Listowel and was one of the last Deans of Ardfert

Saint John’s Church, Listowel … Robert Adderley, former Precentor of Limerick (1908-1918), was the Rector of Listowel in 1918-1946 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

When a project looking at my predecessors as Precentors of Limerick was postponed some months ago due to the pandemic limits on public events, I thought it might still be interesting to continue looking at past precentors in a number of blog postings.

In earlier postings, I recalled some previous precentors who had been accused of ‘dissolute living’ or being a ‘notorious fornicator’ (Awly O Lonysigh), or who were killed in battle (Thomas Purcell). There were those who became bishops or archbishops: Denis O’Dea (Ossory), Richard Purcell (Ferns) and John Long (Armagh).

There was the tragic story too of Robert Grave, who became Bishop of Ferns while remaining Precentor of Limerick, but – only weeks after his consecration – drowned with all his family in Dublin Bay as they made their way by sea to their new home in Wexford (read more HERE).

In the 17th century, two members of the Gough family were also appointed Precentors of Limerick. In all, three brothers in this family were priests in the Church of Ireland and two were priests in the Church of England, and the Rathkeale branch of the family was the ancestral line of one of Ireland’s most famous generals (read more HERE).

In the mid to late 18th century, two members of the Maunsell family were Precentors of Limerick: Richard Maunsell (1745-1747) and William Thomas Maunsell (1786-1781) (read more HERE).

They were related to Canon John Warburton who was, perhaps, the longest-ever holder of the office, being Precentor of Limerick for 60 years from 1818 until he died to 1878 (red more HERE).

Earlier this week, I looked at Warburton’ successor, Canon Frederic Charles Hamilton, who provides an interesting links with both this group of parishes, with the Mariner’s Church in Dún Laoghaire and the Anglican mission agency SPG, now USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), of which I am a trustee. (see HERE).

As I move to the end of the 19th and the early 20th century, Hamilton’s successor as Precentor, Francis Meredyth, was a published poet and dramatist, and some of the Precentors of Limerick were also among the last Deans of Ardfert, including Robert Archibald Adderley and Charles Gray-Stack.

Robert Archibald Adderley was descended from a branch of the Adderley family who moved to Ireland in the 17th century.

In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries there were a number of branches of the Adderley family in the English Midlands, all tracing their descent from Thomas Adderley, who was living at Blake Hall in Moreland, Staffordshire, from the early 16th century and died in 1538.

Various branches of this family lived at Blake Hall; Coton Hall at Coton-under-Needwood, Staffordshire, north of Lichfield and east of Uttoxeter; Tunstall Hall in Shropshire; Alrewas, near Lichfield; and Hams Hall, Fillongley Hall and Weddington Hall, all in Warwickshire.

Ralph Adderley, of Coton-under-Needwood, was High Sheriff of Staffordshire (1574-1575), Custos Rotulorum for Staffordshire. He married Margaret, daughter of Thomas Bagot of Blithfield, in 1554, and died in 1598.

Their second son, Thomas Adderley, moved to Ireland at the end of the 16th or beginning of the 17th century.

Edward Adderley and his wife Mary Hale were ancestors of the Adderley family of Innishannon, Co Cork. Francis Adderley of Innishannon, Co Cork, and his wife Elizabeth (Fowkes) were the parents of Thomas Adderley (1713-1791), a politician, landowner, amateur architect, developer of the linen industry and MP.

Thomas Adderley was still a child when he inherited his father’s estate, and was educated at Trinity College Dublin. He built the town of Innishannon, Co Cork, brought 60 Huguenot families to Innishannon in 1747 to establish a linen manufactory, and built a charter school there in 1752.

His first wife, the former Elizabeth Bernard, from Castle Mahon, Co Cork, was the widow of James Caulfeild (1682-1734), 3rd Viscount Charlemont, and MP for Charlemont, Co Armagh. Elizabeth and James had at least six children before he died in 1734. Their eldest surviving son, James Caulfeild (1728-1799, became 4th Viscount Charlemont, and in 1740 the widowed Elizabeth married Thomas Adderley (1713-1791) from Innishannon. They lived in Dublin, and had one more child, Elizabeth Adderley.

Thomas Adderley was an active and involved stepfather to James Caulfeild, providing advice and help to him throughout his transition to adulthood and after. Thomas, who became MP for Charlemont, built Marino House in 1753 on property he had acquired, and presented it to his stepson, Lord Charlemont. While Charlemont was away – in London or travelling through Europe – Thomas Adderley developed and managed the Marino estate on his behalf.

Thomas was appointed one of the Dublin Wide Streets Commissioners in 1757, while his stepson James later became known as the ‘Volunteer’ Earl of Charlemont.

Back in Innishannon, Thomas Adderley’s interests included the silk industry, the linen industry, salt works, a flour mill managed mainly by the Orrs, Courderoy Mill managed by the Baker family, a carpet factory and a cotton factory.

When he died on 28 May 1791, he was buried at Saint Mary’s Church, Mary Street, Dublin. His gravestone is among those leaning against the back wall of what is now Wolfe Tone Park.

The Adderley estate in Innishannon became heavily encumbered with a mortgage of £40,000 during the life of Edward Hale Adderley (1770-1870). It is said locally that Adderley was unable to go outside his private grounds for 12 years, except on Sundays, for fear of being arrested for debt. He built an underground tunnel to Saint Mary’s Church, through his garden, and used this tunnel to move between his house and the church without being arrested.

Finally, under cover of darkness, he left Ireland at night for London, where he died about 40 years later, and the Adderley estate was acquired by Thomas Frewen and his family.

Another member of the Innishannon family, Richard Boyle Adderley, was a friend of the poet Robert Southey (1774-1843) during their time at Westminster School. He later became a barrister and civil servant and died in 1857.

Thomas Adderley of Ballyclough, near Mallow, was the father of Richard Boyle Adderley (1820-1874), a ‘schoolmaster,’ who married Ellen Meade (1831-1905) in Castlemagner,near Kanturk, Co Cork, in 1852, and he died in Douglas, Cork, in 1874.

Their second son, Robert Archibald Adderley (1870-1946), born in Cork on 16 May 1870. He was educated at TCD (BA, MA), and was ordained deacon in 1901 and priest in 1903. He was a curate at Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Tuam (1901-1905), when he married Eva Mary Charlotte Jones from Co Sligo in 1902.

Robert and Eva Adderley were the parents of a daughter Eva Mary (born in 1903) and two sons: Harry Robert Adderley (1906), who died in infancy, and Richard Raymond Folliat Adderley (1909-1975).

Robert moved to Limerick in 1905 and was Curate of Saint Mary’s Cathedral (1905-1908) and Vicar Choral (1905-1918). During that time, he was the Precentor of Limerick for ten years (1908-1918). During World War I, he was also a chaplain to the forces in 1915-1919.

After the war, Canon Adderley spent almost 30 years as Rector of Listowel (1918-1946), which was amalgamated with Ballbunion in 1922, and Brosna and Abbeyfeale in 1928, all now part of the Rathkeale and Kilnaughtin Group of Parishes.

In the cathedral chapter, he was Prebendary of Croagh (1918-1924), Prebendary of Kilpeacon (1924-1940), Treasurer of Limerick (1940-1941), and then Dean of Ardfert (1941-1946). But the position of Dean of Ardfert was a sinecure or nominal appointment: the parish of Ardfert was amalgamated with Tralee in 1921, and the Church of Ireland parish church closed in 1945.

Dean Adderley was still the Rector of Listowel and Dean of Ardfert when he died in hospital in Tralee, Co Kerry, on 12 October 1946.

Saint Brendan’s Cathedral, Ardfert, Co Kerry … Robert Archibald Adderley was the Dean of Ardfert in 1941-1946 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Irish countess who converted to Judaism in Belfast

Elizabeth Jane Caulfeild, Countess of Charlemont, in 1877 (© The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Patrick Comerford

One of the best known Jewish women in Irish social and political life was Ellen Odette Cuffe (1857-1933), Countess of Desart, wife of William Ulick O’Connor Cuffe, 4th Earl of Desart, and one of the four women appointed to the first Senate in the Irish Free State.

The Countess of Desart was born into a well-known Jewish family, but her role in Irish life overshadows another Irish countess who converted to Judaism in the late 19th century: the Countess of Charlemont, who was born into the Church of Ireland, is buried in a Church of Ireland churchyard, and is commemorated in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh

Lady Charlemont’s conversion to Judaism became a talking point in Victorian society, yet she goes without mention in Louis Hyman’s standard reference work, The Jews of Ireland.

Lady Charlemont was born Elizabeth Jane Somerville (1834-1882) on 21 June 1834, a daughter of Sir William Somerville, later Lord Athlumney, and Lady Maria Harriet Conyngham.

Her father, Sir William Meredyth Somerville (1802-1873), who later became Baron Athlumney in 1863 and Baron Meredyth in 1866, was a Co Meath landowner and a Liberal politician. He was MP for Drogheda in 1837-1852, and in Lord John Russell’s government he was Chief Secretary of State for Ireland – effectively the senior cabinet minister in Ireland – from 1847 to 1852, during the worst years of the Great Famine. After losing his seat in Drogheda, he was elected Liberal MP for Canterbury (1854-1865), where his mother-in-law lived.

The family lived at Somerville hear Balrath, outside Navan, Co Meath, and owned Athlumney Castle, near Navan.

Elizabeth’s mother, Lady Maria Harriet Conyngham, was a daughter of Henry Conyngham (1766-1832), 1st Marquess Conyngham, who owned Slane Castle, Co Meath, and his Elizabeth, who had been one of the many mistresses of King George IV.

A fountain erected by Sir William Somerville on his Co Meath estate in 1855, a year before his daughter’s marriage (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Elizabeth Somerville was 22 when she married the much older James Molyneux Caulfeild (1820-1892), on 18 December 1856. He was then then Liberal MP for Armagh (1847-1857) and Lord-Lieutenant of Armagh (1849-1864).

He was the son of the Hon Henry Caulfeild and Elizabeth Margaret Browne, and a grandson of James Caulfeild (1728-1799), the 1st Earl of Charlemont, often known as the ‘Volunteer Earl.’

The family estates included the Marino estate with the Casino in Dublin; Charlemont House on Rutland Square, built by the ‘Volunteer Earl’ in 1765 and now the Dublin City Gallery on Parnell Square; and Roxborough Castle in Co. Tyrone.

The Casino in Marino … built by the ‘Volunteer Earl’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Elizabeth’s husband James Molyneux Caulfeild was born in Hockley, Armagh, in 1820 and educated at Trinity College Cambridge. On his return to Ireland, he became involved in Liberal politics, and he was elected MP for Drogheda at the age of 26.

His father, Henry Caulfeild, died in 1862, and when Francis William Caulfeild, 2nd Earl of Charlemont, died at Marino, Dublin, on 26 December 1863, James succeeded his uncle as the 3rd Earl and Elizabeth became the Countess of Charlemont.

James began remodelling and extending Roxborough Castle with the architect William Barre (1830-1867), and he moved some items from the family’s residences in Dublin to reuse in this house.

James Molyneux Caulfeild (1820-1892), became the 3rd Earl of Charlemont in 1863

Elizabeth was known as a woman of many accomplishments, an excellent linguist, and a good musician. Soon after becoming Lady Charlemont in 1863, she began attending Jewish services, sought spiritual advice from rabbis, and converted to Judaism.

Jewish services were held publicly in Belfast for the first time in 1864 in the home of Martin Jaffe, and the foundation stone of the synagogue on Great Victoria Street was laid on 7 July 1871. The first minister of the Belfast congregation was the Revd Dr Joseph Chotzner from Kraków.

Her introduction to Judaism may have come through her friend the writer George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880). The Jewish philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore, was aware of her sincerity, encouraged her move, and helped her to find relevant books to read.

She frequently attended the synagogue in Belfast, and while she was in London she worshipped at the Central Synagogue on Great Portland Street, built in 1870, and at the New West End Synagogue in Bayswater, which was consecrated in 1879 and whose founding members included Martin Jaffe from Belfast, brother of Sir Otto Jaffe (1846-1929), twice Lord Mayor of Belfast (1899-1900, 1904-1905).

The surviving gates into Marino House, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Lord Charlemont sold Charlemont House in Dublin to the Government in 1870 and it became the General Register of Ireland and Census offices. Meanwhile, his aunt Anne (Bermingham), widow of the second earl, had continued to live at the family estate at Marino in Dublin, until she moved to London, where she died in 1876.

By then, James had put Marino House and estate up for sale. A notice in The Times on 8 May 1876, advising that the estate was to be sold, described the demesne in great detail. It said the ‘gardens are very tastefully laid out, and in the highest heart and condition, well stocked with fruit trees of good and new varieties. The houses consist of conservatories, greenhouses, vineries, peach houses, forcing and stove houses, of modern construction, all heated on the best principles …’

The estate, including the Casino at Marino, to Cardinal Cullen, who donated most of it to the Christian Brothers.

Four years later, Elizabeth died at Roxborough Castle, Moy, Co Tyrone, on 31 May 1882 at the age of 47. Although she had become a Jew, she was buried in the churchyard at Moy, and her husband included her name on the family memorial he erected in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh.

The couple had no children, and James married a second time within a year. On 10 May 1883, he married Anna Lucy Lambart, daughter of the Revd Charles James Lambart, Rector of Navan, Co Meath, at the British Consulate in Pau, France.

This couple had no children either and James died in Biarritzon 12 January 1892, at the age of 71. He was brought back to Ireland and buried in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, on 16 January 1892.

With his death, the title of Earl of Charlemont died too. However, the title of Viscount Charlemont continues in the family, and the current holder is the 16th Viscount Charlemont.

Roxborough Castle was burned down by the IRA in 1922, fell into ruin and was dismantled. Marino House in Dublin was demolished too, but Charlemont House on Parnell Square survives as the Dublin City Gallery and the Casino in Marino has been carefully restored by the Office of Public Works in recent years.

The Caulfeild monument in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh … Elizabeth and her husband are named in the last five lines (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Searching for the remains of Lord Charlemont’s lost estate

The Marino Institute of Education … on the site of Marino House built in the 1750s by the Earl of Charlemont (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

It is almost 20 years since I was invited to speak about the history and identity of the Church of Ireland to a group of German church leaders, who were visiting Ireland in 1998. I spoke in the Marino Institute of Education, but the visit from the Association of Protestant Ministers of the Diaspora in the Rhineland was so short, and I was brought in and out of their meeting so hastily, that I never had the opportunity to appreciate the setting or the surroundings in Marino.

I was back in the Marino Institute yesterday [30 May 2016] for a day-long series of conversations with Archbishop Rowan Williams, and decided to walk there from the Mater Dei Institute of Education in Drumcondra.

It was a bright, sunny, summer morning, and as I arrived at the Marino Institute I was impressed by the tree-lined surroundings on Griffith Avenue, and the driveway that leads up to the impressive gates that open into the Marino Institute.

Charlemont, the name of the small housing estate nestling below these gates just off Griffith Avenue, provided a clue to the story of the site of the institute, even if the house that once stood there was demolished almost a century ago.

A watercolour of Marino House by the Irish artist Edward McFarland in 1853 shows a conservatory with flowers. This picture is included in McFarland’s album of watercolours, A Drive from Dublin to Howth Returning by Clontarf.

Another watercolour by McFarland in the same collection shows the Entrance Gate to Marino Demesne. It is the only representation of the main entrance gates in their original location, when they still opened into Charlemont’s demesne.

Cipriani’s gates at Marino are decorated with dragons and the motto from the Charlemont coat-of-arms (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

In 1755, James Caulfeild (1728-1799), 1st Earl of Charlemont, returned to Ireland after his Grand Tour of classical sites in Italy and Greece. His step-father offered him an estate in Donnycarney that stretched down to the shores of Dublin Bay at Fairview.

In creating his demesne, Lord Charlemont was strongly influenced by his experiences on the Grand Tour, from visits to antique Roman gardens to the poetry of Virgil and Horace. Perhaps the sea views reminded him of his Mediterranean tour when he renamed his estate Marino.

In 1746, at the age of 18 year, he was sent on a Grand Tour of Europe, accompanied by the Revd Edward Murphy as his tutor. During his Grand Tour, which lasted almost nine years, he travelled to Holland and Germany, and spent a year in Rome and Naples before travelling on to Greece, where he was totally fascinated by the Parthenon in Athens and made drawings of the building long before it was pillaged destroyed by Lord Elgin.

He visited Turkey and Egypt too before returning to Rome in 1750, where he met many famous people, including the Scottish architect Sir William Chambers (1723-1796), the sculptors Simon Vierpyl and Joseph Wilton and the artist and decorator Giovanni Battista Cipriani (1727-1785) from Florence. He spent vast sums of money collecting paintings, sculptures and books and shipping them back to Ireland.

He returned to Ireland in 1755, and went on to build Marino House, the Casino in Marino, which is Dublin’s finest surviving neoclassical building, and Charlemont House in Dublin, now home to the Hugh Lane Gallery of Modern Art.

Although bestowed with titles and honours, he disregarded court favours and formed a political alliance with Henry Flood and Henry Grattan. In 1780, as Lord Charlemont, he became the commander-in-chief of the Irish Volunteers, and in 1783 he presided at the Volunteer Convention in Dublin. From then on was known as the Volunteer Earl.

The main entrance to his estate on the north fringes of Dublin was in Fairview, later the site of Saint Joseph’s National School, where an imposing Doric gateway opened on to a long driveway to the house.

The house was designed or remodelled by William Chambers and the gates were designed by Cipriani. In 1768, Chambers wrote to Charlemont, enclosing ‘Cipriani’s drawing for the dragons of the gate at Marino.’ The dragons feature on the Charlemont coat-of-arms, and the family motto, Deo Duce, Ferro Comitante (‘God as my leader, my sword my companion’) is also inscribed on the gates.

Lord Charlemont hired Matthew Peters, a renowned gardener, to landscape his Marino estate in a type of ‘idealised Italian landscape’ – open and informal, with soft undulating lines offset by carefully positioned clumps of trees. There, until he died in 1799, Lord Charlemont lived a life of elegance and luxury.

His titles and estates were inherited by his son, Francis William Caulfeild (1775-1863), 2nd Earl of Charlemont, who had been MP for Co Armagh until 1799. He died at Marino House in 1863. His four children pre-deceased him and his estate and titles passed to by his nephew, James Molyneux Caulfeild (1820-1892), the 3rd and last Earl of Charlemont.

In 1876, this Lord Charlemont, put Marino House and estate up for sale. A notice in The Times on 8 May 1876, advising that the estate was to be sold, described the demesne in great detail. It said the “gardens are very tastefully laid out, and in the highest heart and condition, well stocked with fruit trees of good and new varieties. The houses consist of conservatories, greenhouses, vineries, peach houses, forcing and stove houses, of modern construction, all heated on the best principles...”

The Irish Christian Brothers bought Marino House, on the former Charlemont demesne, and made it their home. The last Earl of Charlemont died some years later in 1892 in Biarritz and was buried in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh.

A photograph from the late 19th century in the Lawrence Collection shows Marino House with a member of the Irish Christian Brothers standing outside. At the time, the Christian Brothers were using this former residence of Lord Charlemont as their quarters, until a new house named Saint Mary’s was built nearby in 1904.

By 1911, a map shows the remains of the Charlemont estate included Marino House, the gate lodges, the Casino, and the ruins of the Gothic Room. New additions included Saint Mary’s College, the O’Brien Institute, and Saint Joseph’s Christian Brothers School

Marino House before it was demolished (Photograph: Archiseek)

However, Marino House would be demolished within the next decade or so. By the 1920s, the Christian Brothers owned a significant portion of the old estate, including all the land between Saint Mary’s Monastery, now the Marino Institute of Education, and Saint Joseph’s in Fairview. Brother Killian Fitzgerald, who at that time was on the teaching staff at Saint Joseph’s, recalled that ‘even up to the [1920s] …, Marino could still be admired for its beautiful woods and its exquisite demesne.’

The population of Dublin was growing rapidly, and there was a pressing need for new housing. In 1924 a parcel of land belonging to the Christian Brothers’ parcel was acquired by a Dublin Corporation housing order for the Marino and Croydon Park Housing Scheme.

Over the next two years, 1,283 houses were built on those 89 acres of land. In the process, Lord Charlemont’s old house was demolished, although his Casino still stands as an enduring monument to this Renaissance man.

Lord Charlemont’s achievement in creating an earthly paradise at Marino was seen by him as his gift to posterity. Sadly, by the mid-20th century, almost all vestiges of this marvel had been lost, and in turn the memory of such a landscape at Marino was almost erased.

The urns designed by Cipriani for Marino House stand on the roof of the Marino Institute to this day, on either side of a statue of the Virgin Mary. Cipriani’s gates have been saved and moved and now stand at the entrance to the Marino Institute of Education.

The urns of Marino House still stand on the roof of the Marino Institute (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

A day of conversations with Archbishop Rowan Williams

The Marino Institute of Education … the venue for a day of conversations with Archbishop Rowan Williams (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

I spent to spend today [30 May 2016] as a participant in a day of conversations with Archbishop Rowan Williams in the Marino Institute of Education in Dublin.

There were three conversations during the day. The first conversation, ‘Risking faith in conversation,’ was opened by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and was then taken up by all the participants.

Archbishop Williams, who is now the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, spoke of the need to transcend static positions, rhetoric and arguments, and to overcome soundbites to that we could dig deeper in risking faith in conversation.

It was a generously vague title, but the key word was recognition, he said.

He spoke of gambling on recognition, rather than convergence, communion or agreement. It seeks to see how someone else’s thinking is continuous with how I am thinking. There may not be convergence, but recognition allows the conversation to continue.

There is a recognition of the idea that people are conversable with, and this is what brings us into the moral community.

Death, sex and memory are fairly biologically built into how we act as humans, and are dimensions of our humanity. There is a pre-existing act of faith that there will be coincidence.

We are not psychological or epistemological atoms that can say what we like, but we are always seeking to make sense. To make sense with myself alone is not communicating with others. Someone else has to understand, perhaps to say that this is rubbish, or I do not agree, but still about making sense of what I am saying.

We actively seek the challenge of other voices, and to do this takes for granted a particular type of confidence, which has enough security to disagree, and to bring conflict into focus.

We need to have challenge, or else conversation would wither and die. Good conversation balances security and challenge, and where it is safe enough to disagree we can take a step forward.

In his role as Archbishop of Canterbury, he had tried to create circumstances in which disagreement could be articulated within the Anglican Communion.

As he spoke of risking faith in conversation, he said good conversation starts from memory, narrative, where I stand, and what I believe. I continue to speak from what I believe and where I stand. What emerges will resonate, enlarge, enrich and provide material for more conversation.

When things are said, things change. Speaking changes things, by interacting and relating.

In interfaith dialogue, the point of dialogue is not to find an agreed formula or capitulation, but in putting fresh questions that take me to places that I have not been to before. It brings us back to recognition.

For example, conversations with Buddhists take us to an unexpected set of questions.

Conversations are based on where we actually are, and bring memories and convictions into public and political conversations, without any embarrassment, and without any expectation of winning the arguments.

They are not abut asserting the dominance of faith in society but about visibility, without dominance or arrogance.

We can ask, ‘Can you see what I’m seeing?’ And the reply may be, ‘No, but I can see that you are seeing something.’ Recognition is not the same as comprehension.

The afternoon opened with the second conversation, ‘Risking faith in poetry and fiction,’ with Dr Williams in conversation with Professor Declan Kiberd, of the University of Notre Dame and University College Dublin, and the writer and theologian Dr Anne Thurston, who were then joined by all the participants.

Archbishop Williams spoke out of his own experience of writing. He described how you write in order discover what you do not know what you know. It starts as a question, ‘What’s that about.’ It is an image, a picture, you walk around it.

Drama is a matter of listening, where the writer listens in to conversations. It belongs in the same territory as faith, with the same kind of unclassifiable character.

He spoke of the itch and curiosity and desire to walk into areas where there is puzzlement and something that needs to be explored. That sense of not knowing, not being in control, in a benign way, gives us something on which to build.

The third conversation in the afternoon was ‘Risking faith in philosophy,’ opened by Dr Williams in conversation with Professor Joseph Dunne of Saint Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, and Dr Clare Maloney of the Marino Institute of Education.

This was planned as a day three distinct but not separate conversations and they were cumulative throughout the day.

An afternoon break in a garden in the Marino Institute of Education (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

A visit to the Casino, Dublin’s finest neoclassical building

The Casino in Marino is one of the finest 18th century neoclassical buildings in Europe (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Patrick Comerford

After my return visits to Saint Michan’s Church in Church Street and All Saints’ Church, Grangegorman, to celebrate the Eucharist and to preach on Sunday morning, I stayed on the north side of Dublin for the afternoon and visited the Casino in Marino, off Malahide Road.

This is one of the finest 18th century neoclassical buildings in Europe and was designed by the Scottish architect Sir William Chambers for the Irish patriot and patron of the arts James Caulfeild (1728-1799), 1st Earl of Charlemont.

The name Casino means “small house,” but this is deceptive for the building has 16 finely decorated rooms and is endlessly rich in its subtlety and design. Charlemont had already named his estate on the coast three miles from the centre of Dublin after the town of Marino in Lazio. But the name Casino is a diminutive form of the Italian casa (“house”), and in the 18th century casino had none of today’s connotations of gambling.

Charlemont was born in Dublin in 1728, and in 1734 succeeded his father as 4th Viscount Charlemont. In his teens and early adult years, Charlemont was known for his love of classical art and culture, and he spent nine years on the Grand Tour in Italy, Greece, Turkey and Egypt. During the Grand Tour, he became friends with Giovanni Piransi, who dedicated the first four-volume edition of Antichitá Romane to his Irish friend, Regni Hiberniae Patricio in 1756.

On his return to Dublin, Charlemont commissioned Chambers to remodel his main residence, Marino House, to design his Dublin town house, Charlemont House, now the Hugh Lane Art Gallery in Parnell Square, and to designed the unique neoclassical garden pavilion building that is the Casino at Marino.

A cultivated and literary man, Charlemont was the first President of the Royal Irish Academy and an early member of the Royal Dublin Society. He was made Earl of Charlemont in 1763, and was one of the original Knights of the Order of Saint Patrick.

Charlemont took a leading part in the formation of the Irish Volunteers and was president of the Volunteer Convention in Dublin in 1783. Honours and titles failed to silence his support for the demands for Irish independence, and he was identified politically with Henry Flood, Henry Grattan and the patriotic and liberal factions in the Irish Parliament. He died on 4 August 1799.

During his grand tour of Europe, Charlemont befriended Sir William Chambers (1723-1796), the London-based Scottish-Swedish architect whose best-known works are Somerset House on The Strand in London, and the pagoda at Kew.

Chambers was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, the son of a Scottish merchant. He worked with the Swedish East India Company and made three visits to China before returning to Europe. He studied architecture in Paris, spent five years in Italy, and moved to London in 1755.

Chambers was the major rival of Adam in British neoclassical architectural designs and concentrated his talents on building houses for the nobility. When he died in London in 1796, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Charlemont commissioned Chambers to remodel some rooms within his main residence, Marino House, and to design his Dublin town house, Charlemont House, and the Casino in Marino.

Originally the Casino was linked to Marino House by a tunnel, although this has been blocked off due to building works in the area. The Casino was neglected for many after the Charlemont Estate was sold in 1881. Marino House was demolished in the 1920s, the estate was broken up and developed for housing, and the Casino, which was the only part of the great estate to survive, passed into state ownership in 1930, after the passage of an Act of Parliament.

The Casino was built between 1755 and 1775, and is a perfect example of Chambers’s work – although he never visited Ireland to see its completion. It is an expression of the earliest influences from Paris and Rome on Chambers, and in The Treatise on Civil Architecture (1791) he said it was derived from an un-executed design for “one of the end pavilions of a considerable disposition made soon after my return from Italy ... for Harewood House.”

The doorway on the entrance façade ... the actual entrance door is half the height of the outside door, and only two panels open as the entrance (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

From a distance, the Casino looks deceptively simple. But as you approach it, the rich decorations and differences in the façade treatment become apparent. The Casino is only 50 feet square to the outer columns, and from the outside it looks like a single-room structure, with a large panelled door on the north elevation and a single large window on each of the other elevations. But this is an illusion, for the Casino actually has 16 rooms on three floors.

The plan takes the form of a Greek Cross, with a pair of columns framing each projecting elevation. Outside, the façades are richly adorned with sculptural ornaments and decorative carvings. The statues of Apollo, Venus, Bacchus and Ceres were designed by Giovanni Cipriani in 1768.

The main façades are the north and south, with the entrance on the north side. These are dominated by the solid attic storey, statues and urns. But the decoration is functional – the urns contain chimneys, while the outermost columns contain the down pipes from the gutters so as not to spoil the elevations.

The doorway on the entrance façade rises almost to the height of the columns, emphasising the monumental proportions of the building. However, as you enter the Casino you find the actual entrance door is half the height of the outside door, and only two of the panels in the door open as the entrance.

The glass in the windows is subtly curved, disguising the partitioning inside so a single window serves several separate rooms (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

The panes of glass in the windows are subtly curved, disguising the partitioning that allows what looks like a single window to serve several separate rooms. These changes in scale from the exterior into the interior allow the Casino to contain many more rooms than appear possible from outside.

There are many other tricks throughout the building that help to preserve the simplicity of design. Four of the columns surrounding the building are hollow and, with a length of chain dangling in each, allow rainwater to drain down. The Roman funerary urns on the roof, designed by James Gandon, are used as chimneys.

Unfortunately, the four lions at the corners never became the fountains that Chambers intended (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Inside, the basement level has a kitchen and associated rooms, the main floor has reception rooms, and the top has with a state bedroom and servants rooms. Throughout the building, there are fine plaster-work ceilings and elaborate hardwood parquet floors.

The Casino has been carefully restored by the Office of Public Works in recent years, and is normally open to the public seven days a week.

After an hour-long guided tour of the Casino, we returned to the city centre for a late lunch in the Falafel Lounge, a vegetrian Lebanese restaurant at 63 Dame Street, before spending the rest of the afternoon in the city centre.

I had some photographs to take in Merrion Square and then in Leeson Park to complete a power point for a presentation in Kilcoole later this week on Sir Thomas Myles. But in between, there was time to stroll through Merrion Square and the grounds of Trinity College Dublin in the summer sunshine.

The Casino has been carefully restored by the Office of Public Works in recent years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)