Little Book of Blackrock (eBook)

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ANCIENT ROADS
AND OLD BUILDINGS

NO. 1, AVOCA AVENUE

This two-storey over-basement house, built sometime before 1850, is typical of the many villas and houses built in Blackrock during the mid- to late-nineteenth century. It was also very capacious, with no fewer than nine bedrooms. For some sixty years in the later twentieth century, it was the home of the Stephenson family, Desmond Stephenson and his family; he was a brother of the renowned Dublin architect, Sam Stephenson. In his time there, visitors included Brendan Behan, the writer, and another writer, Brian O’Nolan, otherwise known as Flann O’Brien, who lived three doors away.

BLACKROCK HOUSE

Blackrock House in Newtown Avenue was built as a two-storey Georgian house in about 1774; its third storey was added later. Unusually for the time, the facade of the house was faced in red brick. Most houses built in that period had their facades rendered. The house was indeed spacious, with six reception rooms and eight family bedrooms, two servants’ rooms, a servants’ hall, a laundry, a bootroom, and wine and beer cellars. The grounds ran down to the seashore and included a walled garden and grass tennis courts. An octagon summer house stood on the shore below the garden and the ruins of it are still there today.

The house was connected with several newsworthy and sometimes tragic events. In 1789, two young men, Crosbie and Maguire, ascended in a balloon from Mount Pleasant Square in Ranelagh. The ascent was successful but when they attempted to bring the balloon down, it landed in the sea off Howth. The two were rescued and taken across Dublin Bay to Blackrock House, where they were duly entertained. More tragically, in November 1807, when the Prince of Wales ran aground near Blackrock House, many of the bodies of soldiers, rescued from the stricken vessel, were laid out in Blackrock House.

Among the occupiers in the first eighty years of its existence were Lord Rutland and the Marquis of Buckingham. The last single owner-occupier of the house was the McCormick family, who bought it in 1898. They sold the house and the surrounding land in 1935; by 1940, it had been converted into flats, while part of the grounds were bought by a building firm called Archers, which built the terraced and semi-detached houses still standing today. At present, Blackrock House remains standing and is used for social housing.

CARYSFORT AVENUE

By 1840, the lower part of Carysfort Avenue had been fully developed, with some of the houses built in terraces, all distinguished by attractive door cases and fanlights. The terraces here were very similar in design to those at Prince of Wales Terrace, also on Carysfort Avenue. Close by, Anglesea Avenue and Sydney Avenue had been built earlier, about 1830, with late-Georgian-style terraced houses.

CARYSFORT PARK

Now owned by University College, Dublin, Carysfort House was built in 1803 by Sir John Proby and leased to Judge William Saurin, a notable legal figure of the time. Carysfort Park was built as a large three-storey over-basement house with a fine portico. The house was surrounded by open fields, which in recent times have been built over with houses and apartments. The house and the estate were bought by the Sisters of Mercy in 1891, who ran an industrial school for children there until 1903, when a teacher training college for women was set up. In this college, Éamon de Valera was an early professor of mathematics, appointed in 1906.

Other old buildings in Carysfort College included the novitiate, the halls of residence and the old farm buildings. Subsequently, newer buildings included the College of Education and a sports hall. In 1989, the Sisters of Mercy put their convent and the teacher training college on the market and Carysfort Park subsequently housed UCD’s graduate school of business studies.

DESTRUCTION OF OLD HOUSES

Over the past fifty years, since the late 1960s, the huge demand for building land in the Blackrock area has resulted in the destruction of many fine old houses, houses that once had considerable architectural and historical appeal. Artist and conservationist writer Peter Pearson has chronicled the destruction of many of these old houses, including Frescati House, Maretimo, Rosefield, Fitzwilliam Lodge, Laurel Hill, Elm Cliff, Dawson Court, Villa Nova, The Elms, Lisalea, Cherbury, Sans Souci, Rockville, Ardagh Park, Ardlui, Carysfort, Talbot Lodge, Hawthorn, Clareville and the eighteenth-century stables at Newtownpark House.

Some houses were saved from destruction, such as South Hill and the old house which is the focal point of the Blackrock Market, thanks to the interventions of An Taisce, even though planning permission had been given that allowed for their destruction.

DUNARDAGH

This fine house in the Italianate style was built at Temple Hill in 1860 and was complemented by its fine gardens. It subsequently became a seminary run by the Daughters of Charity. Nearby was Craigmore, built slightly earlier in the more restrained Georgian style, for a wealthy Quaker tea merchant called Jonathan Hogg. Subsequently, it became a centre for mentally handicapped people. Also close by was one of the finest Victorian mansions in Blackrock, Ardlui, also built in the Italianiate style. It had a very large conservatory running the full length of its south front and it was noted for its fine gardens. Sadly, this fine house was demolished in 1955.

FORT LISLE, ELM CLIFF AND
VAUXHALL GARDENS

Two houses, known as Vauxhall Gardens and Elm Cliff, were built around 1750 for a Dublin brewer called William Medcalf. They had spectacular sea views and were also renowned for their gardens. Vauxhall Gardens was converted into a hotel in 1793, while in 1834, Elm Cliff, formerly Fort Lisle, was turned into a boarding house. In 1879, Elm Cliff’s land was incorporated into the then new People’s Park, while the house itself was demolished in 1880. The other house, Vauxhall Gardens, suffered a similar fate, but today the gates that once formed its entrance are at the entrance to the park, while the gardens of the two houses are still incorporated into the grounds.

HAWTHORN

This large Victorian house was built about 1850 on a field adjacent to Carysfort Avenue; among its outstanding features was a large porch with a flight of granite steps and a pair of old gas lamps. The house was demolished in 1987 and the grounds were then completely built over.

LINDEN

Linden, in the area where Blackrock meets Stillorgan, was built around an eighteenth-century villa. Linden was run as a convalescent home for well over a century, from 1864 until 1996. The home was begun and run by the Sisters of Charity, who had also set up St Vincent’s Hospital. The third house here, Talbot Lodge, was also run as part of that convalescent home. Linden was also renowned for its gardens. The houses were eventually demolished and the site redeveloped for housing.

LIOS AN UISCE

At the bottom of Mount Merrion Avenue, in the mid-eighteenth century, a merchant and brewer called William Medcalf leased several plots from the Fitzwilliam Estate, the predecessor of the Pembroke Estate, in order to build a number of fine houses. He was obliged by the terms of his lease to spend at least £300 on each house and to make considerable plantations of trees such as oak and elm.

One of the houses he built is now known as Lios an Uisce, or Lisnaskea, on the high ground overlooking what is now Blackrock Park. In its first incarnation, the house, then known as Peafield Cliff, was of simple design, two storeys high and five windows wide. In 1754, it was leased to Lady Arabella Denny, along with two adjacent fields that would later become the site of Sion Hill convent and Peafield Terrace at the foot of Mount Merrion Avenue.

As the house didn’t have enough room for the large gatherings that assembled to dine and dance, in the tradition of Georgian Ireland, Lady Arabella had substantial extensions built on to the house, while she also had laid out a fine landscaped garden.

MARETIMO

Maretimo was built as a marine villa in about 1770 by Sir Nicholas Lawless, MP for Lifford in Co Donegal, and a successful woollen merchant, otherwise known as Lord Cloncurry. Like the neighbouring villas, Maretimo was renowned for its constant entertainments, at all hours of the day and night, and its lavish garden parties. Sir Nicholas was also a keen collector of classical antiquities and a generous patron of the arts. After he died in 1799, his second son, Valentine, succeeded him, and when the railway line from Westland Row to Dunleary was being built, it was he who persuaded the railway company to build an elaborate bridge, the Cloncurry Towers, which are still in place over the line.

With the death of the fourth baron in the early 1930s, the title died out. The 1936 Ordnance Survey map shows new terraced and two-storey houses that had been built in the former gardens of Maretimo House by a developer called J.P. Colbert. The big house itself survived until 1970, when it was demolished and replaced with an apartment block.

MELFIELD

Melfield, which is now in the grounds of Newpark Comprehensive School on Newtownpark Avenue, was built in the late eighteenth century, but little of the once elaborate interior survived. For many years, prior to the establishment of Newpark School, the house was occupied by the Avoca and Kingstown Junior School. Also nearby was Belfort, a solid Victorian house built in 1870. The gardens...