The Duke of Wellington may have likened his birthplace to a stables, but Mornington House was always one of the finest town mansions in Georgian Dublin - though for decades it served only as offices for the Land Commission, the body that broke up the great estates.
Now this grand house on Merrion Street lives again as part of the five-star Hotel Merrion, with opulent interiors fit for a duke. It would have made a fine Taoiseach's residence, as the Heritage Council proposed, but this hope was dashed when it was sold off with its neighbours.
The terrace of four houses, directly opposite Government Buildings, was purchased by Martin Naughton and Lochlann Quinn, the millionaire owners of Glen Dimplex, and they decided to develop the property as a hotel, in partnership with the Hastings group in Belfast.
Architects Burke-Kennedy Doyle and Partners designed an Lshaped extension to the rear, following the lines of Fitzwilliam Lane and Baggotrath Place, to accommodate most of the 147 bedrooms, with a large landscaped courtyard separating it from the 18th-century houses.
Dublin Corporation's planners wanted the extension to be pushed further back and also insisted on the omission of its penthouse floor. But these conditions would have undermined the viability of the scheme and the developers managed to have them overturned by An Bord Pleanala. Had they failed, Lochlann Quinn and his friends would have been deprived of their enormous penthouse apartments, which are being sold in raw "shell-and-core" state for well over £500,000 apiece. The great advantage to the owners is that they will be serviced by the hotel.
Creditably, the architects avoided the obvious temptation to design the new block in a mock-Georgian style. "That was a source of some discussion between us and our clients," says Martin Jones, of BKD, "but we wanted to make a contrast between the old and the new."
The courtyard between new and old, with a garden designed by Jim Reynolds, has a full basement underneath to accommodate the hotel kitchens, car park and leisure centre - including a sizeable swimming pool, clad in blue mosaic tiles, with an attractive mural at one end.
AT present, the courtyard is overlooked by the aggressively horizontal rear-end of the JWT building on Baggot Street, dating from the early 1970s, but it's to be re-clad in a more sympathetic style. Right beside it, work is well under way on Patrick Guilbaud's new restaurant.
This will have its own entrance from the street, through the Georgian door of No. 21. The front room at hall-floor level will be a private dining-room, with the room at the rear being used for pre-dinner drinks. The restaurant itself will be located in a new building just behind it.
Designed by Arthur Gibney and Partners, who were also responsible for the present Guilbaud's, it will have an airy dining-room under a high barrel-vaulted ceiling. The new restaurant will also have its own terrace, with outdoor tables, at a lower level than the hotel's courtyard.
Adapting four Georgian houses for hotel use is no easy task. They were in "appalling" condition - particularly No. 22, where the roof was "falling in", there was "bright orange fuzz" on the walls and the top floor was "dry rot city", says Simon Healy, the project architect. Because No. 22 was better placed in relation to the complex as a whole, it was decided to locate the hotel entrance here. But Mornington House, at the end of the terrace, won't be wasted; its entrance hall and grand staircase will be used as a separate access for business meetings.
The fact that the houses had been "knocked together" during their civil service years was an advantage, since they had to remain linked to function as a hotel. Inevitably, there are changes in levels, marked by steps or ramps, but - let's face it - the Royal Hibernian had the same.
Most of the "quality" rooms, or suites, are located on the upper floors of the four houses. Though each room is individually air-conditioned, the ducts are cleverly concealed behind the ceilings or walls of the bathrooms, tiled in cool Carrara marble to Lochlann Quinn's taste. We are happy to add, however, that there are no gold taps.
Some compromises had to be made. On the first floor of Mornington House, a corridor cuts through one of the principal rooms - but its spectacular ceiling, uncovered by the restoration, is still fully visible, albeit through the over-high balustrade of a non-functioning gallery.
Mr Quinn insisted on built-in wardrobes in all of the bedrooms, which was probably a mistake; good Georgian or Victorian antiques would have been a more appropriate choice. The commodious double beds are all high, in what Mr Healy refers to as the "Nell Gwynn hop-up type". Thin Georgian glazing bars on all of the windows have been retained or reinstated, with the original "wavy" glass salvaged or recreated. Standard double-glazing would have made a mess of the windows, so this problem was solved by installing secondary glazing instead. Outside, the brickwork was "wigged and riddled" and then tuck-pointed, with the advice of David Slattery, who acted as consultant conservation architect on the project. And the removal of the link bridge restores the view of Government Buildings from Fitzwilliam Lane.
All of the Georgian floors had to be strengthened with steel, which meant that the ceilings had to be supported while this work was under way. Their plaster decoration, in the flamboyant rococo style, has since been expertly restored by the Galway stuccodore Seamus O hEocha.
The most surprising ceiling by far is a vast coved affair on the top floor of No. 22, Monck House. The birds in its elaborate rococo plasterwork all had their heads shot off, indicating that it was probably a gentlemen's games room, with plenty of space for a large billiard table. Ah! Now know something of what went on in gentlemen's games rooms.
A total of 34 Georgian fireplaces were salvaged and re-used, though one of the finest - in the entrance hall of Mornington House - is missing its centrepiece, which Lochlann Quinn might have re-carved. The detail in many of the original timber door surrounds is breathtaking.
Bulgarian limestone, indistinguishable from Portland, has been laid in main entrance halls of Nos. 22 and 24. Behind the front door, which has been split into a pair of vertical panels, there is a plateglass inner porch engraved with the hotel's logo - a Georgian ceiling rose.
To the left is a magnificent cantilevered stone staircase, still as solid as a rock, with a wrought-iron balustrade which has been brought up to regulation height so cleverly that the change is almost imperceptible. Two lifts are discreetly tucked away behind the main reception area.
All of the ground-floor rooms to the rear, where guests and visitors will enjoy afternoon tea, have been rather disappointingly connected together with series of doors of different sizes. Surely the architects could have created an enfilade, or palatial succession of doorways?
Unlike the Shelbourne, the tea salons all open out onto a south-facing terrace overlooking the landscaped courtyard, which is a definite plus. Beside this terrace, there is a modern glazed link to the new bedroom block; no attempt here to mimic a Victorian conservatory.
The hotel also has a bar at hall-floor level, fitted out rather sombrely in walnut, but the main bar is in the high-vaulted basement, with a cast-iron stairs leading directly down to it. This has been designed by David Crowley and Associates, who also did the hotel's restaurant.
A semi-circular triptych of murals in the restaurant features a very poor representation of the Wellington Monument in the Phoenix Park, presumably to establish a connection with the Iron Duke. There is also a tongue-in-cheek proposal, still undecided, to call the bar "The Stables".