When the Irish Georgian Society was founded almost 50 years ago, the nation had no great love of its architectural heritage. Thankfully, times have changed, writes Robert O'Byrne
It has become something of a truism to say that Ireland and her citizens are today utterly changed from what they used to be. But nothing better brings home the reality of this observation than an examination of our recent past. It is, for example, astonishing to discover that when two private individuals, Desmond and Mariga Guinness, officially established the Irish Georgian Society on February 21st, 1958 (50 years ago on Thursday), the nation's heritage of 18th-century architecture was viewed by most of her citizens with at best indifference, at worst overt hostility.
The incident that spurred the Guinnesses into action serves to illustrate just how bad the plight of our Georgian heritage then was. In July 1957, the demolition of two superb 18th-century houses on Kildare Place, a small piazza adjacent to the Dáil, received authorisation from the government, which owned both buildings. No 2 Kildare Place had been designed by Richard Castle and executed after his death in 1751 by John Ensor; its equally distinguished neighbour was of a slightly later date.
Both of these splendid houses were in excellent condition and there was no reason for their destruction other than a disinclination on the part of the State to maintain the properties. Had they survived, they would now be worth millions, an asset to the exchequer and to our tourist industry. But as a correspondent wrote in the Irish Architect and Contractor, "In the year 1957, when financial stringency decrees that 50,000 of our people must leave in order that our balance of payments be preserved, our Government allows the wilful destruction of £40,000 of Irish public property which from a point of view of history and tradition is priceless."
Desmond Guinness still remembers that the first he knew of the intended Kildare Place demolition was when, emerging from the Shelbourne Hotel, he saw workmen removing the houses' roof slates. Immediately he wrote a letter of protest to the editor of The Irish Times, proposing that rather than being wantonly destroyed, the houses should be preserved and used to display properly the neighbouring National Museum's fine collection of 18th-century furniture, at that time squeezed into a couple of rooms and "stacked as though in a saleroom for lack of space".
An editorial in the same edition of this newspaper concurred with his suggestion and decried the official "barbarous decision to destroy the two handsome houses". And in his Cruiskeen Lawn column, Myles na gCopaleen felt driven to ask whether the clearance of Kildare Place meant "that there is no regard by the State to what may be called the nation's soul?". All protest was to no purpose - the government had made up its mind. In August 1957 the two houses were pulled down and an ugly brick wall erected in their place. Half a century later it is still there, leaving Kildare Place a barren, wind-swept spot.
THOUGH A FEW people mourned the unnecessary loss of these fine buildings, probably more concurred with the minister of state quoted as saying, "I was glad to see them go. They stand for everything I hate." For much of the last century Georgian architecture was widely perceived in Ireland as being something alien, the product of a foreign culture imposed upon this country.
In 1970, Tipperary County Council wished to demolish the early 18th-century Damer House in central Roscrea, Co Tipperary, and replace the building with a municipal car park. The Irish Georgian Society campaigned against this proposal and volunteered to undertake a programme of restoration. This offer was eventually accepted, but even when the work had been completed a local councillor could still see fit to denounce Damer House as a "bastion of British imperialism" on which no public funds should be squandered.
Is it any surprise that in such a climate so many significant properties, part of this nation's collective heritage, the work of Irish builders and craftsmen, were wilfully swept away? Though much remains, it is easy to forget how much has been lost in the past half century, very often, like with the Kildare Place houses, through acts of breathtaking vandalism. In 1946, for example, the Land Commission, which had already carved up the Hazelwood estate in Co Sligo, sought a buyer for the old house, a superlative Palladian building dating from the early 1730s. It was a condition of the sale that the new owner should demolish Hazelwood, remove all materials and level the site. (Curiously, the house somehow survived this intended fate and is now scheduled for restoration.)
The commission's unsympathetic approach to Ireland's Georgian heritage was typical of the public sector, but the private was no better. At the end of the following decade, not long after the Irish Georgian Society was founded, Elizabeth Bowen, one of this country's finest novelists of the 20th century, finally gave up the fruitless struggle to maintain her family home, Bowen's Court in Co Cork. She sold it to a local man in the belief that the house, a fine example of mid-18th-century design, would continue to be cherished. Within two years her former home had been pulled down.
"It was a clean end," she later ruefully observed. "Bowen's Court never lived to be a ruin." But the house should never have had to be a ruin, and nor should it have been pulled down. Elizabeth Bowen was obliged to sell because she could not afford to live in the house any longer; because the State gave no support in ensuring its survival; because, as Desmond Guinness wrote in the Irish Georgian Society's spring 1960 bulletin, "we are the only country in Europe that has not yet developed its architecture as a tourist asset".
Right from the start, the society argued that this nation's Georgian buildings should be cherished and protected not merely for their inherent beauty, but as a valuable asset in the business of attracting tourists to Ireland. Nobody, after all, has ever travelled here to admire our extensive collection of dormer bungalows and suburban housing estates. It has always been apparent that the majority of visitors to this country relish our exceptional heritage of 18th-century architecture. In fact, for a long time the only people who seemed not to appreciate its worth were the citizens of Ireland.
On December 31st, 1959, the architectural correspondent of this newspaper wrote, "It is well-known that, as far as the central city is concerned, the days of Dublin's Georgian heritage are numbered and that when these decayed and obsolete monuments of a past age come to be demolished, many of their sites will be redeveloped with buildings much larger in bulk and greater in height than the present ones."
That unhappy prophecy soon came to pass when, in 1961, the ESB announced its intention to demolish a terrace of 16 Georgian houses on Lower Fitzwilliam Street and the fight to save the capital's legacy of 18th-century architecture commenced.
Today the fight is largely over. During the past 50 years, the Irish Georgian Society - which remains a small, voluntary organisation entirely funded by the generosity of a few thousand members worldwide - has engaged in many battles. Some of these it won, others it lost. The victories include saving several key 18th-century monuments such as the Tailors' Hall and St Catherine's Church in Dublin; rescuing properties such as Damer House, Roundwood House in Co Laois, and Doneraile Court, Co Cork; and, above all, ensuring the preservation of Castletown House, Co Kildare, which is Ireland's earliest and greatest Palladian house.
Unfortunately the defeats were equally numerous and can be recalled wherever the pathetic remnants of a once fine house or an ill-sited, ill-conceived and poorly executed building are found throughout the country.
ATTITUDES, BOTH PUBLIC and private, have changed, and legislation, along with its implementation, has greatly improved. When it comes to questions of heritage, Ireland and her citizens are now very different from what they used to be. But it would be a mistake to imagine the cause that originally inspired the establishment of the Irish Georgian Society half a century ago has become redundant.
In the very first year of its existence, the society expressed grave concern over the fate of Vernon Mount, an irreplaceable late 18th-century villa with painted interiors that stands on the outskirts of Cork city. Vernon Mount is now in such poor condition that it has been placed on the World Monuments Fund's 2008 list of 100 most endangered sites and, just as was the case 50 years ago, the Irish Georgian Society is campaigning to ensure the house's future. The fight for Ireland's heritage is by no means over.
• Robert O'Byrne is writing a history of the Irish Georgian Society, due to be published later this year