The Early Residential Buildings Of Trinity College Dublin

This book contains a history of the early buildings of Trinity College, from the Elizabethan Quadrangle up to the residential buildings of the early 18th century. Among all those red-brick buildings only the Rubrics remains, albeit much altered, to suggest what Trinity College looked like before the 1750s, when replacement of the early buildings began. Why and when were new buildings added to the College? How were they funded? Who designed them? Where were materials sourced? What can be said about the architecture of the buildings, all of which, apart from the Rubrics, were pulled down in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Who managed their construction on the College's behalf, and who carried out the building work? How were essential services provided? The book answers all of these questions, and en route it explores an almost forgotten event, the disastrous fire of February 1726/7, in which at least one house in Library Square was destroyed and several more were damaged. The book also explores the community of residents of the early buildings up to the end of the 19th century. The book ends with a personal memoir of the Rubrics in recent times.

Once Dublin's most exclusive residential street, throughout the eighteenth century Henrietta Street was home to the country's foremost figures from church, military and state. Here, in this elegant setting on the north side of the city, peers rubbed shoulders with property tycoons, clerics consorted with social climbers and celebrated military men mixed with the leading lights of the capital's beau monde, establishing one the principle arenas of elite power in Georgian Ireland. Looking behind the red-brick facades of the once-grand Georgian town houses, this richly illustrated volume focuses on the people who originally populated these spaces, delineating the rich social and architectural history of Henrietta Street during the first fifty years of its existence. Commissioned by Dublin City Council Heritage Office in conjunction with the 14 Henrietta Street museum, by weaving the fascinating and often colourful histories of the original residents around the framework of the buildings, in repopulating the houses with their original occupants and offering a window into the lives carried on within, this book presents a captivating portrait of Dublin?s premier Georgian street, when it was the best address in town.

This is the first comprehensive, scholarly history of Trinity College Library Dublin. It covers the whole 400 years of the Library's development, from its foundation by James Ussher in the seventeenth century to the electronic revolution of the twenty-first century. Particular attention is given to the buildings and to the politics involved in obtaining funding for them, as well as to the acquisition of the great treasures, such as the Book of Kells and the libraries of Ussher, Claudius Gilbert and Hendrik Fagel. An important aspect is the comprehensive coverage of legal deposit from the beginning of the nineteenth century, viewed for the first time from the Irish perspective. The book also draws parallels with the development of other libraries in Dublin and with those of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and features throughout the individuals who influenced the Library's development - librarians, politicians, readers, book collectors and book thieves.

In 1800, Dublin was one of the largest and most impressive cities in Europe. The city's townhouses and squares represented the pinnacle of Georgian elegance. Henrietta Street was synonymous with this world of cultural refinement, being one of the earliest and grandest residential districts in Dublin. At the end of the eighteenth century, the street was home to some of the most powerful members of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy. Yet, less than a century later, Dublin had been transformed from the playground of the elite into a city renowned for its deprivation and vast slums. Despite once being 'the best address in town, ' by 1900 almost every house on Henrietta Street was in use as tenements, some shockingly overcrowded. How did this happen? How did a location like Henrietta Street go from a street of mansions to one of tenements? And what was life like for those who lived within the walls of these houses? This is a story of adaptation, not only of buildings but of people. It is a story of decline but also of resilience. Spectral Mansions charts the evolution of Henrietta Street over the period 1800 to 1914. Commencing with the Act of Union and finishing on the eve of the First World War, the book investigates the nature and origins of Dublin's housing crisis in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Commissioned by Dublin City Council Heritage Office in conjunction with the 14 Henrietta Street Museum, the book uses the story of one street to explore the history of an entire city.

This innovative urban history of Dublin explores the symbols and spaces of the Irish capital between the Restoration in 1660 and the advent of neoclassical public architecture in the 1770s. The meanings ascribed to statues, churches, houses, and public buildings are traced in detail, using a wide range of visual and written sources.