Frescati House
Frescati House was a country house and estate in Blackrock , a suburb of the Irish capital Dublin , between the hills and the sea. In the 18th century, Blackrock was very popular with well-off people and grew into a fashionable seaside resort . The lower nobility of smog-ridden Dublin moved to the area to breathe sea air. During this time a number of country houses were built on the beach around Blackrock, e. B. Maretimo, Carysfort, Lios an Uisce and Sans Souci . Frescati House left the family of John Hely-Hutchinson , the Provost ofTrinity College Dublin , build in 1739.
history
The Duchess
In the 1750s, John Hely-Hutchinson sold the house to the FitzGeralds , Ireland's largest landowners, who owned land across Leinster . Frescati House became one of their three main residences , along with Leinster House in Dublin and Carton House in County Kildare . They spent a lot of time at Frescati House, especially in the summer. When Emily FitzGerald, Duchess of Leinster , saw Frescati House, she said she fell in love with the house.
expansion
Unlike Kildare House and Carton House, the FitzGeralds did not lease Frescati House, but bought it and had it expanded. They had it expanded in the 1760s. They are said to have put £ 85,000 into the house, which is many millions of euros in today's money. It was expanded to three times its original size and received side wings and bay windows to take advantage of the beautiful sea views. At that time the house got its name, based on the name of the Italian seaside resort Frascati .
Description of house and landscaped garden
Unlike other large houses, the exterior of Frescati House was kept simple and not decorated with decorative pediments and pillars. Some thought this was noble simplicity, others thought it was little remarkable or worth preserving. Its simple exterior contrasted with the richly decorated and well-designed interiors. There were carved marble mantels , many finely crafted ceilings, and top quality stucco work . There was a library, a classic stone staircase with walls decorated with medallions, and a circular room with a cross-vaulted ceiling . In the long living room there was a ceiling painted by Riley , a student of Joshua Reynolds . Frescati House even had its own theater with Corinthian columns. Jacob Smith , who had also worked at Carton House and Russborough House , landscaped the large formal gardens full of rare plants and bushes. The house was set back from the road on a large park and wooded lot; the Priory Stream flowed through it. There was also a small pond with sea water in the garden. The entrance to the property was near the entrance to what is now the Blackrock Shopping Center and the property extended to what is now Sydney Avenue .
Lord Edward FitzGerald
Frescati House was the favorite abode of Lord Edward FitzGerald , a prominent commander of the Society of United Irishmen . He was Emily FitzGerald's son and had spent much of his childhood here. The mother was very concerned about the health of her children and so they spent most of their time in Blackrock and were also brought up there. Emily FitzGerald was a great admirer of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Émile , who preached the importance of practical lessons from the real world over stubborn learning from books. Emily FitzGerald decided that Blackrock was the best place to practice Rousseau's ideals of raising her children. The princess, who loved extravagance, invited Rousseau herself to tutor her children at Frescati House. He refused, so Emily FitzGerald finally hired a Scottish tutor. He, named William Ogilvie , was given the job of bringing Émile to life in Blackrock. She later shocked her family and discredited them by marrying Ogilvie six weeks after her husband's death. Lord Edward married his wife Pamela in Tournai in December 1792 . After the couple had spent some time in Hamburg , it came to Frescati House in 1793. Because of Lord Edward's involvement with the United Irishman, the couple barely had a permanent home while they were together. Pamela, who some believe to have been the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Orléans , has been described as "elegant and highly committed" and as "sensible in her remarks and curiosity." Several meetings of the United Irishmen took place at Frescati House. Thomas Paine , the author of Human Rights , visited Lord Edward at Frescati House. Lord Cloncurry , who lived nearby, in Maritimo , was also a frequent visitor to the house. A passage from a letter Lord Edward wrote to his mother in 1793 reads:
“My wife and I have come to settle here. We came last night, got up today on a fine spring day and we're enjoying the little library; the windows are open and we hear the birds singing; this place looks beautiful. The plants in the passage have just been watered and, since we left the door to the passage open, the rooms smell like a greenhouse. Pamela has planted four wonderful flower pots and is now working on her blowing box while I am writing to my dearest mother; and on the two small shelves are six pots with beautiful auriculas and I am sitting in a bay window with all these good feelings that the beautiful weather, this beautiful place, the singing birds, the pretty woman and Frescati House give me. "
When he returned to the house in 1797, he wrote:
“I cannot describe to you how pleased I was to see this place again. Years go by in a moment; every bush, every curve, every noise in the house has its own little story. The weather is pleasant and the place looks beautiful. The trees have grown that way and there are thousands of beautiful, protected spots, which is very pleasant by the sea at this time of the year. The birds sing, the flowers bloom and for a few moments make me forget the world and all the villainy and tyranny that goes on in it. "
Following a meeting at Frescati House on February 24, 1798, FitzGerald's revolutionary plans were betrayed by Thomas Reynolds . In March 1798, the United Irishman had been infiltrated by spies. At that time, members of the Leinster Committee were imprisoned. Lord Edward FitzGerald came from ran away. But an informant lured by the £ 1000 was responsible for his arrest on May 19th on Thomas Street in Dublin. He shot one of the attackers trying to escape, but was shot himself in the process. He died on June 4, 1798 in Newgate Prison from his untreated wounds.
Victorian period
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Later the house briefly belonged to Sir Henry Cavendish , Treasurer for Ireland. From 1804, the Reverend Craig's boys' school was housed there for a while . This school prepared students for Trinity College in Dublin and instilled anti-papal and anti- Catholic values, exactly the opposite of what Lord Edward believed. Many significant mantels were removed from the house during this period. According to Gerald Campbell's book Edward and Pamela Fitzgerald , Lady Campbell (her daughter) found two of them in houses in Merrion Square . Five stables (which were in front of the curve of today's Frescati Park) were converted into residential buildings. The Craig family sold the property in the 1850s.
Construction activity at the beginning of the 20th century
In the 20th century, residential houses were built on the Frescati House estate, e.g. B. Frescati Park . This also partially included Stable Lane and the stable houses were demolished to make room for it. The residential area was built in the sparse forest around Frescati House and consisted of houses with arched windows similar to those of Frescati House. When Lisalea House was demolished, its property became part of the Frescati House estate.
The beginning of the end
Frescati House's decline began in the late 1960s when the McKinleys bought it. The extent of the associated property remained significant. In the late 1960s, Dún Laoghaire County Administration bought land from the property to build a bypass. Even after the land for the four-lane Blackrock bypass was sold, the house still had 2.8 acres. At the same time, Frescati House and its lands were re-designated as a commercial park. This meant a high financial potential for the property. In 1970 the property was owned by Frescati Estates Ltd , a company owned by the directors and owners of Roches stores . They asked for planning permission to demolish the house. The permit was granted regardless of what was to be built there. A supermarket, an office building, a hotel and a parking lot were planned for the property.
Fight to keep Frescati House
When the plans became public in 1971, there were objections from people who wanted to keep the country house. A meeting in the Blackrock Town Hall on the future of Frescati House was well attended. Various groups were formed to oppose the demolition. Some residents formed an organization called the Frescati Preservation Society . Desmond FitzGerald was its chairman and Marie Avis Walker supported the organization as secretary. Roches Stores merely agreed to receive a single, stuccoed ceiling to be kept in a memorial hall next to the supermarket. Local politicians joined in the Save Frescati cause as the continued existence of the house became a big issue with those who advocated preservation. Since the planning of demolishing the house for any replacement development had already been approved, the campaign focused on preventing planning permission for the replacement development.
Roches Stores threatened to sue Dún Laoghaire County Administration for £ 1.3 million, a large sum at the time, although legal opinion prevailed that such a lawsuit would not succeed. But they promised to withdraw the lawsuit if they were allowed to tear down the wing of the house. The county government of Dún Laoghaire proposed that this demolition permit be granted; the pillar room, however, was to be integrated into the part that was to be preserved. The proponents of preservation rejected this proposal. Various groups that wanted to keep the house, including An Taisce, Bord Fáilte , the National Monuments Advisory Council , the Old Dublin Society , the Arts Council and the Irish Georgian Society , signed a formal objection to the Dún Laoghaire County Administration's proposal, one To give permission to demolish even any part of Frescati House. Various companies offered to buy the house and build on the property without demolishing Frescati House. One of these companies wanted to build houses on the remaining land and restore Frescati House. All of these offers were rejected.
Conservation advocates feared Roches Stores would attempt to illegally demolish the house. When people living in the area noticed a truck full of brickwork from the house, they alerted Dublin City Council, which sent a building inspector. After gaining access to the house, the delegation found the mall's architect with some craftsmen there and discovered that some floors had been removed. The architect stated that “only floor boards and profile beams were raised”. There was no apparent reason that such work should be done in the house. However, it was not allowed to do any work of this kind in the house. The building inspector pointed this out clearly.
Maintaining Frescati House proved to be a difficult struggle. The campaign continued, including lengthy court battles and petitions. A historian from Trinity College wrote a master's thesis on the situation at Frescati House. She was summoned to court and asked what she thought of the proposed demolition of the Frescati House wing. “Rough,” she said, “it's vandalism! What more can one say of destroying good things that our ancestors left us in order to last? ”A petition with thousands of signatures from Ireland and abroad has been presented to the court. It was argued that Frescati House was structurally well preserved, but that work needed to be done inside. Mariga Guinness of the Irish Georgian Society said she had a lot of requests from people wanting to stay at Frescati House. She added that she saw buildings such as the British Embassy and Holy Cross that were in much worse shape have been restored.
Marie Avis Walker took advantage of a legal loophole first used by someone who had sought a permit in the early 1970s, "a small hut made of mud and willow branches, nine rows of beans and a hive for honey bees" on the Isle of Innisfree to build. This request was rejected by Sligo County Administration on the grounds that it would hamper public concerns. When Marie Avis Walker took advantage of this loophole, she was more successful: she received planning permission for a shopping center in which Frescati House would remain in its entirety. Developers expressed concern that she would be able to do so even though she was not the landowner. As a direct consequence of this, the relevant law was changed and today it is no longer possible to obtain planning permission for a property that does not belong to you. This process was important for another reason: Although Marie Avis Walker proved that the shopping center and Frescati House could coexist, Roches Stores rejected this possibility, thus demonstrating their unwillingness to keep Frescati House.
As the quarrel went on, the house fell into disrepair. Valuable parts of the interior, such as mantels, have been removed. Parts of the roofing were stolen, causing damage to the stucco. Roches Stores was unwilling to invest any money in maintaining a building that it was about to demolish. The county administration was also partly to blame for the decline, as they did not properly replace the wall they had torn down for the construction of the new bypass. This kept the Frescati House property open to the public and no action was taken against people who damaged the house. No repairs were carried out on the house, and so it continued to deteriorate. The increasingly deteriorating condition of the house was one of the factors that made the eventual demolition inevitable.
In the early 1980s, An Bord Pleanála finally granted permission to demolish the wings of the building. This demolition took place in 1981. This affected 70% of the house. The important circumstances that spoke for a restoration of the rest of the house were simply ignored later. When the wing was torn down, nothing was done to support the rest of the house. Even so, the house remained secure in its structure. The county administration has objected that the proposed replacement development is unsuitable for the area. When Roches Stores had completed their supermarket, those in favor of preservation no longer had any legal control, as the permit to demolish the house became effective as soon as the permit to develop the property was granted. The county government refused to negotiate with the preservation advocates. Roches Stores stated that Frescati House "could not be restored". Marie Avis Walker pointed out that the British embassy in Merrion Square, which had been damaged by fire, had been restored.
The end
At this stage it was clear that the attempt to preserve Frescati House had failed. In 1982 the county government tried to get an order from the Supreme Court to Roches Stores to restore the remainder of the home as stipulated in the planning permit. The judge, Mr. O'Hanlon , criticized both sides for the situation that had now developed. The county government had failed to ensure that the empty building was kept in good condition and to apply the law against Roches Stores. It had not responded effectively to the property developer’s refusal to keep promises to keep the one house and to spend £ 20,000 on necessary repairs. Judge O'Hanlon concluded that the condition was now irreversible and that it was no longer feasible at this stage to restore Frescati House. An extract from the judgment reads:
“It seems to me that the developer has completely ignored or even welcomed the deterioration in the building's condition, and in any case has done nothing to stop it. I mean that the property developer has failed to heed any moral obligation that arose from negotiating with the county administration or the planning application, but I also mean that the county administration has completely failed to use its legal power to deal with this situation to become."
On November 4, 1983, Frescati House was demolished to the ground in the early hours of the morning, ending a campaign that had lasted nearly 13 years. Two excavators did the job quickly and not a single demonstrator showed up to prevent the destruction, although some came to watch the demolition. Some of the bamboo plants that Lord Edward planted as a sprout, brought back from a trip to St. Lucia Island in the Caribbean , were still there. Souvenir hunters came to search the rubble that remained on the property until 10:00 a.m. Then the remains were loaded onto trucks and dumped in Ringsend . Aidan Kelly summed up the end of Frescati House in a letter that appeared in the Irish Independent :
“Slowly, well before winter dawn, the yellow monster lurched against the gray facade. A lone rook rummaged in the large beeches nearby, disturbed by the merciless purr of powerful engines. Down by the stream, what was left of the ornamental garden, some bamboo leaves, trembled in the night breeze. A powerful arm struck the building. There was no noise, not even a rumble. Brickwork fell down the ivy-covered walls with a rustle and a cloud of dust, only to thump in the moss. Within an hour, Frescati House no longer existed "
“A long time later, in the dim light of the November morning, some early buyers came along, lost in their own business. They didn't notice anything. Perhaps our small and selfish minds, our stealthy Irish manner, our willing response to the flipping of a coin, will never be able to capture the natural nobility and great sincerity of this man [Lord Edward FitzGerald]! His progressive realization of the utter injustice of the aristocracy's behavior towards Ireland is something the Irish will never have the intellectual grandeur to value. In Irish popular belief, this gallant man has always been a bad patriot. Now roll a boulder into it and attach a board to it! How quickly we judge and insult someone and don't even notice ... "
Aftermath
Roches stores no longer exist since the Frescati House was demolished. The store has tripled and is now called the Frascati Shopping Center (note the "a"!). A new shopping center was built opposite the site of the former country house and opened just two years after the demolition. To compensate for the loss of Frescati House, Frescati Estates Ltd agreed to offer an ongoing grant to University College Dublin , endowed with £ 50,000; it is called the Lord Edward Fitzgerald Memorial Fund . Roches Stores had a granite boulder with a bronze plaque placed next to the entrance. The tablet recalls Lord Edward FitzGerald, even if the inscription shows factual inaccuracies; so is z. B. mentioned that he lived in “Frascati House” (note the “a” again!). The boulder is to the right of the pedestrian entrance to today's shopping center, but hedges often grow over the front so that passers-by can barely see it.
The Priory Stream (or Frescati Stream near the former country house) is now channeled and lies under the parking lot; but you can see it between the adjoining apartment buildings, then it flows under the main street and pours into Blackrock Park . In times of threat from unexpected attacks by the Crown Militia from Dublin Castle , the stream may have provided an escape route. The original tunnel that Emily FitzGerald had built to carry seawater into the park at Frescati House has been preserved to this day. You don't know exactly where it is and it has been locked.
The visitor may notice scattered blocks of granite that appear out of place in a parking lot. They once belonged to the country house. The remains of Frescati House are now scattered and difficult to find. The cast iron railings were stolen, but some fragments of the stucco are being kept in a safe place by the keepers. Ironically, more of the house would have survived if Roches Stores had been allowed to start demolishing in 1971. The stucco ceiling, which they originally offered to preserve, has now been destroyed.
Pressure from proponents of keeping reached a nearby country house, St Helen's, being declared a National Monument . This house has since been converted into a five-star Radisson Blu hotel . The experience gained in dealing with Frescati House was used elsewhere. Hundreds of homes in the area were placed on a list of structures to be preserved immediately after Frescati House was demolished. The Frescati House case was considered in the final stages of the Architectural Heritage (National Inventory) and Historic Monuments (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 1998 and buildings of cultural importance are now given more protection by the resulting law. The high level of neglect that Frescati House experienced was a key tactic of the developer. Legislation was later introduced allowing owners of historic buildings to be jailed or fined up to £ 1 million for neglect. This law came into play when Arthur's Garage , a historic listed building in the southern city center, was illegally demolished. The developer agreed and did so to rebuild it.
Blackrock to Frescati House
Blackrock is an upscale residential area. The high demand for building land in Blackrock has resulted in the demolition of a number of old houses, including B. Maretimo, Dawson Court, The Grove, Mount Merrion House, The Elms, Laural Hill, Fitzwilliam Lodge, Talbot Lodge, Frescati Lodge, Woodville, Carysfort Lodge, Avoca House, Lisalea House, Ardlui, Linden Castle and the Yankee Terrace (a Street with about 10 small farmhouses from the 19th century). None of these represent as much of a loss as Frescati House's.
Blackrock has changed a lot since the Frescati House was demolished. The bypass has changed the character of the area. There is a vibrant atmosphere in the village, dominated by cafes, pubs and boutiques.
Frescati House was the last significant building associated with the 1798 boom. The ongoing change in Blackrock was described by a longtime resident, comedian Rosaleen Linehan . In her own words, “Long live Blackrock. Nostalgia continues on itself. There is no doubt that in 40 years' time people will be lamenting the loss of the Roches Center and all of its outlets and its replacement by a fake version of Frescati House. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Roches sale puts reclusive retail dynasty in limelight for last time in National News, Frontpage Independent.ie.
- ^ P. Pearson: Between the Mountains and the Sea in Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County . The O'Brien Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0-86278-977-0 .
- ^ Alfred Webb: Lord Edward FitzGerald - Irish Biography . In: Library Ireland . Retrieved February 20, 2019.
Coordinates: 53 ° 18 ′ 4 " N , 6 ° 10 ′ 54.8" W.