Remarkable €5.2m restoration sees new life given to Dublin's historic 11 Parnell Square
11 Parnell Sqaure Dublin Irish Heritage Trust. Picture: Colin Shanahan www.digicolphotography.com
‘Done by the book’ just about sums up the remarkable conservation and new lives given back to Dublin’s 11 Parnell Square – during its long years of standing to date it has featured in James Joyce’s 1914 Dubliners short story Ivy Day in the Committee Room; the 260-year old building also housed Dublin County Council for 75 years, and it now is a secure home for the private poetry libraries of both Seamus Heaney and Austin Clarke.
And, doing the other books, and as impressive, the two-years’ long €5.2 million restoration and adaptation of the four-storey house to A3 rating on one of Dublin’s oldest Georgian squares just two minutes from the top of O’Connell Street to new cultural space came in on budget, and even includes a substantial bike shed that cost just €16,500… unlike a certain one at Leinster House that infamously cost €336,000, the price of a small semi-d.
Number 11 Parnell Square is bursting with stories, and in its new shiny old guise after a painstaking and often adaptive conservation of a national treasure will continue to forge many more: overseeing architect Valerie Mulvin of the acclaimed architectural practice McCullough Mulvin says it’s now robustly set up for the next 100 years or more.
On top of the process from start to finish was Anne O’Donoghue, CEO of the Irish Heritage Trust (IHT) whose headquarters is here, No 11, and her avowed mantra from start to finish was “the budget is the budget.” It’s possibly not a surprise to learn Ms O’Donoghue came to head up the heritage body, a registered charity, after a career in investment banking, thanks to a keen interest in the arts and asserts “the IHT delivers to budget.”
That ‘budget is the budget’ mantra has been used before, one suspects, in the case of several other key building in the care of the Irish Heritage Trust, including Cork’s Fota House, arboretum and gardens, Strokestown Park/the Irish Famine Museum, and Waterford’s Johnston Castle Estate.
It chimed instantly with architect Valerie Mulvin and Poetry Ireland director Claire Power, nodding with familiarity at it when the Irish Examiner got a private, two-hour two of the four-storey No 11 just days before its official launch and reopening this Thursday, in the more presence exalted presence of President Catherine Connolly.
Originally built as a city pied a terre for the powerful and wealthy Butler/Ormond family (who called Kilkenny Castle their country residence,) No 11 Parnell Square is now the shared new home, offices and meeting spaces for Poetry Ireland, the Irish Heritage Trust and the Irish Landmark Trust, with up to 35 staff between the three bodies getting to work in some of the most glorious surroundings, in the northside heart of the city, with the building now owned by the supportive Fingal County Council.
Notably, the three bodies have their presence, often side-by-side and intermingling, on several of the levels of this four storey (three floors over tall basement) elegant brick-faced mid-terrace building) on the eastern flange of what was originally called Rutland Square when it was first laid out by the 18th century developer Luke Gardiner: his surname is still recalled in the nearby Gardiner Street.
No 11 has views over the Garden of Remembrance to the front, a tranquil outdoor space behind the Rotunda hospital through its slender, tall six-over-four pane custom-made sash windows, with the original crest of Dublin County Council, including a raven, in carved stone over the portico, while to the back it looks out to the backs of equally imposing buildings on North Great Georges Street.
Several of those ‘behinds’ have curvaceous bows in brick up all their levels, as does No 11, where now a second bow has been added in specially-made brick, curved in a tighter form, to facilitate a lift for access to all levels for those with various needs. Separately, an external lift has been slotted in by the street level railings and basement steps to get access if need to the lower ground/basement level where Poetry Ireland has large, interlinked series of rooms for events, readings and other communal cultural assemblies with rear garden access.
Cultural Quarter Hopes It’s hoped that the (re)opening and new facilities will add to the cultural heft already on its proud, but still slightly down at heel, Parnell Square doorstep, envisaged in the near future as a vibrant cultural quarter to rival attractions south of the Liffey.
Already on the square are the James Joyce Centre, and the Irish Writers’ Centre, while across the trafficked road next door to the Garden of Remembrance, is the Gate Theatre, while the Hugh Lane Gallery is on the square’s northern section, currently closed for refurbishment for a three-year span.
Bigger again and surely of critical importance is the hope for a new, €100 million Dublin City Library at and behind Nos 23 – 28 Parnell Square adjoining the 1908- established Hugh Lane Galler of contemporary art, with much of its collection lent to other galleries and institutions pending reopening.
That huge civic library spend has been several years in the wings, with several redesigns, and activity on this ‘big book’ project has yet to start.
By comparison, No 11 Parnell Square was relatively small fry: plans for the restoration/conservation and adaptation to safe accessible multi-use cultural space started back in 2019 under then-lead architect Niall McCullough, but got derailed by covid, and then by soaring build costs.
The plans got cut back slightly, and by the time work was ready to start two or three years ago, McCullough Mulvin once again won the managing contract, albeit for a slightly scaled back range of facilities, with director Valerie Mulvin takin charge after the death several year ago of her husband and practice co-founder Niall. (Further south, McCullough Mulvin did the stunning, jenga-brick-like student accommodation apartments at Cork’s Victoria Cross for UCC.)
At No 11 Parnell Square, construction and other hands-on works were done by specialists Bourke Builders, who even made the windows, while the materials they got to work on spanned three centuries, including repointing the brick, doing a full re-roof job at a cost of €275,000 found to be necessary once the revised project was started in on and had to be accommodated within the €5.2m budget.
Funding largely came from the Government’s Project Ireland 2040 Urban Regeneration and Development Fund (URDF), alongside €1.2m fundraised by tenants IHT, Poetry Ireland and Irish Landmark Trust through philanthropic and other supports.
Visually, there are many arresting original details, such as ornate ceilings (some small, representative sections were left bare after cleaning to show the level of detail), vaulted ceilings in oval shaped attic level rooms, unusually fine for a top floor, usually reserved for servants. Even No 11’s second service/staff staircase is a wonder in cut stone: this building was designed and built day one to impress.)
The mid-level’s immaculate oak parquet flooring managed to survive during the difficult and painstaking process of negotiating ‘fire-stopping,’ necessitating a delicate balance when safety protection is needed between various internal levels, where on the one hand you have precious plasterwork on ceilings, and flooring on the flip side: truly, one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor, and thankfully safe solutions were found for a heritage building that wears its age with pride.
Architect/project manager Valeire Mulvin says she’ s most proud of the cleaning and conservation of the impressive cantilevered staircase, where even small interventions can result in catastrophic collapse (as happened in 2007 at the National History Museum). Now suspended over it, encouraging visitors to crane necks upwards and away from the detailed mosaic floor, is a colourful suspended artwork “Infinity Loops”, by artist: Méadhbh O'Connor, in steel and plexiglas, funded under the Percent For Art scheme.
That contemporary piece sits nicely above the high quality ‘Celtic Revival’ handiwork in stained glass in the same hall’s oak foyer/internal porch, put in in the early 1900s when Dublin County Council took over the building and enriching many areas with the best of native craftsmanship and Irish motifs, including oak seating, benches and throne-like seats for the mayor and other top officials in the Council chamber (the Council was disbanded and broken into three in 1973).
Original owners the Butlers/Ormonds had left No 11 around 1830, and later occupiers included private tenants and clubs, seeing the old Ascendancy order being replaced with more nationalist minded occupiers such as the National Club in the late 1800s, in tune with changing political times: ironically, the Orange Order had occupied an adjoining house, built originally as a pairing for No 11: if the party walls could talk?
Today, if the walls could talk, they might discourse in fine prose and verse, and may even instance that line from Nobel prize winner, poet Seamus Heaney, “where hope and history rhyme,” as some 3,900 books collected by the late, great writer were gifted to Poetry Ireland by the Heaney family, and are currently being catalogued, many with personal dedications from other writers and poets; others have small notes and memos among the pages.
Also coming home to Poetry Ireland is a collection of 5,500 titles from the Austin Clarke Collection: both can be made accessible to readers and researchers, and building tours of what will be known as the Dublin Centre for Heritage and Poetry will also be made available, says IHT CEO Anne O’Donoghue along with events and launches.
Among the many fireplaces (all decommissioned) is the one in Joyce’s story ‘Ivy Day in the Committee Room’ where several canvassers for Parnellite politicians discuss the events of the day around the embers of dying fire, brought back to life in a novel way of opening cork-stopped stout bottles: in this ‘Dubliners’ short story, and in the absence of a corkscrew two bottles get placed by the fire and, after slow warming, the corks came out of their own volition “with an apologetic ’pok.’” Warm stout? More likely it will champagne corks proudly popping for the next few events at No 11 Parnell Square.
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