ATTRIBUTED TO THOMAS PENRONE (1741-1792)
Two architectural drawings depicting (1) Ground Plan of the Chief Secretary's House and Elevations of the East Front and South Front and (2)Plan of the...

ATTRIBUTED TO THOMAS PENRONE (1741-1792)
Two architectural drawings depicting (1) Ground Plan of the Chief Secretary's House and Elevations of the East Front and South Front and (2)Plan of the Second Floor
Extensively annotated, and numbered and inscribed verso '9(4) / Plan of the / Chief Secretary's / House in the / Phoenix Park'.
Pencil, pen, ink and watercolour, 42 x 54cm and 27.2 x 35cm. Unframed  (2)

 

Provenance: Sylvester Douglas (1743-1823, created Lord Glenbervie in 1800) Chief Secretary of Ireland from 1794-1795; His son Frederick Sylvester Douglas (1791-1819) married Wrightson Harriet, who married as her second husband, Henry Hutchinson (b.1790) whose younger daughter Louisa-Lucy married Sir Sitwell Reresby Sitwell of Renishaw Hall in 1857; By descent in the Sitwell family at Weston Hall, in Northhamptonshire 

 

These plans related to the building in the Phoenix Park, now named Deerfield, which since 1927 has been the residence of the American Ambassador to Ireland. The building’s present appearance belies its origins as a modest lodge for the park bailiff, which having been first enlarged and remodelled in 1776, was acquired by the Government in 1782 to serve as the official residence of the Chief Secretary. Further enlarged and remodelled in several phases over the first half of the nineteenth century, it continued to accommodate successive chief secretaries –  including Sir Arthur Wellesley (1807-1809, later Duke of Wellington), his brother William Wellesley-Pole (1809- 1812), Sir Robert Peel (1812-1818) William Lamb (1827-1828, later Lord Melbourne), and Lord Frederick Cavendish, famously murdered in the Park on the day of his arrival in 1882 – down to the last, Sir Hamar Greenwood (1920-1922). 

 

The drawings were sold from Weston Hall, in Northamptonshire, until recently a seat of the Sitwell family, principally of Renishaw Hall, and came to Weston through Sylvester Douglas (1743-1823, created Lord Glenbervie in 1800) who served as Chief Secretary under the Earl of Westmorland, from 1794-1795. Although unsigned undated, the drawings can be attributed to Thomas Penrose (1741-1792), Clerk and Inspector of Civil Buildings to the Barrack Board, who succeeded to the post on the death of Thomas Cooley in 1784. Penrose, born in Waterford into a prosperous Quaker family, his architecture, like Cooley’s, was imbued with neo-classicism, the limited knowledge about the beginnings of his architectural career marked by an association with James Wyatt, having served in effect as the architect’s agent in Ireland, supervising Wyatt’s works between 1772 and 1787. Work with the Wide Streets Commissioners in 1782 was followed by appointment to the Barrack Board  and among his earliest recorded work in this role were proposals for the Chief-Secretary’s Lodge, as evidenced by a design for an entablature for the study, signed by the architect and dated 28 August 1784 which, with other drawings, is preserved in the Stapleton collection in the National Library. 

 

The drawings in this lot clearly served as a survey of the existing building, evidently made after it had been formally acquired for the Chief Secretary in 1782, but perhaps had been specifically prepared by Penrose in advance of these relatively minor alterations. However, from the pencil annotations, it seems likely the survey drawings were later furnished by the Civil Buildings office to Douglas as an incoming Chief Secretary. While the death of Penrose in 1792 offers a terminus ante quem for the survey, these later pencil additions can be dated to the period 1794-1795. These include reference to ‘Lady K’S dressing room’, ‘Mr. D’s wardrobe’ and ‘Trail’s bed chamber’ confirming the association with Sylvester Douglas (later Lord Glenbervie) who was married to Lady Katherine North (1760- 1817, daughter of Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford). Douglas served briefly under Westmorland, arriving in 1794 until Westmorland’s recall in 1795, with James Trail, nephew of the Bishop of Down and Connor, serving as his private secretary during this time. The annotations suggest the drawings were supplied to Douglas in advance of taking up the post and that he subsequently had them marked them up with his proposed domestic arrangements.  

 

However the chief significance of these drawings is that they reveal for the first time the character of the building created in 1776 for Sir John Blaquiere (later 1st Lord de Blaquiere), before its alteration in the early years of the nineteenth century and the subsequent remodelling and enlargement which resulted in the present building; although Deerfield still retains Blaquiere’s buildings at its core, the visible fabric now holds few clues as to its original appearance or layout.  

 

Blaquiere (1732-1812), the son of a Huguenot refugee who settled in London in 1685, began his career in a London counting house, purchased a commission in the army, and by 1771 was with the English legation at the French court in Paris, secretary to the ambassador Lord Harcourt (Simon, 1st Earl Harcourt, 1714-1777). When Harcourt was appointed Lord Lieutenant in 1772, Blaquiere accompanied him as Chief-Secretary serving until Harcourt’s resignation in 1776. Described by Horace Walpole as ‘a frank, good humoured but weak and conceited man’, Blaquiere was socially and politically ambitious. As Chief Secretary he was the effective leader for government in the House of Commons, gaining in this role a reputation that ranged from popularity to contempt, In terms of architectural patronage, Blaquiere was influential in modernising the capital, serving as a member of the paving board from 1784, the same year he introduced a Wide Streets Bill, while in the same period he helped to establish free conduits and fountains throughout the city. 

 

For Irish Chief-Secretaries, one of the usual perquisites in lieu of a formal pension, was the grant of sinecures becoming vacant during the tenure, which in 1775 resulted in Blaquiere securing the office of Bailiff of the Phoenix Park.  Serving under the ranger and keepers, the bailiff was the person responsible for inspecting and reporting on all aspects of the park as well as costing, organising and overseeing necessary works.  With an annual salary of just £9, the role also included lodgings, then provided in a relatively modest four-roomed dwelling with a ‘potato patch’ and grazing for six beasts.  However, just as Nathaniel Clements had enhanced the post of park ranger, Blaquiere quickly moved to make his new position more prestigious. He succeeded in having the salary substantially increased to £500, obtained the right to assign his duties to a deputy or under-bailiff and, just as Clements had built an imposing ranger’s residence (which like the Baliff’s Lodge was acquired by Government in 1782 to become the Vice-Regal Lodge, and is now Áras an Uacthtaráin), he proceeded in 1776 to remodel and enlarge the modest bailiff’s lodgings, and extended its lands to provide a fitting demesne.

 

In terms of architectural patronage, Blaquiere was influential in modernising the capital, serving as a member of the paving board from 1784, the same year he introduced a Wide Streets Bill, while in the same period he helped to establish free conduits and fountains throughout the city. 

 

For Irish Chief-Secretaries, one of the usual perquisites in lieu of a formal pension, was the grant of sinecures becoming vacant during the tenure, which in 1775 resulted in Blaquiere securing the office of Bailiff of the Phoenix Park.  Serving under the ranger and keepers, the bailiff was the person responsible for inspecting and reporting on all aspects of the park as well as costing, organising and overseeing necessary works.  With an annual salary of just £9, the role also included lodgings, then provided in a relatively modest four-roomed dwelling with a ‘potato patch’ and grazing for six beasts.  However, just as Nathaniel Clements had enhanced the post of park ranger, Blaquiere quickly moved to make his new position more prestigious. He succeeded in having the salary substantially increased to £500, obtained the right to assign his duties to a deputy or under-bailiff and, just as Clements had built an imposing ranger’s residence (which like the Baliff’s Lodge was acquired by Government in 1782 to become the Vice-Regal Lodge, and is now Áras an Uacthtaráin), he proceeded in 1776 to remodel and enlarge the modest bailiff’s lodgings, and extended its lands to provide a fitting demesne.

A survey of the park by Thomas Sherrard in this period shows the building in its newly extended demesne, and significantly the plan form corresponds exactly with the plans represented in these drawings. It is reasonable to propose that Blaquiere involved Thomas Cooley (1741-1784) in the design. The London-born architect, a pupil of Robert Mylne, who came to Dublin in 1769 to erect on behalf of the city’s merchants his competition winning entry for the Royal Exchange, had settled in Ireland, finding patronage in the See of Armagh under Primate Richard Robinson and, significantly, been appointed Clerk and Inspector of Civil Buildings to the Barrack Board in the same year Blaquiere was given the post of park bailiff. Among Cooley’s early works were designs for the Public Law Offices in 1776, in which the Lord Lieutenant, Earl Harcourt and Blaquiere were closely involved.

The drawings reveal the extent of the building as enlarged and remodelled for Blaquiere, the original four-roomed lodge, likely sharing the seventeenth century origins of the park, now subsumed into the core of a compact villa in fashionable neo-classical style, its sophistication expressed in the handsome, well balanced proportions and restrained details. The existing four-bay, two storey block was essentially enlarged with neat single-storey wings, each set back slightly with a cornice and blocking course concealing a hipped roof, and with a large tripartite or Wyatt window set in a shallow, segmental-headed relieving arch. The western eastern wing was given a deeper plan to accommodate new entrance, formed as a variation on the theme of a Venetian window, with a pretty fanlit doorcase flanked by narrow sidelights. 

 

The appearance of the main front, with the design and arrangement of the wings is especially interesting because it anticipates James Gandon’s important villa design for Emsworth, Malahide, made almost two decades later, and more significantly perhaps seems to have provided a model for Francis Johnston’s highly accomplished villa at Galtrim in Meath of c.1802, and unexecuted design of 1808 for a lodge for the Private Secretary in the Viceregal demesne. Johnston, who in 1776 as a 16-year old had been sent from Armagh to Dublin to train in Cooley’s office by Primate Richard Robinson and would eventually be appointed Architect and Inspector of Civil Buildings in 1801, was evidently very familiar with Blaquiere’s lodge, even if by 1803 the building had already been radically altered by the addition of bowed fronts to the wings, linked by a glazed colonnade which continues to dominate the south, garden front.

 

One distinctive aspect of Blaquiere’s building before alteration was the provision of a rooftop conservatory, shown in the drawing above the flat roof of this wing, representing an unusual feature with few comparisons in this period. Internally, the neat formality of the main front gives way to a less coherent plan, its somewhat sprawling irregularity obviously explained by the absence of a basement and the constraints of an older plan. Notable is the wine cellar, located off the main stair, its size and prominence of within the plan giving some credence to the claim made in 1782 that Blaquiere was ‘very hospitable. Has a good cook and good wines and knows their influence’.

 

Whether or not Cooley was involved, it remains unclear whether de Blaquiere’s alterations to the old baliff’s lodge were undertaken in a personal, rather than official capacity, for although he succeeded in having been granted some £8,000 from the public purse towards the building, the canny former Chief Secretary (one of whose successors, William Eden, had complained in 1780 that ‘Confinement in the Castle air will soon destroy both me and my family’) sold the lodge to the government in 1782 for £7,000, to serve as the official residence of the Chief Secretary

 

Sir John Blaquiere, who continued to serve as Bailiff until 1789, settled permanently in Ireland having already married a wealthy heiress, Eleanor Dobson, this marriage and the profits of his sinecures allowing him financial independence, with estates in Westmeath and Cavan. Made a Knight of the Bath in 1774, and granted a baronetcy in 1784, he remained a member of Parliament until raised to the peerage as Baron de Blacquiere at the Act of Union. 

 

Kevin V. Mulligan

 

 

References

 

Barrington, Personal sketches and recollections of his own time (1872, 1997 reprint),  74-75 Bickley (ed.) The Diaries of Sylvester Douglas (Lord Glenbervie), Vol. i (1928), 33-43 Casey, Buildings of Ireland, Dublin (2005), 296-297 Craig, Classic Irish Houses of the Middle Size (1976), 182-183, 186-187; 196

E.M. Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament 1692-1800, Vol. iii (2002), 202-205

The Manuscripts and Correspondence of James, First Earl of Charlemont, Vol. I. 1745-1783 (Historical Manuscripts Commission, 12th Report, appendix, Part X, 1891), 35, 42)

John A. McCullen, An Illustrated History of the Phoenix Park, Landscape and Management to 1880 (2011), 24-25, 31-32, 235-246 

O’Dwyer, Architecture, Politics and the Board of Work 1760-1860, Irish Architectural & Decorative Studies, Vol. V, (2002), 109-173

Elizabeth Shannon, Up in the Park, The Diary of the American Ambassador to Ireland 1977-1981 (1983), 175-176. 

Thorpe, Thomas Cooley before the Dublin Royal Exchange, Irish Architectural & Decorative Studies, Vol. viii (2005), 71-85

Joan Tighe, ‘Sir John Blaquiere in Dublin’, Dublin Historical Record, Vol. xxiv, No. 2 (1971), 3-14

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