House - medieval, Stillorgan Grove, Co. Dublin
Co. Dublin |
House
Somewhere beneath the ordinary suburban streetscape of Stillorgan Grove, in south County Dublin, lies a site that once held a fortified medieval manor house, then a grand late-seventeenth-century mansion with a miniature theatre, twelve acres of formal gardens, and a mantelpiece carved with the judgement of Solomon.
None of it survives above ground. The site is entirely flat, hemmed in by modern development, and offers no visible trace of the centuries of occupation that preceded it.
The record of what stood here is assembled from fragments. By 1360, the manor was occupied by Sir John Cruise, suggesting the site functioned as the principal residence of the local lord of the manor, a fortified house that would have combined domestic and defensive functions in the manner typical of medieval Irish lordship. The Wolverston family held the property through the turbulent sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the period between the dissolution of the monasteries and the Cromwellian wars, and the house is mentioned in the 1641 Depositions, a vast collection of witness statements gathered in the wake of the Irish rebellion of that year. In 1684, Sir Joshua Allen, described as a master builder, made improvements to the existing structure. His successor, Viscount John Allen, went further: in 1695 he demolished the old fortified house entirely and replaced it with a seven-bay, two-storey mansion over a semi-basement, with projecting front gables, side wings linked to the main block by rails, dormer windows in the attic storey, and substantial chimneystacks. One wing housed a miniature theatre; the other, the stables. The gardens, laid out in what was already being described as an old-fashioned style, extended across twelve acres. A watercolour once owned by a Mr Verschoyle recorded the façade in some detail, and the interior was noted for its carved mantelpiece depicting the biblical scene of Solomon's judgement. The mansion was demolished around 1880.
There is nothing to see at the site today in any conventional sense. Its value is almost entirely archaeological and historical, a place worth knowing about rather than visiting with any expectation of atmosphere or remains. Researchers interested in the 1641 Depositions, in the Allen family, or in the domestic architecture of late-seventeenth-century Dublin may find the documentary record more rewarding than the ground itself. The site has been recorded by Geraldine Stout and Padraig Clancy as part of a wider survey of medieval and post-medieval remains in County Dublin, and that written record now carries most of what survives.