Stones of Dublin by Lisa Marie Griffith

Author:Lisa Marie Griffith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Collins Press

Nevertheless, the building was in major need of repair, and this money saved the cathedral and restored it to its glory. The population of Dublin had changed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from being primarily Anglican to being overwhelmingly Catholic. While St Patrick’s Cathedral was one of the premier places for Dublin Anglicans to worship, a dwindling congregation and the generally poor condition of the Liberties neighbourhood in which the Cathedral was located, meant the cathedral badly needed attention and, most importantly, money. Benjamin Lee was created a baronet in 1867 and died the following year. While Benjamin Lee left the brewery to his two sons, Arthur Edward and Edward Cecil, Arthur Edward had little interest in the running of the business and sold his interest in the firm to his brother in 1874. Edward Cecil continued his father’s philanthropic activities, carrying out the remainder of his father’s plans for St Patrick’s Cathedral and helping to reconstruct Marsh’s Library (see chapter three).28

Edward Cecil Guinness’s greatest social legacy within Dublin is probably the wonderful red-brick Iveagh Trust buildings. These buildings are located adjacent to Christ Church Cathedral and within the vicinity of the family’s beloved St Patrick’s Cathedral. It is well worth taking the time to walk around the perimeter of these buildings or appreciate them from a bench in St Patrick’s Close. The grey brick (largely limestone exterior) of the cathedral is in remarkable contrast to the startling red brick of the Iveagh Trust buildings. In 1890 Edward Cecil announced his plan to donate £250,000 towards social housing. This money would be invested in a trust, later to be named the Iveagh Trust after the family’s recently acquired noble title, and was to be spent providing sanitary affordable housing for the working poor in Dublin and London; £200,000 was earmarked for London, with £50,000 for Dublin (the trust later split to deal with each city separately). The scheme was pioneering, although something similar had been attempted by the Dublin Artisan Dwelling Company (of which Arthur Edward Guinness was the chairman) in the 1870s in Rialto.29 By the time the trust had completed its work in Dublin, it had spent more than £250,000 and had transformed one of the most notorious slum districts in Dublin, which has been described as ‘a maze of alleys, courts and lanes, centuries deep in filth’.30 The Liberties had been populated by city artisans, weavers and linen bleachers for much of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. This was quite a poor part of the city, and poverty was exacerbated by the fact that the cloth industry was very susceptible to fluctuations in the market and the depressed nature of weaving in Dublin by the mid-nineteenth century. A warren of tenements existed in and around St Patrick’s Cathedral and along Bride Street. While legislation had been passed in 1868 and 1875 to enable the corporation to pull down slum and tenement buildings, Dublin Corporation could not afford to replace these buildings and reinvigorate the area.

The Iveagh Trust buildings are spread over Thomas Court, Kevin Street and Bull Alley.

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