THE PROVOST’S HOUSE.
The Provost’s House is commonly said to be a copy of a design by Lord Burlington for General Wade’s house in Piccadilly. General, or rather Field-Marshal Wade was a notable person in his day. He put down the Glasgow Riots in 1727, and did much towards the pacification of Scotland by the construction of the celebrated military roads in the Highlands. He also commanded the English army in Lancashire and Yorkshire at the time of the Pretender’s invasion of England in 1745. His house, which was built in 1723, was not in Piccadilly, nor in any street leading out of it, but in Cork Street, extending back as far as Old Burlington Street; and on Marshal Wade’s death in 1748 it was sold by auction, according to Horace Walpole,[147] to Lord Chesterfield, and seems afterwards to have been the town house of the Marquess Cornwallis, and known as Cornwallis House.[148] And in 1826 it was added to, and included with Sir Thomas Neaves’ house, next door, as the Burlington Hotel, now Nos. 19, and 20, Cork Street.[149] The façade and ground plan of Lord Burlington’s design is given by Campbell, Moore, and Gandon in their Vitruvius Britannicus, vol. iii., plate 10; and the house is there said to be in Great Burlington Street (now Old Burlington Street), a much older street than Cork Street. Marshal Wade’s house has been scarcely altered since it was built in the eighteenth century; his arms are still over the front entrance in the court, and the interior is characteristic and interesting.[150] The working plans of the Dublin house were prepared by a local architect of the name of Smith; and he received for his work, as already mentioned, the modest sum of £22 15s., as is shown by the College accounts for 1759.
The mansion stands on the east side of Grafton Street, about twenty yards from the western side of the Parliament Square. The main entrance is from Grafton Street, through a spacious courtyard, enclosed by a granite wall 310 feet in length, and is entered by a handsome gateway. There is a private corridor, or covered way, which connects the house directly with Parliament Square within the walls of the College. The façade is of granite, finely ashlared. The ground story is of icicled and rusticated work, over which a range of Doric pilasters, with their architrave, frieze, and cornice supporting a high pitched roof with no eave. In the principal story are five windows, with balusters beneath, arranged two on either side of a large Venetian window, with columns and ornaments of the Tuscan order. The interior of the house is original and interesting; the hall and ante-hall are spacious and dignified; the circular staircase, which is lighted by a lofty domed skylight, leads up to a fine suite of apartments. On the ground floor, with an entrance from the hall, and approached through an ante-room, is the large dining-room, which is now used as the Provost’s Library and as the Board-room, where the Provost and Senior Fellows assemble in council to deliberate upon the administration and government of the College. In this room and in the ante-room is a collection of portraits of all the Provosts, from the time of Adam Loftus to Dr. MacDonnell, and of many of the distinguished Fellows and Professors of the College, and other important personages connected with the University. On the staircase is a portrait of George I., by Sir Godfrey Kneller; another of George III., by Allan Ramsay; and one of Hugh Boulter, Archbishop of Armagh, painted by Bindon for the Foundling Hospital. All these are full-length portraits. The most interesting picture in the house is, perhaps, a half-length portrait of Queen Elizabeth, by Zucchero, hanging in the large drawing-room; where there is also a full-length portrait by Gainsborough—the artistic gem of the collection—of John Russell, Duke of Bedford, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1757, and Chancellor of the University of Dublin. There is also in the drawing-room a half-length portrait of Archbishop Ussher, one of the earliest Fellows of the College (Professor of Divinity, 1607; Vice-Chancellor of the University, 1614; and Archbishop of Armagh, 1624), and buried, like Primate Boulter, in Westminster Abbey. In the Provost’s apartments on the ground floor is a picture of Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Dublin and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, 1567, and first Provost of Trinity College, 1592, by an unknown artist, as well as a copy of the same by Cregan; and a head of Archbishop Ussher. There are two portraits said to be of Samuel Winter, the Puritan Provost appointed by Cromwell in 1562, but possibly portraits of Luke Challoner, one of the more distinguished founders of the University. There are also portraits of Sir William Temple, Provost of Trinity College, 1609; John Stearne, M.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1660; Michael Ward, D.D., Provost, 1674, Vice-Chancellor of the University, 1678; Anthony Dopping, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1662; Narcissus Marsh, Provost of Trinity College, 1678; St. George Ashe, D.D., Provost, 1692; Peter Browne, D.D., Provost, 1699; H.R.H. George, Prince of Wales, Chancellor of the University of Dublin, 1715; Sir Hans Sloane, Bart., M.D. of the University of Dublin, who died in 1752; Sir Philip Tisdall, Privy Councillor and M.P. for the University, 1739; William Clements, M.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1733, M.P. 1761; Francis Andrews, LL.D., Provost, 1758, by Antonio Maroni; Bryan Robinson, M.D., Regius Professor of Physic in the University, 1745, by Wilson; John Hely Hutchinson, LL.D., Provost, 1774, and Secretary of State for Ireland, by Peacock; Richard Murray, D.D. Provost, 1795, by Cumming; Hugh Hamilton, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1751; Henry Dalzac, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1760; John Forsayeth, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1762; John Kearney, D.D., Provost, 1799, by Cumming; Matthew Young, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1775; George Hall, D.D., Provost, 1806, by Cumming; Arthur Browne, LL.D., Fellow of Trinity College, 1777, by Hamilton; Thomas Elrington, D.D., Provost, 1811, by Foster; Bartholomew Lloyd, D.D., Provost, 1831, by Campanile; Samuel Kyle, D.D., Provost, 1820; Franc Sadleir, D.D., Provost, 1837; Richard MacDonnell, D.D., Provost, 1852, by Catterson Smith.
DRAWING ROOM, PROVOST’S HOUSE.
The various offices attached to the house are conveniently disposed in the wings, the height of the ground story. The rooms at the back of the mansion look out upon a large lawn and pleasure-ground, beyond which are the Fellows’ Garden and the College Park. From the windows of the house to the Cricket Pavilion at the further end of the Park is nearly a quarter of a mile of green sward, a noble expanse in the heart of a great city. The only intervening structure is a small building of Portland stone, of pseudo Greek or classical design—the Magnetical Observatory. This little temple of modern science was built in the year 1837 at the instigation of the celebrated mathematician, Dr. Humphrey Lloyd, afterwards (1867) Provost of Trinity College; and at the time of its completion in 1838 it was the only observatory specifically devoted to magnetic research—with the exception of that at Greenwich, under the direction of the Astronomer-Royal—in the United Kingdom. And it was here that Dr. Lloyd conducted those numerous and most interesting experiments, of which the results were communicated to many successive meetings of the British Association. The building itself, in the Doric order of architecture, was erected under the superintendence and from the design of Mr. Frederic Darley, of Dublin. The front elevation is not ungraceful, being partly copied from an Athenian model. But the architectural beauty of the rest of the building has been sacrificed to the scientific necessities of the interior, and the result is very far from satisfactory as a work of art. It stands in latitude 53° 21′ N. and longitude 16° 6′ W. It is forty feet in length by thirty feet in width, constructed of Portland stone, the interior being of the calpe, or argillaceous limestone of the valley of Dublin. Several specimens of each of these stones were submitted to severe tests, and found to be entirely devoid of any magnetic influence. To preserve a uniform temperature, and also as a protection from damp, the walls are studded internally. The nails employed in the wood-work are all of copper, and all locks and metal work of every kind throughout the building of brass or gun metal. No iron, of course, was used in any part of the work. The interior is divided into one principal room and two smaller rooms, lighted by a dome at the top, and by one window at either end of the building.
A complete account of this Observatory within and without, and of the numerous and most interesting instruments which it contains, will be found in An Account of the Magnetical Observatory of Dublin, and of the Instruments and Methods of Observation employed there, by the Rev. Humphrey Lloyd, D.D., University Press, 1842.