WEST FRONT.

The principal or west front of Trinity College, looking on to Grafton Street, College Green, and the old Houses of Parliament, now occupied by the Bank of Ireland, is a Palladian façade three hundred feet in length and sixty-five feet in height, occupying the whole of the eastern side of the large paved space which is still called College Green. The centre or principal corps de logis is one hundred feet in length. The entablature is supported by four detached columns with Corinthian capitals; and a bold but simple pediment surmounts the whole. At either corner is a square pilaster with a Corinthian capital. The building is continued on either side of this centre to a distance of seventy feet of plain and unadorned construction; the ground story of rustic ashlar, the remainder of fine cut granite. The north and south extremities of this great front are formed by two square pavilions rising above the height of the wings, and projecting about ten feet from the curtain line. The pavilions are pierced by four handsome Palladian windows, in the north and west and in the south and west fronts respectively; and the construction is ornamented at the projecting angles by coupled pilasters of the Corinthian order, supporting an attic story, surmounted by a very satisfactory balustrade. In the entire façade are fifty-one windows regularly disposed, giving light to four stories of rooms. According to the original plan the centre of the building was to have been crowned by a dome, and the abandonment of what might have given additional nobility to the whole is said to have been merely due to want of sufficient funds. But the elevation as it is, is not wanting in dignity; and though somewhat severe in its outlines, it gives the impression at once of simplicity without meanness, of solidity without heaviness, and of richness without extravagance of detail.

TOP OF STAIRCASE, REGENT’S HALL.

The principal masonry is of finely grained and dressed granite, quarried in the mountainous district of the County Dublin. The columns and pilasters which support the entablature are throughout of Portland stone. The ashlaring is entirely of fine granite. The only independent ornamentation is in the form of rich wreaths of fruit and flowers, carved in bold relief above and below the large centre window and the windows in the pavilion. In the centre of this west front is a handsome doorway, surmounted by a circular arch, and immediately within is an octagonal vestibule with a groined and vaulted roof. On the left of the entrance is the porter’s lodge. The entire length of this doubly vaulted gateway is seventy-two feet. The interior or eastern front of the building, facing the quadrangle, is simpler, but on similar lines to that already described as facing the street. The pavilions, however, are wanting in the eastern front, their place being taken by the adjoining buildings looking to the north and the south, forming an angle with the front, and making three sides of the incomplete quadrangle to which the principal doorway affords an entrance. Above the great gateway, in the centre of the façade, with windows looking both to the west over College Green and to the east over the great square of the
College, is a large room or hall, at first used as a Regent House for the meetings of Masters of Arts, afterwards as a Museum, and from the transfer of the specimens to the new Museum in the College Park in 1876 as an Examination Hall. This fine room is reached by a spacious staircase from the great gateway of the College. It is sixty-two feet long by forty-six feet broad, well lighted, but somewhat bare. Three pictures are hung on the walls—one of the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Napier, Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1867, in his state robes; a poor picture of the great Bishop Berkeley; and a pleasant portrait of Dr. William Hales, sometime Fellow of Trinity College, painted in 1769.

TOP OF STAIRCASE, REGENT’S HALL.

The principal masonry is of finely grained and dressed granite, quarried in the mountainous district of the County Dublin. The columns and pilasters which support the entablature are throughout of Portland stone. The ashlaring is entirely of fine granite. The only independent ornamentation is in the form of rich wreaths of fruit and flowers, carved in bold relief above and below the large centre window and the windows in the pavilion. In the centre of this west front is a handsome doorway, surmounted by a circular arch, and immediately within is an octagonal vestibule with a groined and vaulted roof. On the left of the entrance is the porter’s lodge. The entire length of this doubly vaulted gateway is seventy-two feet. The interior or eastern front of the building, facing the quadrangle, is simpler, but on similar lines to that already described as facing the street. The pavilions, however, are wanting in the eastern front, their place being taken by the adjoining buildings looking to the north and the south, forming an angle with the front, and making three sides of the incomplete quadrangle to which the principal doorway affords an entrance. Above the great gateway, in the centre of the façade, with windows looking both to the west over College Green and to the east over the great square of the College, is a large room or hall, at first used as a Regent House for the meetings of Masters of Arts, afterwards as a Museum, and from the transfer of the specimens to the new Museum in the College Park in 1876 as an Examination Hall. This fine room is reached by a spacious staircase from the great gateway of the College. It is sixty-two feet long by forty-six feet broad, well lighted, but somewhat bare. Three pictures are hung on the walls—one of the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Napier, Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1867, in his state robes; a poor picture of the great Bishop Berkeley; and a pleasant portrait of Dr. William Hales, sometime Fellow of Trinity College, painted in 1769.

PARLIAMENT AND LIBRARY SQUARES.

LIBRARY SQUARE.

The name of the accomplished architect who designed the west façade of the College is, strange to say, lost to history; but we know at least that Sir William Chambers, the architect of Somerset House, designed the buildings looking on Parliament Square, as well as the fronts of the Theatre and Chapel, and that the work was carried out from his drawings—for he never visited Ireland—by his very accomplished assistant, a Lancashire artist of the name of Mayers, who also designed and superintended the internal decorations of the Theatre and the Chapel. There is good reason to suppose that some of the ornamental work of the façade, by whomsoever originally designed, was carried out by Smith, the modest architect or handicraftsman who prepared the plans for the Provost’s House in 1759. There are two large clocks—separate timepieces—placed over the inner and outer pediments of the façade respectively, showing the time within and without the College. They are built upon horizontal cast-iron plates, with 7in. main wheels, dead beat escapements, and electro-magnetic seconds. The pendulums are connected by wire with the Observatory at Dunsink. The time is indicated upon cast-iron dials, enamelled dark blue, and each 6ft. 6in. in diameter. Both these clocks were placed in their present position in 1878.

LIBRARY SQUARE.

The noble expanse of ground that is enclosed by the principal buildings of the College is too large to be called a quadrangle, being six hundred and ten feet long, by three hundred and forty feet broad, at the widest part, and it is too irregular in shape to be called a square. It is the survival of at least five more ancient and less spacious enclosures—(1) the Old Square,[151] built in 1685, and taken down in 1751 to make room for the present handsome granite buildings known as Parliament Square, in grateful memory of the source from which the funds had been provided for the building; the Library Square, built in 1698, and the oldest portion of the College buildings now in existence, and which was itself divided into two quadrangles (2 and 3) by some new buildings standing east and west, which were taken down in the middle of the eighteenth century. The space between the present Dining Hall and the Fellows’ Garden was also divided into two quadrangles (4 and 5) by the old Hall and the old Chapel, which formed a continuation of these departed “New Buildings” to the westward, as far as the centre of Parliament Square.