House - 18th century

The National Monuments Service's description

Shown on the first edition of the OS 6 " maps as Merrion Castle this structure lay just S of the original castle (DU023-001001-) which the Fitzwilliam family occupied as their primary seat from the 15th to the early 18th century. In 1711 a new rural seat was established by the fourth Viscount at Mount Merrion (DU023-006----) as the original castle at Merrion was run down. In 1737 an agent of the Fitwilliam family Richard Mathews remarked that 'no gentlemen could pretend to sitt down there, in a Cleane way' (O'Kane 2016, 108). Nearby, another agent of the Fitzwilliam family, Bryan Fagan 'built a house of Bricke and Slatted and Encompassed a large Garden with a Stone wall nine feet high' in 1738 as recounted in correspondence between Richard Mathews and Lord Fitzwilliam (NAI MSS 97/46/1/2/3/1; O'Kane 2011, 99).

Updated: 8 April 2020

Compiled by: Margaret Keane

References

O'Kane, Finola, 2011, 'An Absentee Family's Suburban Demesne; The Making of Mount Merrion, Co. Dublin' In: Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridegway (eds). The Irish Country House; Its Past, Present and Future. Dublin: Four Courts Press.

O'Kane, Finola, 2016,'Dublin's Fitzwilliam Estate; A Hidden Landscape of Discovery, Catholic Agency and Egalitarian Suburban Space' in Eighteenth Century Ireland, Vol 31, pp94-118.