Merrion Square

Up until the building of Kildare House (now Leinster House) in the 1840s, the northside of Dublin was the most fashionable place to live, but as the Earl of Kildare had predicted, it set a new fashion. The southside of the Liffey was no longer seen as the inferior part of Dublin. In the late 1760s demand increased for large, single sites on Merrion Square, almost certainly spurred by the elevation of the Earl of Kildare to Duke of Leinster in 1866. It had become the focal point of a whole new quarter for the aristocratic, and a house on Merrion Square was soon considered essential for social success.

The development of the Merrion Square was initiated by the 6th Viscount Fittzwilliam until his death in 1776, and was continued under his successor Richard 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam. However, it was the succession of agents appointed by the 7th Viscount that oversaw the smooth running of the projects, as he remained in London as an absentee landlord after the 1798 Rebellion.

The sweep of brick terraced houses that surrounds Merrion Square is a streetscape unequal in Dublin. It was highly praised by contemporaries, who stated it had "an air of magnificence inferior to nothing of the kind...except Bath"*. According to John Ferrar's View of Dublin of 1796, the architect John Ensor and Ralph Ward, Surveyor General of the Ordnance, were commissioned to carry out the work of laying out Merrion Square. A series of surveys produced for the Fitzwilliam Estate in the 1760s by John Barker show images of the initial plot arrangements and the proposed detail of the square. By 1818 the Square was virtually completed, with only one plot remaining.

Georgian housing

View of Merrion Square from Upper Mount Street/.

Georgian housing

Georgian housing

View of Merrion Square from Upper Mount Street/.

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St Stephen's Green & Fitzwilliam Square

St Stephen's Green and Fitzwilliam Square are fine examples of elegant eighteenth century homes, which are built of brick rather than the stone used for the Great Houses such as Leinster House. Fitzwilliam Square, the smallest of the great Georgian squares to be developed, is the only one of its kind to remain private to the residents of the square. Typical of Georgian style, the townscape of Dublin was simple and uniform throughout. Each block of houses was intended to be viewed as a whole. This simplicity and strictness of the design was a reaction to the elaborate florid Baroque period immediately before the dawn of the Georgian era.

While the houses on these squares were occupied by the wealthier, high ranking people of society, those with lesser means lived in smaller, less elaborate houses off the main squares, such as Upper and Lower Mount Street off Merrion Square.


*Casey, Christine. The Buildings of Ireland: Dublin, the city within the Grand and Royal Canals and the Circular Road with the Phoenix Park. Yale University Press, 2005.