Irish Houses of Parliament

This article is about the houses of the pre-1800 Irish parliament. For the current parliament building of the Republic of Ireland, see Leinster House.

The Irish House of Lords entrance to the Parliament House (east view). The House of Lords entrance, which was part of an extension to the original building, was designed by renowned architect James Gandon.

The Irish Houses of Parliament (Irish: Tithe na Parlaiminte), also known as the Irish Parliament House, today called the Bank of Ireland, College Green, due to its use by the bank, was the world's first purpose-built two-chamber parliament house. It served as the seat of both chambers (the Lords and Commons) of the Irish Parliament of the Kingdom of Ireland for most of the 18th century until that parliament was abolished by the Act of Union of 1800, when Ireland became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

In the 17th century, Parliament settled at Chichester House, a town house in Hoggen Green (later College Green) formerly owned by Sir George Carew, Lord President of Munster and Lord High Treasurer of Ireland, which had been built on the site of a nunnery disbanded by King Henry VIII at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries. Carew's house, named Chichester House after its later owner Sir Arthur Chichester, was already a building of sufficient importance to have become a temporary home of the Kingdom of Ireland's law courts during the Michaelmas law term in 1605. Most famously, the legal documentation facilitating the Plantation of Ulster had been signed in the house on 16 November 1612.

Plans for the new building

Elevation of the Parliament House, Dublin, by Peter Mazell based on the drawing by Rowland Omer 1767

Chichester House was in a dilapidated state, allegedly haunted and unfit for parliamentary use. In 1727 Parliament voted to spend £6,000 on the building of a new parliament building on the site. It was to be the first purpose-built two-chamber parliament building in the world. The then ancient Palace of Westminster, the seat of the English (before 1707) and, later, British Parliament, was merely a converted building; the House of Commons's odd seating arrangements was due to the chamber's previous existence as a chapel. Hence MPs faced each other from former pews, a seating arrangement continued when the new British Houses of Parliament were built in the mid-19th century after the mediæval building was destroyed by fire. (It was also followed in the 1940s, when the then House of Commons chamber was bombed during World War II, though consideration had been given to replacing it with a semi-circular chamber instead.)

The design of this radical new Irish parliamentary building, one of two purpose-built Irish parliamentary buildings (the other being Parliament Buildings, Stormont), was entrusted to a talented young architect, Edward Lovett Pearce, who was himself a member of parliament and a protégé of the Speaker of the House of Commons, William Conolly of Castletown House. While building was begun, Parliament moved into the Blue Coat Hospital on Dublin's Northside. The foundation stone for the new building was laid on 3 February 1729 by Thomas Wyndham, 1st Baron Wyndham, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

Design of the new building

Pearce's design for the new Irish Houses of Parliament, or Parliament House, was revolutionary. The building was effectively semi-circular in shape, occupying nearly 6,000 m² (1.5 acres) of ground. Unlike Chichester House, which was set far back from Hoggen Green, the new building was to open up directly onto the Green. The principal entrance consisted of a colonnade of Ionic columns extending around three sides of the entrance quadrangle, forming a letter 'E' (see picture at the bottom of the page). Three statues, representing Hibernia (the Latin name for Ireland), Fidelity and Commerce (later carved by Edward Smyth) stood above the portico. Over the main entrance, the royal coat of arms were cut in stone.

The chandelier in the House of Lords.

The building itself underwent extensions by the architect James Gandon, as Pearce had died young. Gandon was responsible for three of Dublin's finest buildings, the Custom House, the Four Courts and the King's Inns. Between 1785 and 1789 he added a new peers' entrance at the east of the building, facing onto Westmoreland Street. Unlike the main entrance to the south, which came to be known as the House of Commons entrance, the new peers' entrance used six Corinthian columns, at the request of peers who wished their entrance to be distinct from the Ionic columns of the main entrance. Over this, three statues by Edward Smyth were placed, representing Fortitude, Justice and Liberty. A curved wall joined the Pearce entrance to Gandon's extension. This did not mark the exterior of the building but masked the uneven joins of some of the extension, as shown in the view at the bottom of this page. The wall, built of granite with inset alcoves, although an instantly recognisable aspect of the building today, bears little resemblance to the building as it was in its parliamentary days.

Another extension was added on the west side into Foster Place, designed in 1787 by another architect, Robert Parke; while matching Gandon's portico, he tried a different and less successful solution, linking the other portico to the main Pearce one by a set of Ionic pillars. The result proved unattractive. When the Bank of Ireland took over the building, it created an architectural unity by replacing this set of Ionic columns by a curved wall similar to that built on the east side by Gandon. Ionic columns were then added to both curved walls, giving the extensions an architectural and visual unity that had been lacking and producing the building's exterior as it is today.

The interior of the Houses of Parliament contained one unusual and highly symbolic feature. While in many converted parliamentary buildings where both houses met in the same building, both houses were given equality or indeed the upper house was given a more symbolic location within the building. However, in the new Irish Houses of Parliament the House of Commons was given pride of place, with its octagonal parliamentary chamber located in the centre of the building. In contrast, the smaller House of Lords was given a sideline position nearby.

The original domed House of Commons chamber was destroyed by fire in the 1790s, and a less elaborate new chamber, without a dome, was rebuilt in the same location and opened in 1796, four years before the Parliament's ultimate abolition.

Pearce's design copied in the US Capitol and British Museum

Close-up of the House of Commons colonnade. The British Museum's facade is modelled on the colonnade (uncropped image)

Pearce's revolutionary designs came to be studied and copied both at home and abroad. The Viceregal Apartments in Dublin Castle imitated his top-lit corridors, although with minor alterations that undermined the effect somewhat. The British Museum in Bloomsbury in London copied his colonnaded main entrance for its own facade. The impact of his designs stretched as far as Washington, DC, where Pearce's building, and in particular his octagonal House of Commons chamber, was studied as plans were made for the new United States Capitol building. While the shape of the chamber was not replicated, some of its decorative motifs were, with the ceiling structure in the Old Senate Chamber and old House of Representatives chamber (now the Statuary Hall) holding a striking resemblance to the original Pearce-designed ceiling in the original Irish House of Commons. Coincidentally, while the Capitol was copying aspects of the design of Dublin's Parliament House, the White House was being modelled on the ground and first floors of Leinster House, then the residence of the Duke of Leinster, one of the leading peers in the Irish House of Lords, and now the seat of the modern independent Irish parliament, Oireachtas Éireann.

The uniqueness of the building, the quality of its workmanship and its central location in College Green, across from Trinity College, Dublin, made it one of Dublin's most highly regarded buildings.

Public ceremonial in the Irish Houses of Parliament

Much of the public ceremonial in the Irish Houses of Parliament mirrored that of the British Houses of Parliament. Sessions were formally opened by a Speech from the Throne by the Lord Lieutenant, who "used to sit, surrounded by more splendour than His Majesty on the throne of England". The Sovereign's official representative, when he sat on the Throne, sat beneath a canopy of crimson velvet. As in the English and British parliaments, the House of Lords was presided over by the Lord Chancellor, who sat on the Woolsack, a large seat stuffed with wool from each of the three kingdoms, England, Ireland and Scotland. Wool was seen as a symbol of economic success and wealth. At the State Opening of Parliament, Members of Parliament were summoned from the nearby House of Commons chamber by Black Rod, a royal official who would "command the members on behalf of His Excellency to attend him in the chamber of peers".

A ceiling in the eighteenth century Powerscourt House, the townhouse of Viscount Powerscourt on South William Street, Dublin. Within a couple of years of the abolition of the Irish Parliament, Viscount Powerscourt, who had been a member of the House of Lords, sold this Dublin residence. Many other peers also sold their palatial Dublin residences. Powercourt's residence is now a shopping centre.

In the Commons, business was presided over by the Speaker, who in the absence of a government chosen from and answerable to the Commons was the dominant political parliamentary figure. Speaker Conolly remains today one of the most widely known figures ever to be produced by an Irish parliament, and not just for his role in Parliament but also for his great wealth that allowed him to build one of Ireland's greatest Georgian houses, Castletown House.

Sessions of Parliament drew many of the wealthiest of Ireland's Anglo-Irish Ascendancy to Dublin, particularly as sessions often coincided with the Irish Social Season, running from January to 17 March (St. Patrick's Day), when the Lord Lieutenant presided in state over state balls and drawing rooms in the Viceregal Apartments in Dublin Castle. Leading peers in particular flocked to Dublin, where they lived in enormous and richly decorated town houses, initially on the Northside of Dublin, later in new Georgian residences around Merrion Square and Fitzwilliam Square. Their presence in Dublin, along with large numbers of servants, provided a regular boost to the city's economy.

The abolition of the Parliament in 1800 had a major economic impact on the life of the city. Within a decade, many of the finest mansions (including Leinster House, Powerscourt House, and Aldborough House) had been sold, often to government agencies. Though Parliament itself was based on the exclusion of the vast Irish Catholic majority in Ireland, many nationalist historians and writers blamed the absence of Parliament for the increased impoverishment of Dublin, with many of the large mansions in areas like Henrietta Street sold to property developers and landlords who reduced them to tenements.

The draw of the Viceregal Court and its social season was not enough to encourage most Irish peers and their large entourage to come to Dublin any more, their absence and that of their servants, with all their collective spending, severely hitting the economy of Dublin, which went into dramatic decline. By the 1830s and 1840s, nationalist leader Daniel O'Connell was leading a demand for the Repeal of the Act of Union and the re-establishment of an Irish parliament in Dublin, only this time one to which Catholics could be elected, in contrast with the entirely Anglican assembly that had met in the old Houses of Parliament.

Abolition of the Irish Parliament

In the last thirty years of the Irish Parliament's existence, a series of crises and reforms changed the role of that legislature. In 1782, following agitation by major parliamentary figures, but most notably Henry Grattan, the severe restrictions such as Poynings' Law that effectively controlled the Irish Parliament's ability to control its own legislative agenda were removed, producing what was known as the Constitution of 1782. A little over a decade later, Roman Catholics, who were by far the majority in the Kingdom of Ireland, were allowed to cast votes in elections to Parliament, though they were still debarred from membership. The crisis over the 'madness' of King George III produced a major strain in Anglo-Irish relations, as both of the King's parliaments in both of his kingdoms possessed the theoretical right to nominate a regent, without the requirement that they choose the same person. However, both in fact chose The Prince of Wales, who served as The Prince Regent in both the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland.

The British Government decided that the entire relationship between Britain and Ireland should be changed, with the merger of both states and parliaments. After one failed attempt, this finally was achieved, albeit with mass bribery of members of both Houses, who were awarded British and United Kingdom peerages and other 'encouragements'. In August 1800 Parliament held its last session in the Irish Houses of Parliament. On 1 January 1801, the Kingdom of Ireland and its Parliament officially ceased to exist, with the new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland coming into being, with a united parliament meeting in Westminster, to which Ireland sent approximately 100 members, while peers in the Peerage of Ireland had the constant right to elect a number of fellow Irish peers as representative peers to represent Ireland in the House of Lords, on the model already introduced for Scottish peers.

After 1800: From a Parliament to a bank

The Irish House of Lords chamber. Formerly the bank boardroom, it is today used for recitals and book launches. The display in the picture is located on the dais where the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland's throne was placed.

Initially, the former Parliament House was used for a variety of purposes, including being used as a military garrison and an art gallery. In 1803 the fledgling Bank of Ireland bought the building from the British Government for £40,000 for use as its headquarters. One proviso was stipulated; it was to be so adapted that it never could be used as a parliament again. As a result, the only recently rebuilt House of Commons chamber, though one of Dublin's finest locations, was broken up to form a number of small offices; but primarily replaced by a magnificent cash office added by the architect employed to oversee the conversion, Francis Johnston, then the most prominent architect working in Ireland. However, contrary to the stipulation, the House of Lords chamber survived almost unscathed. It was used as the board room for the bank until the 1970s, when the Bank of Ireland moved its headquarters elsewhere. The chamber is now open to the public and is used for various public functions, including music recitals.

William III's victory over James II/VII
The Battle of the Boyne tapestry that hangs in the Lords chamber.

Of the contents of the building, some have survived in different locations. The Mace of the House of Commons remained in the family of the last Speaker of the House of Commons, John Foster, MP. The Bank of Ireland bought the Mace at a sale in Christie's in London in 1937. The Chair of the Speaker of the House of Commons is now in the possession of the Royal Dublin Society, while a bench from the Commons is in the Royal Irish Academy. The original two tapestries have remained in the House of Lords. The chandelier of the House of Commons now hangs in the Examination Hall of Trinity College, Dublin. The Woolsack, on which the Lord Chancellor of Ireland sat when chairing sessions of the House of Lords, is now back in location in the chamber on display. Copies of debates of the old Irish Parliament are now kept in Ireland's modern-day parliament house, Leinster House, on nearby Kildare Street, so keeping a direct link between the old bicameral Parliament of the Kingdom of Ireland and the modern-day bicameral parliament, the Oireachtas, of the modern Republic of Ireland.

The continuing symbolism of the Old Irish Houses of Parliament

From the 1830s under Daniel O'Connell, generations of leaders campaigned for the creation of a new Irish parliament, convinced that the Act of Union had been a great mistake. While O'Connell campaigned for full scale Repeal of the Act, leaders like Isaac Butt and Charles Stewart Parnell sought a more modest form of Home Rule within the United Kingdom, rather than the full recreation of an independent Irish state. However, even if the proposal got through the British House of Commons (and the first two attempts, in 1886 and 1893 did not), the British House of Lords, with its massive unionist majority, was guaranteed to veto it. Finally, the passage of the Parliament Act in 1911, which restricted the veto powers of the House of Lords, opened up the prospect that an Irish Home Rule Bill might indeed pass through both Houses, receive the Royal Assent and become law.

The Woolsack
The Lord Chancellor of Ireland sat here when chairing the House of Lords, now back in location in the Chamber.

Leaders from O'Connell to Parnell and later John Redmond spoke of the proud day when an Irish parliament might once again meet in what they called Grattan's Parliament in College Green. When, in 1911, King George V and his consort Queen Mary visited Dublin (where they attracted mass crowds), street sellers sold drawings of the King and Queen arriving in the not too distant future at the Old Houses of Parliament in College Green to open the newly re-established Irish parliament. In 1914, the Third Home Rule Act did indeed complete all parliamentary stages and receive the Royal Assent. The day when the old Parliament House would one day become the seat of parliament once again seemed around the corner. However, the intervening First World War provided what proved to be a fatal delay for Home Rule. In late April 1916, a small band of radical Republicans under Patrick Pearse staged the Easter Rising, in which they seized a number of prominent Irish buildings, mainly in Dublin, and proclaimed an Irish Republic. Surprisingly, one building they did not take over was the old Parliament House. Perhaps they feared that, as a bank, it would be heavily protected. Perhaps, already expecting that the Rising would ultimately fail and that the reaction to the Rising and what Pearse called their "blood sacrifice", rather than the Rising itself, would reawaken Irish nationalism and produce independence, they did not seek to use the building for fear that it, like the GPO, would be destroyed in the British counter-attack. Or perhaps, because of its association with a former Ascendancy parliament, it carried little symbolism for their new republic.

Interestingly, there are two tapestries designed by Dutch landscape painter William Van der Hagen, and woven by John Van Beaver, dating from circa 1733 in the hall. The tapestries are unique. One represents the "Battle of the Boyne" and the other the "Defence of Londonderry". Each of the tapestries has five portrait and narrative medallions around the central scene which depict, narrate and name central characters and events in each of the battles. Both also have "trophies of arms and figures of Fame below enclosed by fringed curtains."

The Dáil chooses a different home

When, in January 1919, Irish republican MPs elected in the 1918 General Election assembled to form the First Dáil and issue a Unilateral Declaration of Independence, they chose not to seek to use the old Parliament House on College Green. Instead, they used the Round Room of the Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of Dublin. (Ironically, the Round Room had more royal connections than the old Parliament House; it had been built for the visit of King George IV in 1821).

The Irish House of Commons by Francis Wheatley (1780). This first Commons chamber was destroyed by fire. The rebuilt chamber was opened in 1796, only four years before parliament was abolished.

Even if the new Dáil had sought to use the old Parliament House, it is highly unlikely that the Bank of Ireland, then with a largely Unionist board (some of whom being directly descended from members of the former Irish Parliament), would have supplied the building for such a use, not least because it was also a working bank and the Bank's then headquarters. In 1921 the British Government created a House of Commons of Southern Ireland through the Government of Ireland Act 1920 (also known as the Fourth Home Rule Act), though only four MPs – all unionists – assembled for the State Opening of Parliament by the Lord Lieutenant, which was held in the Royal College of Science rather than the old Parliament House. Section 66 of the Government of Ireland Act 1920 stated that once the Government of Southern Ireland had provided alternative accommodation for the bank and compensation for moving, the old Parliament House would become vested in 'His Majesty for the use of the Parliament of Southern Ireland'. However, the House of Commons of Southern Ireland failed to operate and a Government of Southern Ireland was never formed, and the Southern Ireland was soon superseded by the Irish Free State.

In 1922, when the Provisional Government under W. T. Cosgrave made plans for the coming into being of the new Irish Free State, it gave little thought to using the old Parliament House as the parliament building for the new state. Though larger than Leinster House, the building eventually selected, it possessed three major practical problems. Firstly, it was the working headquarters of Ireland's major bank, which would need to have an alternative headquarters provided, were the state to use the building for parliamentary purposes;

In addition, it lacked room around it for the provision of additional buildings to be used for governmental purposes. Directly behind it, on the actual location of Chichester House, there was now a major street called Fleet Street. In front of it, on both the Lords and Commons entrances, were major thoroughfares, College Green and Westmoreland Street, meaning that the only space for expansion was on its Foster Place side, yet here too there was little potential for the constitution of government offices. (In contrast, the eventual choice, Leinster House, possessed the Royal College of Science, parts of which the state immediately 'borrowed' to use as a Cabinet office, a prime ministerial office and offices for several ministries)

While in the 18th century the fact that one of its House of Lords entrance opened directly onto a street caused little worry, in the Ireland of 1922 with a civil war raging, the building was simply too insecure to be used as a modern day parliament building. While the House of Commons entrance was surrounded by railings, it offered only minimal parking space and minimal security from attack, and practically no means of escape in the event of an attack. In contrast Leinster House was located well in from the streets that surrounded it, had considerable parking potential and was far more secure in the event of an anti-treaty republican attack on the Free State Dáil and Seanad.

As a result, the Free State initially hired Leinster House from its then owner, the Royal Dublin Society, in 1922, before buying it in 1924. Longer term plans either to convert the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, into a national parliament, or to build a new parliament house, all fell through, leaving Leinster House as the accidental permanent modern Irish parliament house.

Modern view

The 'screen wall' that joins the original entrance to Gandon's extension. This is the most recognisable image of the building, though ironically, while originally built by Gandon, it was given its modern appearance by the Bank of Ireland. A matching screen wall faces onto Foster Place on the other side of the building.

Ultimately the old Irish Houses of Parliament, the world's first purpose-built two-chamber parliament building, is seen generally with affection by a people whose ancestors were debarred from membership. A parliament that, though Protestant establishment in membership and loyal to the Crown, in 1782 produced the first real attempt at Irish independence, achieving the 'Constitution of 1782' that stressed its loyalty to the King by virtue of his Irish, not British Crown.

Although flawed in its working, discriminatory in its membership and powerless in its ability to control the executive, it was used as a symbol by generations of nationalist leaders from O'Connell to Parnell and Redmond in their own quest for Irish self-government. In a particular irony, Sinn Féin, which as a republican party fought for Irish independence during the Anglo-Irish War, was founded by a man, Arthur Griffith, who sought to restore the King, Lords and Commons of Ireland and the 1782 constitution to the centre of Irish governance, and the College Green Houses of Parliament to its position as the home of an Irish parliament.

To this day some still lobby for the re-use of the College Green House of Parliament. In 2006, the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Eamon Ryan, met with Bank of Ireland's chief executive and chair to propose that the building be used as an electronic library. In 2010, Minister of State, Seán Haughey, proposed that the building be handed over to the state in return for the Irish state's bailout of the bank during the Irish banking crisis. Both suggestions were rejected by the bank. Other suggestions included that the building be used to house the bank's former art collection, that it be used as an office for an elected Lord Mayor of Dublin or that it house the Dáil or Seanad and act as a parliament building again. In 2011, Jimmy Deenihan, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, wrote to the bank setting out proposals to acquire the building as a venue for the state to use as a cultural venue and requesting a meeting with the bank's Governor.

References and sources

Notes

Sources

• History of the Irish Parliament 1692–1800 by E.M. Johnston-Liik (Ulster Historical Foundation, 2002) ISBN 1-903688-09-4
• Volume 2 of 'The Unreformed House of Commons' by Edward and Annie G. Porritt (Cambridge University Press, 1903)