Irish Building of the Millenium
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Since this celebration is for TWO Millennia, why not consider
– the best blg. of the First Mill.,
– the best blg. of the Second Mill.,
and if anyone is up for it, the best outright winner!
For the First Mil., – one of the great cashels or stone forts,
For the Second, surely a Romanesque or Gothic ensemble, as only there is embodied a coherent and authentic sculptural and/or painting programme that all great architecture encompasses (there is no Baroque in Ireland).
James McQuillan,
Prof. of Arch., Archt., etc. -
How about an actual streetscape?
Merrion Square?
Or that little village in Cork with the Georgian square – I cannot remember the name of it.
Actually when you think about it, an important factor is the hardship that the people went through to produce the building in question. This would of course bring in the large Catholic cathedrals built in the 19th century when the country was ravaged by famine and emigration. – Cobh, Killarney, Monaghan, Armagh.
From that point of view, this would rule out Georgian Dublin and the big houses but could also include Ardnacrusha
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Following on from my submissions of last month, there has been no challenge at all to my suggestions.
So I propose that the building of the First Millennnium be the cashel of Dun Aengus, Inishowen, Co. Donegal. This is a unique structure in the history of European settlement, and if you haven’t visited it, then you are hardly in a position to comment!
I might accept the Rock of Cashel, an ‘acropolis’ of the second millennium, and therefore a worthy successor of the cashel of earlier times. However the Dun Aengus fort is emblematic of the antiquity of our culture in Ireland, and is in good and reasonably complete condition.
The other proposals are not that unique, as the street is found everywhere in the world, and power-stations are off-limits to most people. We must select something that is uniquely representative of our identity, and the cashel fulfills that admirably!
Any supporters out there!
James McQuillan
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Hardly ‘perfectio’, a word I never used, but an architectural entity that has the consumate meaning for our culture, in all its depth and complexity, something that all other candidates are somewhat lacking, in varying degrees.
Why is it that most modern commentators on Irish architecture seem incapable of thinking about anything before the eighteenth century. It is our earlier architecture that is truly unique and representative, while Ireland did not share in the Renaissance, and consequently most of what followed was highly derivative, and certainly feeble stuff.
I am looking for the ‘unique’ in form and place, not weak copies of commonplaces done better abroad.
James McQuillan
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No I wouldn’t. These stone houses or cells were used all over the country and are small, ill-lit accomodation of a most rudimentary sort – probably providing the exemplar for the later stone-roofed churches around the 10-12th. cents. Such cells have disappeared on the mainland – see their ruins devotionally preserved on Lough Derg, for example.
While Irish people seem to talk a lot about the past, few seem to understand it, as this discussion amply proves, eh -Editor?
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