Museum Building

Notes:

The erection of the Museum Building at Trinity College Dublin marked the culmination of endeavours to extract, fabricate and promote the use of Irish decorative stone. This building is one of the first examples of Ruskinian Gothic architecture, demonstrating a clear commitment to the structural integrity of its materials. The duotone outer shell is in the classical Dublin palette of granite and Portland Stone, while the domed Byzantine interior showcases a brilliant array of polished Irish limestones and marbles.

The roof, originally of Super Bangor Queen Slate, was replaced with Penhryn Slate in 2021. The concealed exterior walls of the building are constructed of Calp, which is an impure muddy limestone that underlies Dublin and contributes to its name “Dirty Old Town”. The Calp blocks are externally faced with 9 inches of tooled Ballyknockan Granite from Co. Wicklow. The exterior dressing, comprising carved stringcourses, quoins, pilasters and capitals, are in Portland Stone and the tympanum above the door, bearing the College crest, is in Caen Stone. The coloured roundels on the exterior of the building provide modest polychrome decoration on a plain granite backdrop. Portland Stone frames enclose segments of native stone, including Connemara Marble, Cork Red Marble, Carlow black slate, Scawt Hill Marble and Donegal White Marble most likely from Dunlewey.

The interior of the Museum Building is a magnificent, didactic gallery of stone. The walls are constructed of rubbed ashlar Caen Stone. The steps of the imperial staircase, later replaced with Portuguese Creme Sintra Unata limestone, were originally executed in Portland Stone; the rest of the staircase consisting of Caen Stone. The balcony floors are of the same material as the steps of the staircase. The back stairways leading to the basement are of tooled Ballyknockan Granite, while the walls of the basement are Calp. The banded arches above the upper and lower side arcades , together with the large arch dividing the double dome, are alternating pale Portland Stone and red Mansfield Sandstone. The carved arches above the central arcade and the column capitals and bases are in Portland Stone. The exquisite naturalistic carvings throughout the Museum Building were executed by brothers James and John O'Shea and their nephew Edward Whelan. The domes display mosaics of colourful enameled hollow brickwork.

A border of purple Welsh Pen-yr-Orsedd Slate surrounds the entire floor of the stairhall. The polychrome floor was originally paved with red Yorkshire flags, Portland Stone slabs and black slate tiles from Carlow. When the floor was re-laid in the 1980s the Portland Stone was replaced with Creme Sintra Unata limestone and some of the black slate tiles were replaced with honed Kilkenny black limestone. The black slate re-appears in some of the external roundels and in the ornamental stone inlay above the inner arches between the entrance hall and the stairhall alongside Connemara Marble, Cork Red Marble, Donegal White Marble and Scawt Hill Marble. The architects incorporated in their interior and exterior polychrome decoration the same native polished stone, creating a continuity of design throughout the building.

The polychromatic columns contain polished shafts of varicoloured Irish limestones, green Connemara Marble and Lizard Serpentine from Cornwall. The shafts range from monoliths to multi-drum structures. The distinctive, fine-grained, fossiliferous, sienna coloured limestone came from Clonony in Co. Offaly. The mottled reddish-brown limestone was sourced from Armagh. The black “reef limestone” from Michelstown consists of a fine-grained mud lime matrix, which contains many cavities infilled with sparry calcite. The grey, crinoidal limestone, which is very similar to a popularly used stone from Clonmacnoise, was obtained from Castle Caldwell. The widely known, valuable, black limestones are from Galway and the Black Quarry in Kilkenny. The vibrant red limestone originated from Cork, most likely from quarries in Little Island and/or Churchtown. The polished native stone for the Museum Building was supplied by William Richard Manderson of the Killaloe and Dublin Marble Works.

The building is the earliest known instance of structural columns of Connemara Marble and Cork Red Marble. While the quarrying of Connemara Marble was established and the stone widely used and exported prior to the conception of the Museum Building, the commercial exploitation of the Cork Red Marble was only commenced during that period. The combination of robust strength and rich markings promoted the widespread internal use of Cork Red Marble in columns, panels, fonts and for other decorative purposes throughout the British Isles during the second half of the nineteenth century and into the beginning of the twentieth century. The Museum Building initiated the use of Irish decorative stone in a structural sense and promoted a taste for colour inspiring other architects and marble workers to utilise native stone. This building demonstrates the crucial relationship between architecture and geology and it is a testament not only to the adventurous architects who conceived its innovative design, but also to the skilled artisans responsible for its creation and the quarry operators who extracted the native decorative stone that imparts its unique palette.

The architectural elements, craftsmanship and materials of the Museum Building are described in detail on the Making Victorian Dublin website