The Casino at Marino, Cherrymount Crescent, Malahide Road, Marino, Dublin 3
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2024 Diary of Irish Historic Houses (section 482 properties)
To purchase an A5 size 2024 Diary of Historic Houses (opening times and days are not listed so the calendar is for use for recording appointments and not as a reference for opening times) send your postal address to jennifer.baggot@gmail.com along with €20 via this payment button. The calendar of 84 pages includes space for writing your appointments as well as photographs of the historic houses. The price includes postage within Ireland. Postage to U.S. is a further €10 for the A5 size calendar, so I would appreciate a donation toward the postage – you can click on the donation link.
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From the website:
“The Casino is a remarkable building, both in terms of structure and history. Sir William Chambers designed it as a pleasure-house for James Caulfeild, first earl of Charlemont, beside his residence in what was then the countryside. It is a gem of eighteenth-century neo-classical architecture. In fact, it is one of the finest buildings of that style in Europe.
The term ‘casino’ in this case means ‘little house’, and from the outside it gives an impression of compactness. However, it contains 16 rooms, each of which is finely decorated and endlessly rich in subtle and rare design. The Zodiac Room, for example, has a domed ceiling which represents the sky with astrological symbols modelled around its base.“
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The Casino website tells us that the plan of the Casino is in the shape of a Greek cross, and it is only fifty feet square. There are three floors containing sixteen rooms. Although small, they are entirely habitable, with service rooms in the basement, reception rooms on the main floor, and sleeping quarters on the upper floor. There is, however, no evidence of any long term occupation of the building. The exterior of the building is that of a one-room Greek temple, so the complexity of the interior was achieved by remarkable architectural design. This includes faux windows, gib doors, hollow columns, and disguised chimneys. Only half of the great front door actually swings open to admit entrance.
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Very little is known about how the inside of the building originally looked. There are brief descriptions surviving in Charlemont’s own correspondence or in that of visitors, or rare mentions in sales catalogues. The exterior of the building is heavily decorated. Four statues adorn the attic storey; Bacchus, Ceres, Venus, and Apollo declare the abundance and love of good living that inspired the creation of the Casino. Around the chimney-urns curve mermaids and mermen. The ‘ceilings’ of the outside porches are densely carved to create a stucco effect. Four large Egyptian-style lions guard the corners. [1] Service tunnels underground surround the building, lit from above by grilles.
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Mark Bence-Jones writes in his Guide to Irish Country Houses:
“… in the form of a Roman Doric temple, … built over the years 1758-76. It is one of the most exquisite miniature C18 buildings in Europe; within an exterior that appears to be sculptured rather than built are a number of little rooms, each of them perfectly proportioned and finished; with plasterwork ceilings, doorcases and inlaid floors. Sir Sacheverell Sitwell compares them to the little rooms in the Petit Trianon, and indeed the Casino shows considerable French influence, both inside and out. Among those who worked on the Casino was Simon Vierpyl, the sculptor and builder from Rome, and Joseph Wilton, the sculptor. The house [Marino] has long been demolished, but the Casino is maintained as a National Monument and has been restored by Mr Austin Dunphy of O’Neill Flanagan and Partners, in conjunction with the Office of Public Works.” [1]
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The website of the Casino educates us about the family who owned the Casino. James Caulfeild succeeded to the titles 8th Lord Caulfeild, Baron of Charlemont and 4th Viscount Charlemont on the death of his father in 1734. It was not until 1763 that he was created 1st Earl of Charlemont, as recognition for keeping the peace in the Armagh/ Tyrone area. He was well-known for his love of the arts, and spent a record nine years on Grand Tour through Europe, Turkey, and Egypt. With the help of his stepfather, Thomas Adderley, he established himself at Marino on his return to Ireland in 1755. Here he began the improvements to his Marino estate, one of which was the celebrated Casino.
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He was a leader in many different areas of eighteenth-century Irish society. Instrumental in setting up the Royal Irish Academy, he was also its first President. He was a member of the Royal Dublin Society, and a supporter of Grattan’s parliament. He was also a founding member of the Irish Volunteers (formed to protect Ireland from invasion while British troops served in the American Revolutionary War). His contribution to Irish culture was significant and lasting. [3]
The website tells us that while James was on his Grand Tour in Rome, he had become acquainted with those he would eventually hire to create his estate at Marino. This included William Chambers, Simon Vierpyl, Johann Heinrich Müntz, and Giovanni Battista Cipriani. Charlemont’s heavy involvement in the composition of the buildings at Marino, as well as his house in Rutland Square, is clear from the correspondence that has survived. In many ways, what he created at Marino was a living testament to the different cultures and styles he had experienced while travelling, and his buildings there were fitting exhibition spaces to the huge number of souvenirs and collectable items he brought home.
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The website tells us of Lord Charlemont’s ancestor who came to Ireland:
“Toby Caulfeild was born in Oxfordshire, England, the son of Alexander Caulfeild (c. 1520 – c. 1581; also known as Alexander Calfhill). A military man, he was sent to Fort Charlemont on the border of Tyrone and Armagh in 1601 by Queen Elizabeth. For his services to the Crown, James I granted him over 25,000 acres of land in Northern Ireland over the next twenty years. This included land from the old O’Neill estates in Tyrone, the confiscation of which he supervised from 1607-10. It was on these lands that he build Castle Caulfeild, now in ruins. He died in Dublin and is buried at Christchurch Cathedral there.“
The website also tells us about his mother Elizabeth Bernard:
Elizabeth Caulfeild (née Bernard), Viscountess Charlemont (21 February 1703 – 20 May 1743):
“Elizabeth Bernard, from Castle Mahon, Co. Cork, married James Caulfeild, 3rd Viscount Charlemont (1682 – 1734), in 1723 when she was twenty years old. They lived in Jervis St, Dublin, where he attended parliament as MP for Charlemont in Armagh. Elizabeth and James had at least six children together before he died eleven years later; three survived beyond infancy. These were Francis, Alice, and James. On the death of his father, James became 4th Viscount Charlemont.
“Six years after the death of her husband, Elizabeth married Thomas Adderley (1713 – 1791) from Innishannon in Cork. They lived in Dublin, and had one child together; Elizabeth Adderley. Thomas Adderley was an active and involved stepfather to James Caulfeild, providing advice and help to him throughout his transition to adulthood and after. He was buried in St Mary’s Church on Mary St in Dublin; today his gravestone can been seen among those leaning against the back wall of what is now Wolfe Tone Park.“
The website also tells us more about the architect of the Casino, William Chambers:
“Born in Sweden to a Scottish father in 1723, he spent the first few years of his working life travelling to and from China as an agent of the Swedish East India Company. At the age of twenty-six, he began training as an architect in Paris, later living in Rome, where he was a member of Charlemont’s circle. He moved to London to establish his practice in the same year that Charlemont returned to Dublin (1755). He achieved great success in England, with much employment from King George III and his mother, the Dowager Princess Augusta. His Treatise on Civil Architecture, published in 1759, was a huge influence on Palladian neoclassicism in Britain. The Casino appeared in this Treatise as a plate illustration (image below). Chambers would go on to count James Gandon as one of his students.
“As well as the Casino at Marino, Chambers completed designs for Charlemont House and Trinity College, and for modifications to Rathfarnham Castle, Castletown House, and Leinster House, among others. He never, however, visited Ireland in person. His projects with Charlemont were discussed at great length, over two decades, in numerous letters; many of these can be read today in the Royal Irish Academy. One of his original drawings for the Casino is on display in the building.”
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It was London-born Simon Vierpyl who oversaw the building work. The website tells us:
“He was an accomplished sculptor and builder, who was living in Rome at the same time as Charlemont and Chambers. Impressed with his work on a commission of terracotta copies of statues and busts (now in the Royal Irish Academy), Charlemont invited him to come to Ireland. Vierpyl arrived in 1756, and supervised work on the Casino, something he was complimented for in Chambers’ Treatise. He stayed in Ireland for the rest of his life, working as a builder or developer on many central Dublin sites. He married twice, and died in Athy, Co. Kildare in 1810 at the age of around eighty-five.”
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The website also tells us about Giovanni Battista Cipriani, an Italian painter:
“He was another member of Charlemont’s circle in the early 1750s in Rome; in 1755, he also left the city, and travelled in England in the company of Joseph Wilton. Wilton was a sculptor whose work is represented at the Casino in the four lions which guard it. Cipriani’s contribution was the design of the four attic statues, and the dragon gates that formed the entrance to the estate. Copies of his original sketches for the four statues, as well as a revised sketch of Venus, can be seen on display in the State Bedroom today. The gods represented (Ceres, Bacchus, Venus, and Apollo) were chosen by Charlemont and Chambers, designed by Cipriani, and then sculpted by either Wilton or Vierpyl on site.“
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James Caulfeild married Mary Hickman (d. 1807). The website tells us about her:
“Mary Hickman was from Brickhill in Co. Clare, and married James Caulfeild in 1768, when James was forty years of age. It was rumoured that James had left bachelorhood reluctantly, and only because he wanted to block his brother from inheriting his estate at Marino (Francis had differing architectural taste). However, James and Mary seem to have had a happy marriage; a letter describes how she read works of scholarship aloud to him after his eyesight had become weak with age.
“They had four children: Elizabeth, Francis, James, and Henry. On the death of his father in 1799, Francis became the 2nd Earl of Charlemont. After her husband’s death, Mary continued to live at Marino, until her own death in 1807. She is buried with her husband in Armagh Cathedral.“
The website gives us an “online tour.” The first room is the Vestibule. The website tells us:
“The entrance hall is known as the vestibule. The surprise in this room is the small rosewood mahogany front door. Outside, the front door is made of Irish oak and much larger in scale. Chambers stipulated the oak door should never be treated so it will eventually blend in with the Portland stone of the building. The reason for the deceptively large door outside is to give the impression the building is a one-roomed, one-storey Greek temple. As with all the rooms on the ground floor, below the faux bois (fake wood) floor covering, the parquet floors include many different types of wood (American black walnut, ebony, boxwood, Indian laurel, mahogany and maple) some now in danger (camwood and fustic). Each room features a different geometrical shape in the parquetry.“
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Above the three doors on the curved wall to the south of the vestibule is a semi-circular apse. This recalls the full domed ceiling of the Pantheon in Rome with the same coffers (panels). The coffers give us the illusion of height in a room that is actually quite small, though perfectly proportioned.
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“The higher, rectangular section of the ceiling holds a trophy which includes the lyre of Apollo at its centre surrounded by laurel leaves which appear throughout the building. We believe a statue of Apollo may have stood in one of the two niches. Just below the ceiling, in the frieze, you will notice many classical motifs representing Charlemont’s ideals. From north to south you have motifs musical instruments, the east shows agricultural tools and the west has carpentry tools, a a celebration of culture and agriculture. Other decorative details in this room, echoed throughout the building, are the waterleaf, the dentil mouldings (looking like large square teeth) and the egg and dart. The egg is the symbol of fertility and life and the dart is the symbol of death. In this room you also have the Vitruvian scroll in the chair rail and above which you have the Greek key, a symbol of eternity as the pattern is supposed to have no beginning, no middle and no end.“
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“The oldest item in the building can be found in this room. It is under the window and is a Greek Stele, a headstone Lord Charlemont sent back from his Grand Tour which he found in Greece. It is from 350 BC. During his Grand Tour many antiquities were sent back and would have been on show around the estate or perhaps even in the tunnels, off the light-well, surrounding the basement.“
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“The Blue Saloon, which was the main reception room, was sparsely furnished. Originally, there was a magnificent fireplace designed by Francis Harwood, made of white marble, featuring a life-size ram’s head and lapis lazuli inserts. The fireplace was balanced on the opposite side of the room by an equally elaborate table in marble with lapis lazuli inserts (by Joseph Wilton). Both had since been removed. The current fireplace with its smaller ram’s heads came from Marino House. The ram’s head was a signature trademark of Sir William Chambers and in the each corner of the room there are more 4 rams’ heads. The curved white ceiling set with octagonal coffers surrounds a single compartment representing a blue sky with Apollo’s head emerging from a sunburst. Apollo is the God of the sun. Below the curved ceiling in the carved mouldings are a series of pine cones. The ancient Romans associated pine cones with Venus, the goddess of love. Pine cones symbolise human enlightenment, resurrection, eternal life, regeneration and fertility.
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“The colour scheme of the room was related to the ornaments it once displayed – primarily the white marble and blue lapis lazuli of the fireplace and table. In 1769, Charlemont wrote to Chambers and recommended that “…the Entablature, doorcase etc of the room should be dead white touched with blue and that the cove parts of the ceiling… be of a more brilliant white.” The blue silk wall hangings were possibly broken up with paintings. In the original design for this room, there were five wooden doors. The main entrance door, two doors giving access to rooms on each side and two more false doors to create symmetry. However, Lord Charlemont made alterations to simplify this space by removing the two fake doors and making the two other doors jib doors (hidden doors).
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“The Zodiac Room is accessed from the Blue Saloon via hidden or jib doors. One of the first things to notice in this room is that the window appears to only have twelve panes of glass. However, on the outside, the same window has thirty panes of glass. This is due to the Zodiac Room sharing its space with the lower and upper stairwell next door, therefore the window is also shared between the three spaces. The trick used to distract the visitor from this deception is the form of the glass itself. Outside, the glass panes are convex in shape, reflecting more of what you see behind you than what is going on inside. In this room, a sense of space and height is created by the domed ceiling that provides an optical illusion, making it almost impossible to tell if the height is one inch, one meter or three metres. Resting perfectly below this dome are the twelve signs of the zodiac which is the reason this room gets its name. Apart from the zodiac mouldings, this room is highly decorated with egg and dart mouldings which you see on the door frame, the panels/coffers in the door and in the sides/jambs of both the door and the windows. The egg is the symbol of fertility and life and the dart symbolises death.“
I found it impossible to capture the entire domed ceiling, which is bordered by signs of the zodiac, in a photograph.
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“A letter from George Montagu to Horace Walpole in 1761 said that “I have been to see Lord Charlemont’s collection. He has some charming things that would merit a show even at Strawberry. His medals are very fine, a charming Titian of Borgia, two Carlo Marats, a Claude, two fine vases, a Queen Elizabeth, a lion’s skin of yellow that serves for a veil, a brave collection of books, etc.”
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“The China Closet, originally called the Boudoir, is situated on the western arm of the ground floor. The ground and upper floors are laid out in the shape of a Greek cross while the basement is square in shape which acts as a plinth for the Casino to sit on, making the Casino one of the first sculptural buildings in Ireland. After a fire in the early 19th century, the walls of this room where redecorated by the 2nd Lady Charlemont, Anne Berminghan, who married Francis, the 2nd Earl, son of James Caufeild, in 1802. She was a wealthy heiress, which allowed Francis to maintain the Marino estate after the great debts he had inherited on the death of his father. Anne hung decorative china plates on the walls giving the room the new name of the China Closet.“
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“The floor and ceiling details, original to the 18th century, highlight the use of symmetry and harmony in the building with their large lattice rectangles enclosing smaller rectangles and a central oval. In addition, on the floor, in the central oval, we have a geometrical sunburst while the ceiling’s oval is made up of fasces surrounded by laurel leaves which are symbols of excellence stemming back to the early Olympic Games in Greece. The appearance of the fasces bring us back to ancient Rome when soldiers used sticks or rods, tied together with bands, to control the crowd and these were called fasces. However, in times of insurgence, there was a sword or knife hidden within the fasces to kill people. Fasces in the Casino demonstrate authority and power. Everything in the Casino is symbolic, like the agricultural tools above the doorway and over the window including a scythe, fork, rake and shovel, representing Lord Charlemont’s ideals of culture and agriculture.
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“The recess at the northern end of the China Closet has a hand-painted Chinese wallpaper which came from Rathbeale Hall, in Swords, Co Dublin, installed during the OPW restoration between 1974 and 1984.“
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The landing: “All of the upstairs rooms suffered during the Casino’s period of dereliction, as the flat roof had fallen in. Therefore these rooms may have once been more highly decorated than they appear today. However, at the very top of the staircase, is an exuberant Rococo shell design in eighteenth-century plasterwork, which may give an idea of how the rest of the cornices and covings looked during the building’s original period. There are 5 doors on the landing, to the waiting room, the State Room, the pink room, the servant’s room and to a small stairs behind a cleverly-hinged door which once led to the viewing platform on the roof of the Casino. The roof was a very popular place to visit during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, due to the extravagant views it afforded down across the peaceful meadows to the seashore. Lord Charlemont likened this view to the Bay of Naples, and the peak of the Sugarloaf in the distance to Mount Vesuvius.“
The State Room:
“The first floor is also known as the Attic storey of the Casino or Temple as it is referred to on the maps here on this floor. Up here, our view our the window has been sacrificed so that no outside viewer could see this floor at all. What is visible from the windows, is how the floor slopes into a cavity which leads into a hollow column and the drainage system. There are four of these (nearest to each lion) neatly disguising a drainage system. Chambers designed this using engineering he had learned when he was in China. And it still works today. There are four rooms up on this level. Three of them are plain without stucco or plasterwork and very little decorative features. The grandest and largest upper room is called the State Room. The Casino is a neoclassical house, usually demonstrating restraint and austerity but here we have bling and ostentatiousness. The colour scheme here is consistent with later 18th century and the style more akin to Rococo or even Regency style.“
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“We have gold painted Ionic fluted (grooved) columns separating the room. These are resplendent with pineapples proudly placed in the centre of the Scrolled Capitals (volutes). In the 19th century, lead from the roof was stolen and there was a lot of water damage particularly to this level of the house. While the hollow timber columns are not structural, they helped save the ceiling timbers from falling (so they were structural in the end). The inlaid floors and ceiling mouldings were mostly restored in the 1974-84 refurbishment by the OPW. It has been suggested that Chambers did not have a hand in its design but that Simon Vierpyl took charge here. There are no documented connections between Chambers and the top floor at all, and it is possible that when he ceased his work on the project (due to late payment of bills), it was intended to have just one floor above the basement level. On display in this room is Chambers’ original drawing for the Casino.“
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The Levee Ceremony
“On the wall of the small (waiting) room adjacent to the State Room are the remains of a plinth on which a small daybed would have rested (like a chaise lounge). Imagine Lord Charlemont reclining on a bed practicing a Levee Ceremony. Levee, from the French lever – to rise, to get up, had, at the time, become a fashionable trend in aristocratic circles. Noblemen got dressed from their beds while receiving guests to discuss the day’s business. Here, it would have been practiced in a tongue-in-cheek way, much like a performance. Remember, this was a ‘pleasure house’ and a house for fun and entertainment. In any case, the State Room is a ‘show-off’ room and we believe that James Caulfeild, 4th Viscount and 1st Earl of Charlemont, was a bit of a show off.”
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The webiste continues the history of the family.
“Francis William Caulfeild, 2nd Earl of Charlemont (3 January 1775 – 26 December 1863) was the son of James and Mary above, and succeeded to the title of Earl on the death of his father in 1799. Until 1799, he had represented Armagh in the House of Commons. From 1806, he sat in the House of Lords. He had a keen interest in horticulture, and sat on the botany committee of the Royal Dublin Society. His name and that of his head gardener also frequently appeared in newspaper reports, as the winners of prizes for best flowers and fruit in agricultural shows in Dublin.
“He maintained and further improved the estate at Marino, as well as the other family residences in Charlemont House on Rutland Square, and Roxborough Castle in Co. Tyrone. It was at the house in Marino that he died in 1863, before being buried in the family crypt in Armagh.“
“Francis married Anne Caulfeild (née Bermingham), Countess of Charlemont (c. 1780 – 23 November 1876) on the 9th of February, 1802. She was a celebrated beauty in her youth. A bust of her by Joseph Nollekens was exhibited in Windsor Castle; Lord Byron wrote of his intense admiration for the beauty of this work and its muse. He wrote of Lady Charlemont’s beauty in other venues too, leading to speculation about their friendship.“
Anne’s sister Mary married Nathaniel Clements, 2nd Earl of Leitrim.
“Anne and Francis had four children – James, William, Maria, and Emily – all of whom died before the age of twenty-one. In later life, they seemed to live quite separate lives. On the accession of Queen Victoria, Anne was appointed Lady of the Bedchamber, and lived in London. Her address when she died, at the age of ninety-five, was Grosvenor St. Some watercolours and sketches she made while a young wife in Marino can be viewed in the National Library of Ireland. As Francis died with no living heirs, the title of Earl of Charlemont passed to his nephew, James Molyneux Caulfeild.“
In 1876, The 2nd Lady Charlemont (Anne Bermingham) died, after which the 3rd Earl, James Molyneux Caulfeild, son of the second Earl’s brother Henry Caulfeild (1779-1862), MP for County Armagh, and therefore grandson to the 1st Earl, inherited. He inherited the title from his uncle, Francis. He sold the estate lands. James the 3rd Earl married Elizabeth Jane Somerville, daughter of William Meredyth Somerville 1st Baron Athlumney, of Somerville and Dollarstown, Co. Meath
The website tells us: “He was born in Hockley, Armagh, and lived there until he moved to Cambridge for his education as an adult. He was later High Sheriff and MP for Armagh, as well as Lord Lieutenant for Co. Tyrone.
“Basing himself wholly in the north of Ireland, James lived at Roxborough Castle which, on the death of the 2nd Earl, he began remodelling and extending with the architect William Barre. Some items from the Dublin residences were transported north and reused in this house. On the death of Anne Caulfeild, he sold the estate (Casino included) at Marino to Cardinal Cullen, who donated most of it to the Christian Brothers. After James Molyneux Caulfeild, the title of Earl of Charlemont did not continue, although the title of Viscount continues down to the present day, the current holder being the 16th Viscount Charlemont.“
Cardinal Cullen who kept thirty acres for an orphanage (the O’Brien Institute), and gave the remaining land (over 300 acres) to the Christian Brothers.
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[2] p. 201, Bence-Jones, Mark. A Guide to Irish Country Houses (originally published as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses volume 1 Ireland by Burke’s Peerage Ltd. 1978); Revised edition 1988, Constable and Company Ltd, London.
[3] https://casinomarino.ie/the-family/
Text © Jennifer Winder-Baggot, www.irishhistorichouses.com