The Hunt Museum Essential Guide Editor: Helen Armitage Scala Publishers in Association with The Hunt Museum 2002. 176 pp s/b e12.95/ Stg£14.95. ills 200 colour ISBN 1 85759 287 5 Erin Gibbons This is a useful and welcome publication describing one hundred and fifty of the 2000 or so objects in the collection of the Hunt Museum, Limerick. In the foreword the chairman of the Hunt Museum, George Stacpoole, describes the collection as an eclectic mix, based on a knowledge of art that was legendary. The various categories of objects, time-span, diversity and expertise represented in the collection succeed in making this publication a significant contribution to our knowledge of the collection. In the painting section, the works of painters such as Picasso, Gauguin, Yeats, O Connor, Moore and Mulvany are included and discussed. In the section dealing with ceramics, a 16th-century Majolica drug jar is discussed side by side with an Irish Bowl Food Vessel and a Vase Food Vessel from the Early Bronze Age. The Leopard’s Head mask from the famous court of Benin in Nigeria sits opposite two 18th-century Zwishengoldglas beakers from Germany. In fact many of the objects in the collection appear to be German in origin. This thematic layout of information, though quite traditional in form lends itself well to the publication and it departs from the more chronological approach of many contemporary museum catalogues. Despite the many contributors, the narrative is clear, very readable and appealing both to the specialist and to those with a less scholarly interest. Most of the 200 photographic images are by Davison and Associates Ltd and these are beautifully reproduced. The introduction to the book is essentially an uncritical eulogy of the assemblers of this collection, John and Gertrude Hunt. Neither the method of acquisition of the Hunt Museum collection nor a critical evaluation of the authenticity of some of its pieces is referred to in the forward, introduction or in the fifty-one individual contributions. This is disappointing given the information that is available and known about aspects of the collection. The professional activities of the Hunts in the world of antiques have cast a long and uncomfortable shadow over this collection, but this is never referred to. Their involvement with the illegal dispersal of the famous Pit Rivers Collection is well known. Their involvement in the illegal export of the famous Emly shrine from Ireland to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, their Nazi associations, the friendship of John Hunt (senior) with the Arms dealer John Ball whose collection is also represented here, and with the much discredited Peter Wilson of Sotheby’s. Are these objects and the people who handled them to remain without a past? What is most lacking in this and previous Hunt Museum catalogues is information on the provenance of the objects described. What generally distinguishes museum collections from the bric- a-brac of an antique dealer’s store (no matter how impressive the store contents) is the issue of provenance. Museum objects are not just evaluated in terms of their monetary or art historical value. Each object has a place and a purpose in time and space, and knowledge of the details of this enhances our overall understanding of the culture and society from which the object derives. Despite the fact that the book does not fulfill the aim of its title it is definitely worth a read for anyone with an interest in museums and museum collections. Erin Gibbons (Archaeologist and Museum Consultant) is currently co-researching a book on John Hunt (senior) and Gertrude Hunt with Jackie McDermott   Survey of the Architectural Heritage of County Laois Dúchas The Heritage Service, Department of the Environment & Local Government 2002 60pp s/b e17.99 Ills col 77 & ills b/w 16 Includes CD Rom ISBN 0-7557-1261-7 Desmond FitzGerald, Knight of Glin. Ireland must be the most backward country in Europe when it comes to so-called heritage and historic preservation. France has legislatively protected its architecture since 1830, the Dutch in 1900 and England since 1947. Ireland’s 1999 Planning Act lists thousands of Irish buildings and legislation is now in place to conserve our protected structures. But the government has also cut funding back to the bone for grants to the built heritage and we are slowly whittling away our precious building stock. The disappearance of the vernacular and the more architecturally important buildings that are so much part of our landscape means that the golden egg of tourism will soon be spectacularly broken by shortsighted greed. A wider perspective politically is required at both local and national level to look at an enlightened long-term view rather than take the short-term advantage. Visual literacy and interest in historic buildings is largely ignored by our politicians at all levels and it is only education in our schools that can begin to sow the seeds of appreciation for future generations. It is a depressing picture although there are rays of light on the horizon with some county councils and their conservation and heritage officers becoming aware of what they have within their borders. It is a time therefore to celebrate a series of educational tools that can be used handily in schools and by the computer literate. So far there are seven Dúchas National Inventory of Architectural Heritage packs including the County Laois Survey under review here. The whole country will eventually be listed and what a revelation this will be. The format of these packs is most ingenious. A booklet forms the main text with photographs back to back in English and Irish. Regrettably this means that the same photographs appear twice throughout the booklet except for the front and back covers. This seems rather a waste of space though one can see that integrating different photographs in the two texts would be extremely complex. The photographs by Patrick Donald are excellent, bright and clear. Old photographs are integrated and architectural drawings of such important buildings as Emo by James Gandon and Thomas Sandby (not Sanby) are shown in colour (Fig 1). In contrast they also reproduce laborers’ cottages at Ballykilcavan (c1860), the fascinating designs of Heywood by Lutyens and a number of 18th century maps. All sorts of buildings and features are covered such as mills, canals, bridges, churches, postboxes, stained glass, shop fronts and public houses. All 600 sites are shown and listed on one of the three CD ROMs which are contained in the pack. Firstly the national inventory or database, secondly the map of the county, and finally town maps, all three CDs called ‘Browsers’. This means that all the buildings in the list are illustrated compactly on a disc and this can be put on the screen. They are all filed under location, type and date. Another useful organizational feature is that all the sites are evaluated as International, National, Regional, Local or Record Only. The only criticism of the discs is that the map of the county shown on the screen is very difficult to read even when enlarged, although the maps of the towns are very clear. If one does not wish to look under each heading it is easy to roll the whole inventory through and therefore pick up many an unfamiliar building. Finding an illustration of the conical Spire in Carrick Wood, Ballymorris I immediately wondered whether this was the eye catcher built on the hill to be viewed from the garden front of Emo House. Try as I might, I could not find this ‘site number 1’ on sheet five but eventually could just read the name of the wood on the map showing site number 1 to be near Portarlington, which made it obvious that it was indeed the same structure. So often seeing this Spire peeping over the tops of the trees from the window of my train to Limerick when it passes the outstanding Portarlington train station, I now know from the photograph the full appearance of this fascinating tree-girt folly. The editors date it to 1820 but it was already shown in William Ashford’s panoramic view from Emo painted in about 1800. Even as I write, a new and insensitively sited house is about to be built next to the great Wellingtonia Avenue leading up to Emo House, and more house are threatened. How can this be allowed to happen so close to the amenity lands of one of the most important historic houses cared for the by the State? Dúchas and other conservation bodies are taking the matter up with An Bord Pleanala. One might argue about a number of dates in the catalogue such as Ballintubbert House listed as between 1800 and 1840, which with its tall narrow windows must date from the first half of the 18th century. Naturally a pioneering work such as this will be open to revision and the fact this list has been created is a major triumph. Very few interiors are shown perhaps for security and privacy reasons, the neo-classical Wyatt plasterwork at Abbeyleix House for instance is not shown. Although I know this demesne well I have never seen the ice house shown in the list before. Ballyfin, one of the greatest of all Irish estates, is an exception, interiors are shown (Fig 2) and it is very exciting to think that the great Morrison mansion with its dramatic Regency interiors and superb demesne is to be given a re-birth over the next few years. The house, the Turner conservatory, lodges, grotto, observation tower, trees and parkland are all to be conserved. Although this is going to be a hotel, there will be no golf course, and no golf cottages built in the demesne unlike what is happening in so many of Ireland’s few remaining great estates, so may of which are being desecrated in this manner. Richard Morrison must have also been responsible fro Glenmalyre House recently restored but no architect is mentioned for it in this list. Again, the point is that these lists can be updated. Some of the nomenclature is a bit obtuse such as the Cappard formal canal being called an ‘Orthogonal pool!’ But for most part the entries are factual, short and to the point. The O’Higgins family memorial at Abbeyleix seems to have got muddled with the de Vesci monument – both families would probably turn in their graves! This series will be a lifeline to our architectural past and Dúchas, the Heritage Services are blazing a trail which one can only hope will have some influence on the blinkered eyes of politicians, engineers, and councils all over Ireland before it is too late. Let’s hope that these surveys will cover the country as quickly as possible. Desmond FitzGerald, Knight of Glin is an art historian   Dublin, 1910- 1940: Shaping the City and Suburbs Ruth McManus Four Courts Press 2002 pp 504 ills 142 b/w h/b e45 p/b e29.95 ISBN Cased 1851826157/ p/b 1851827129 Michael Fewer If you spend a lot of time sitting in the turgid Dublin traffic, wondering how did things get this bad, a study of Dublin 1910-1940, Shaping the City and Suburbs, a thoroughly-researched history of the city in the early 20th century by Dr Ruth McManus, well-illustrated with photographs and contemporary Ordnance Survey maps, will provide many clues. In 1922, town planner Patrick Abercrombie wrote: ‘Dublin is a city of magnificent possibilities ...’ Subsequent planning decisions made and implemented by Dublin’s primary local authority at the time, Dublin Corporation, however, laid the foundations of the Dublin we have inherited today, a sprawling, traffic-choked, lost opportunity. Dr McManus’ work deals with this most critical period in the development of the city, when those ‘magnificent possibilities’ were all there to play for. At the time, Dublin, a dying, decaying city since the Act of Union, had the worst slums in Europe. In 1913, twenty-nine percent of the population of Dublin, or 80,000 people, lived in slums, a third of which were described as unfit for human habitation, with 20,000 families living in one-room tenements, and illness and premature death were endemic. In their defense, it has to be said that the decision-makers of the time had an enormous problem on their hands, and as modern town planning was in its infancy, they had few good examples of successful modern urban re-development to learn from. New thinking in Europe at the time ranged from the well-designed, densely-planned apartment-type housing on the Amsterdam or London models, to the low-density, cottage developments of England’s early Garden Cities. The existing Dublin slums, which had been a weeping sore for nearly a century, must have been a major influence in avoiding the continuance of high-density, and this allied with the persuasive gospel of English Garden City evangelists made low-density development around the periphery of the city the preferred choice. In the Dublin context, however, only lip service was paid to the garden city idea, which anyway was more about encouraging social change than architecture, and many of the ecological principles used so successfully in the English Garden Cities were ignored. The first local authority housing scheme, and perhaps the best, of the many which have spread out through the green fields of county Dublin in the period since, was completed at Marino in 1926. Dr McManus chronicles this development through the politics and people involved, and the many other public, public/private partnership and private schemes that followed it through the twenties and thirties, and which set the pattern for the sprawling suburbia which characterises Ireland’s capital city today. Michael Fewer is a writer and architect   The New Neighbourhood of Dublin Original text Maurice Craig and Joseph Hone New text Michael Fewer A &A Farmer 2002. 256pp h/b e30 Fully ills b/w & 25 route maps ISBN 1-899047-82-4 Peter Pearson The New Neighbourhood of Dublin is as the title suggests, in essence an update of the Weston St J Joyce’s book, first published in 1912. The authors of this work, Maurice Craig and Joseph Hone prepared their original text in 1949, but it remained unpublished. They claimed no great originality for their book, its structure following that of The Post Chaise Companion, or route guide, where they described the principal features which were to be seen along the way, such as castles or great houses. In 2001 Michael Fewer, an architect and writer of several Walking Tours undertook to update the text with expanded notes, which would add to the Craig and Hone work. I am not sure that this unusual recipe really works, as the result is a useful but somewhat dreary book in which one is often left hoping for more detailed information or more general contemporary comment. The note-like format of much of the modern text was probably required to keep the size of the book in hand, but to do justice to such a large area as Dublin City and County, we would have needed many more pages. The book is also somewhat disappointing in its illustrations, for while the older black and white pictures of architectural features (many of them of vanished houses) are adequate, there is a distinct lack of any contemporary photographs, which might give Fewer’s up-to-date commentary more weight. A photograph of the new Millennium footbridge is one of the few recent pictures. Among the very few modern buildings, which are mentioned in the book is the very elegant Fingal County Hall with its delicate glass and steel façade. In fairness the dust-jacket describes the book as a unique introduction to the richly varied built environment of Dublin City and County, and given the vast territory that it covers, a huge amount of factual information about places and buildings have been crammed in, but without the appearance of being cramped. For the most part, the facts in the book appear to be scrupulously correct, though some of Fewer’s information is out of date. For instance, much of the once noted Saggart Paper Mills has been demolished, but the nearby house and castle have been restored, contrary to what is said on p.129. Also, why not mention the highly successful City West Hotel and nearby Business Park? Baldonnel House is currently being restored (p.127) and Riversdale House in Palmerstown has not been a nursing home for several yeras (p.107). Anna Liffey Mills deserves more attention, it has been purchased by Fingal County Council and will be restored as a working industrial heritage site (p.101). Johnstown Kennedy House, which is mentioned on p. 129 with the assumption that it is still there was demolished in the 1980s and its wonderful gothic stables lie mutilated still. Bushy Park House faces an uncertain future as the surrounding lands have been sold (p.135) and Trinity College is no longer, I believe, still in occupation of Neptune House in Blackrock p.219. On page five, the date of the erection of The Five Lamps at Fairview is surely 1897 not 1797. These may seem picky and pedantic details to mention, and given the rapidly changing face of County Dublin, it would be very difficult to keep right up to date. What is especially welcome about The New Neighbourhood of Dublin is its evenhanded focus on the North, West and South counties of Dublin. For instance, the first hundred pages are devoted to Fingal County, North of the river. In Craig and Hone’s eloquent text of 1949 we learn of place names (Ballybough is derived from Baile-bocht, the town of the poor) and families such as the Guinesses who built St Annes at Clontarf. Here, Fewer’s commentary is fulsome, telling us how such places have fared in the intervening fifty years, but elsewhere as in Howth and Malahide he has little or nothing to say. There is no mention of the dramatic changes that have occurred at Howth harbour, with its infilling and new Marina, nor is the plight of the historic Howth House recalled, which was very nearly demolished. In his introduction, Fewer comments on the fact that more historic buildings have survived than he would have expected. Out of 284 listed houses, he finds seventy-one demolished. However, given the selective nature of the text in adhering to routes, this might not present an altogether accurate picture, as many more interesting places not recorded or listed which lay away from these routes have also been demolished. One house, which is passed over in the book, is Newlands, an impressive 18th century mansion which had fine plasterwork, but which was dismissed as uninteresting by Craig in a 1970s Foras Forbatha report and was eventually demolished by Newlands Golf Club in the mid-1980s. But perhaps, as times change and people’s interests change, the value of such buildings, today called ‘Heritage’, shifts from generation to generation. What was considered banal in the 1970s is now part of the valued heritage. In general terms I feel the book would benefit from an overview of how the physical environment of greater Dublin has changed and evolved, including an evaluation of the positive new additions and an assessment of what has been lost. The book was part funded by the Heritage Council publications grant scheme and represents a valuable record of many previously unrecorded buildings, especially in North County Dublin. If I have been unduly grumpy in my comments on this book, it is perhaps because I am expecting too much from what is ‘a route guide.’ As such, it is full of interest for layman and historians alike and is packed with much essentially useful information. Peter Pearson is an artist and architectural historian