Regional splendour and mercantile ambition: the Drogheda town house in the eighteenth century

Abstract

This study examines Drogheda's eighteenth-century urban domestic architecture, placing it within the wider context of Ireland and Britain. Drogheda is one of the most complete and atmospheric examples of early-modern classical architecture in Ireland. As such, it is an ideal model for investigating the eighteenth-century development of a provincial town's built fabric and for assessing its dependence on larger centres, such as Dublin, Bristol and Liverpool. Visiting Drogheda is a unique experience; the mercantile town houses are ambitious and precocious in terms of domestic architecture, but a lack of consistent urban design in the eighteenth century allowed the town to retain a cosy atmosphere, with narrow medieval streets within the remaining town walls. Even Laurence Street, the most coherent Georgian streetscape in the town, is terminated by St Laurence?s Gate, a barbican gate from the thirteenth century. The thesis aims at establishing connections between the town's well-known architectural practitioners and patrons active in Ireland and elsewhere during the eighteenth century. In so doing it will coherently anatomise and characterise the architectural form employed in Drogheda's speculative, standard town houses in the period. This is essential to assess the typology and quality of the town's domestic architecture and to place it in the wider architectural tradition. Large bespoke eighteenth-century town houses will be considered as a separate group and related to relevant examples in the capital. Through family, marriage, friendship and career, a vast array of intricate connections can be traced between Drogheda's inhabitants and the wider world. Key figures emerge from the research, such as the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and Master of the Rolls Henry Singleton, the Archbishop of Armagh, Hugh Boulter, the Rt. Hon. William Graham, Sir Hugh Montgomerie, Richard Morgan, John Godfrey, Arthur Heywood, William Shepard, the master-builder Michael Wills, stonecutters and master builders Hugh and George Darley, and an array of individuals involved in the speculative building trade, usually alongside other business ventures. Their connections in Dublin, in Britain and the American Colonies show how an eighteenth-century provincial port town could participate in the exchange of goods and ideas at an international level.