classicism and civility

Irish Arts Review

Classicism and CivilityAuthor(s): Julian WaltonSource: Irish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring, 2004), pp. 102-107Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25503014 .

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CLASSICISM

AND

CIVILITY

Early in the year 1746 Waterford received a new Church

of Ireland bishop, Richard Chenevix. The episcopal residence at that time was a large plain building next to

the imposing if dilapidated medieval cathedral. From

the cathedral close he could look down on the tree-lined Mall

recently created by the draining of a marshy inlet of the River

Suir. His view was dominated by the shell of the huge new epis

copal palace begun by his ambitious predecessor Charles Este to

the design of Richard Castle and left unfinished since the

bishop's death the previous year. Its completion would obviously

be an early priority for Chenevix, and he looked around for the

most suitable person for the job. Waterford at the time had a

small but influential Huguenot community, and Chenevix being

himself of Huguenot stock (his father had fallen at Blenheim) was

acquainted with a crusty Huguenot veteran, Major Francis

Sautelle, whose daughter had married a Waterford-born architect

named John Roberts. The couple were now living in Patrick

Street in somewhat precarious circumstances with their ever

increasing brood of children. Thanks to the Huguenot connec

tion, Roberts received the commission to complete the palace.

The superb siting of the palace and its vast size - even today it

dominates the Mall - emphasise the dominant position of the

Church of Ireland in the mid-18th century (Fig 13). Architecturally it bears very much the stamp of Castle

- the Doric centerpiece and

circular niche above it on the Mall front, for instance - but its suc

cessful completion marked Roberts out as an architect of consider

able ability. The interior is greatly altered today, for in the 1920s a

successor of Chenevix's moved to a more modest country resi

dence and the building then became the headquarters of Bishop

Foy's School. Today, greatly restored, it forms part of the civic

offices. So pleased was Chenevix with his new palace that he leased

his former residence to John Roberts on very favourable terms.

This promising start, and the Bishop's recommendation,

launched Roberts on a uniquely successful career. In 1753 we

find him being commissioned by the Surveyor General, Thomas

Eyre, to work on the new barracks in Waterford.1 And at about

the same time he was employed at Curraghmore, Co. Waterford,

the seat of the Earl and Countess of Tyrone, where he designed

The refined public buildings created by John

Roberts (1714-1796) did much to project an

?mage of Waterford as a city of consequence

in the 18th century, writes JULIAN WALTON

10 2 I

IRISH ARTS REVIEW SPRING 2004



ARCHITECTURE 1 CLASSICISM AND CIVILITY

and built the huge courtyard that forms such a dramatic approach

to the house. It is an extraordinary creation, more reminiscent of

the style of a French ch?teau than of the residence of an Irish

peer. Roberts's model must surely have been Vanbrugh's

Blenheim Palace, and indeed the Curraghmore courtyard is

almost as large at 550 feet long and 192 feet wide; it consists of

The startling project of demolishing a fine medieval cathedral, and its replacement by a new building in a completely different

style, indicates the self-confidence of Waterford's civic oligarchy matching ranges facing each other of two storeys and thirty-one

bays. The centerpieces of each range have sandstone ashlar coach

houses of five bays with large central arches (Fig 10). The archi

tectural features owe much to the influence of James Gibbs,

whom Roberts had no doubt studied carefully in London.

In the following decade Roberts was commissioned by Charles

Huson, rector of St Iberius's Church in Wexford, to rebuild the

church there.2 It is designed in the form of a galleried rectangle

with an apse in the middle of one of the long sides containing the

altar, and screened by a triple arcade carried on great Corinthian

columns. This seems to have been Roberts's first essay in church

building, and its success influenced the style of his first major

ecclesiastical work, the rebuilding of Water ford Cathedral.

The condition of the cathedral had long been a cause for con

cern. In 1739 Bishop Milles had commissioned William

Halfpenny of Bristol to submit plans for its complete rebuilding,

but before these could be taken further the Bishop died. In 1773

^^^^^^^^^^^^BHl^HF^if^^^^9^^^^^^^^HRHI^^^^H

Thomas Ivory was asked to report on its condition, and he too

recommended that it be taken down and replaced. Responsibility

for the building was shared between the church authorities and

the Corporation. On 17 January 1774 a joint committee resolved

that 'the plain plan omitting the rustick work laid before the com

mittee by Mr John Roberts for rebuilding the Cathedral appears

to be the most eligible of any as yet produced to us. Estimate,

?3,704.5s.6d. The old steeple to be taken down and the bells

placed in the French Church.'3 No doubt Bishop Chenevix, once

reconciled to the demolition of his beloved cathedral, favoured

Roberts's submission, but from this reference it is evident that

?: ; . financial considerations were

the main influence in the

committee's decision to

accept the 'plain plan'.

The startling project of

demolishing a fine medieval

cathedral, and its replace

ment by a new building in a

completely different style,

indicates the self-confidence

of Waterford's civic oligarchy

in the late 18th century.

Roberts' cathedral is slightly smaller than its predecessor

but occupies roughly the

1 Detail of one of

the richly carved

capitals in Christ

Church Cathedral

Photo: Carmel

Kikkers, Focus Visual

Communication

2 The nave of Christ

Church Cathedral

showing the

interventions by Thomas Drew prior to the recent

restoration

programme Photo: Carmel

Kikkers, Focus Visual

Communication

3 Christ Church

Cathedral pen and

ink drawing by Charles Newport Bolton c. 1874

4 Thomas Malt?n snr. Interior of the

Cathedral of St

Peter's, (Christ

Church) Waterford c. 1790 del.

(Courtesy of National

Library of Ireland PD

1742C)

SPRING 2004 I RI S 11 AR T S R E V I E W |

103



HONEST JOHN ROBERTS We know more about the personality of John Roberts than about most Waterford peo

ple of his time. However, most of our information comes from one source: the narra

tive written by his grand-daughter Margaret Price for the edification of her

great-nephews and -nieces. Her work is exactly what we might expect of an elderly

great-aunt: prejudiced, anecdotal, weak on solid fact and devoid of chronology.

?' I

Roberts is generally said to have been born in 1712.

However, the register of Trinity Parish states that he was

born on 26 January 1714, the son of Thomas Roberts (a

local builder) and Elizabeth Bowles. His early years were

not easy. His mother died young; his father remarried

and neglected his first family. Young John took himself

off to London, where he worked as apprentice to a car

penter and studied architecture (which is all we know of

his formal training).

John's runaway match with Mary Susannah Sautelle

is obviously not recorded in the local registers. It can

hardly have been the teenage fling implied in most

accounts, for their eldest child was not baptized until

1744, when Roberts was thirty. The young couple found

life pretty tough, with Roberts's three unmarried sisters

and his half-brother Benjamin to feed, besides their own

children. But John was resourceful. He sent his sisters to live in Dublin (where they

eventually married successfully), bound his half-brother as apprentice to a cabinet

maker, and pursued his own career as architect and builder.

As for their own children, Miss Price assures us brightly that there were twenty-one of them, adding almost casually that eight survived to adulthood. They were a talented

bunch. John the eldest son was taught Latin by the ever-helpful Bishop Chenevix,

became a clergyman, and was rector of Passage East for many years. Samuel the sec

ond son became an attorney. The third son, Thomas, is now reckoned to have been

one of the finest landscape painters of his day (Fig 5 & 6). After his premature death

in 1778 his reputation was continued by the fifth son, Sautelle, who had originally trained as an architect under Thomas Ivory. One of the daughters, Flora, was also a

noted landscape painter and did some scenery for the Waterford Theatre.

John Roberts seems to have had little regard for worldly luxuries. One of his fads

was that he would never buy new clothes. When his wife thought he needed them, she simply stole away the old article while he was asleep and left the new one in its

place -

he never seemed to notice. He was enormously respected by his workforce -

Honest John was their nickname for him. Payday was on Saturday morning, and

Roberts was careful to give half the wages to the men's wives so that they could go

off to the market and buy food at the best price, rather than just hope there would

be something left over when their husbands eventually found their way home. And

the husbands were paid in small change, so that they would not be 'inconvenienced'

by having to go into the pubs to get change. Roberts descendants are legion and have distinguished themselves throughout the

globe and in all walks of life. One of his great-grandsons, Samuel Ussher Roberts,

also achieved fame as an architect, his most stunning achievement being Kylemore

near Letterfrack in Connemara, the fairytale castle which he built for a rich

Merseyside industrialist. Nearer home, he built Gurteen Castle near Kilsheelan for

the first Count De la Poer, transformed John Roberts's Georgian block at Faithlegg into a Victorian mansion, and recased the exterior of Curraghmore.

Roberts's most renowned descendant was undoubtedly another great-grandson,

Field Marshal Earl Roberts, V C, of Kandahar, Pretoria and Waterford. There is a curi

ous parallel between the deaths of the architect and the soldier-hero. Both men died

at the same age (eighty-two) and of the same cause (pneumonia). In both cases their

deaths were the result of conscientiously fulfilling duties that could safely have been

left to younger people - the field marshal valiantly attempting to boost the morale of

the wretched Indian troops brought to serve on the Western Front, and John Roberts

supervising the work being done on the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Waterford.

same ground. Erected on high ground in the heart of the old

Viking city, and surmounted by a steeple nearly 200 feet high, it

still dominates the urban landscape. The western fa?ade, as seen

from the garden of the apartments built for the widows of clergy

men in 1700, is dominated by an imposing portico, behind which

rises a lofty tower on which is built the steeple (Fig 3). Roberts

carefully followed the prevailing notion of the correct order of

classical columns: simple Doric capitals for the portico, Ionic

swirls for those on the tower, and Corinthian luxuriance for the

capitals under the base of the spire.

The interior of Roberts' cathedral is of unusual design, though

the influence of Gibbs' London churches is everywhere, particularly

that of St Martin's-in-the-Fields. The west end is dominated by a

large vestibule, now filled with monuments, including the macabre

15th-century tomb of Mayor James Rice, thrown out by Roberts'

workmen but brought back a hundred years later and now regarded

as one of Ireland's most important medieval funerary monuments.

On either side are the vestry and consistorial courtroom, while over

head a gallery leads to the diocesan library. From the vestibule one

looks through rows of Corinthian columns (Fig 1) along the nave to

the beautiful pedimented reredos at the west end.

An engraving by Thomas Malt?n senior of c.l 790 gives a clear

impression of the interior of the cathedral at that time (Fig 4). We

see the fine carved balconies supported by the piers below.

Underneath the galleries were the box pews which also took up

most of the centre aisle. The liturgy in Roberts's day consisted

mainly of morning and evening prayer, in which the sermon pro

vided the climax; the huge three-decker pulpit, centrally placed

where nave and chancel met, was therefore the focus of attention.

At the west end of the nave were a cross gallery and screen sup

7 Staircase of the Waterford Chamber of

Commerce (Courtesy Waterford Museum of

Treasures)

10 4 I

IRISH ART S R E V IE W S P RING 2004



ARCHITECTURE I CLASSICISM AND CIVILITY

ported by fluted Ionic columns which held the organ and divided

the nave from the vestibule.

Like most such projects, then and now, the new cathedral ran

over time and over budget, the final cost being ?5,397. Alas, the

By the end of the 19th century Pugin and his followers had thoroughly denigrated the suitability of classical architecture for Christian churches

kindly Bishop Chenevix did not live to see its completion, and it

fell to his successor Bishop Newcome to consecrate the body of

the church on 21 May 1780. The steeple remained to be built;

subscriptions were still being sought for the work in 1783 and it

was not completed until December 1788.4

By the end of the 19th century Pugin and his followers had thor

oughly denigrated the suitability of classical architecture for

Christian churches, while new liturgical practices stressed the

Eucharist at the expense of the preaching of the Word. Radical alter

ations to Roberts's cathedral were carried out by Sir Thomas Drew

who, dismissing Roberts's expertise, removed the galleries, blocked

up the lower nave windows, and relocated organ and pulpit, while

a huge arch opened up a new vista between vestibule and nave (Fig

2). Damaging to the structure and lacking in sensitivity towards the

original, Drew's intervention is regarded today as regrettable. As

part of the recent and comprehensive restoration programme, the

organ gallery has been restored to its original position.

By the end of the 1770s, therefore, Roberts' achievement was

considerable. His career to this point is well summarised in a letter

written in May 1775 by Bishop Chenevix to his Limerick colleague: 'I can send an architect from this place, one whose integrity,

skill and experience I have long been acquainted with, he having finished the episcopal house, and he has built two houses for me,

and on whose report the trustees (I am certain) may safely rely.

He is well known to the Archbishop of Cashel, Lord Tyrone

(whose fine offices he built), and the chief gentlemen of this

county, having been employed by most of them in considerable

buildings and to their entire satisfaction, and he has now under

taken the rebuilding of the Cathedral of Water ford, his plan hav

ing been approved of by the Corporation and the Clergy'.5

The reference to Roberts' work for 'the chief gentlemen of this

county' is all too tantalising. Which country houses exactly did

he build? We may surmise that Faithlegg House, completed in

1783 for Cornelius Bolton, was his work. Certainly his relation

ship with Bolton was a close one, and around this time the latter

leased to him part of Faithlegg townland with the unappetizing

name of Knockrotton, where Roberts built his own country seat,

which he named Roberts Mount. Nothing remains of it today. He

is also credited with the work done at this period at the home of

5 Thomas Roberts

(1748-1778)

landscape painter, third son of John

and Mary Susannah

Roberts (Courtesy of

the late Lt. Col.

Robert Going)

6 Thomas Sautelle

Roberts West View

of the City of

Waterford 1795

aquatint 31.2 x

46.5cm (Courtesy Waterford Museum

of Treasures)

8 Stuccowork on the stairwell of the

Chamber of Commerce attrib. to

Patrick Osbourne (Courtesy Waterford Museum of Treasures)

m

9 Chamber of Commerce

Waterford (Courtesy Waterford

City Council)

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SPRING 2004 105



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the Leigh family at Rosegarland in County Wexford, where the

staircase bears a striking resemblance to that of Waterford's

Chamber of Commerce. It is also evident from the Bishop's letter

that he worked farther afield; he has even been credited with

building Moore Hall in Co. Mayo and Tyrone House in Co.

Galway (but could there be some confusion here with Lord

Tyrone's 4fine offices' at Curraghmore?)6

One residence that can confidently be attributed to Roberts is

Newtown House, in the eastern suburbs of Waterford, built as

the country seat of the Catholic landowner John Wyse.7 A con

temporary painting shows John Wyse, his wife and brother enjoy

ing a musical interlude in the drawing-room.8 Alas, John Wyse's

enjoyment of his new home was brief. By the time of his death in

1799, laden with debts, Newtown had been sold to the Society of Friends for their provincial boarding school. When the

Pennsylvania Quaker William Savery visited the house early in

1798, he found his co-religionists busily removing the stuccowork

that can dimly be seen in the background of the painting,

together with other offensive ornamentation.9

Meanwhile, Roberts continued his work on public buildings.

It says much for the wealth and self-confidence of

Waterford's Catholics that

they should choose this moment to erect what in fact was Ireland's first post-Reformation

Catholic Cathedral

The medieval leper house in Stephen Street had been closed by the city fathers owing to a mystifying shortage of lepers, but the

diocesan chancellor, the Rev. William Downes, compelled them

to use the funds for the erection of a new hospital for the relief

of the sick and maimed poor of the city. This was designed and

built by Roberts on an imposing site at the foot of John's Hill to

the east of the city, and was completed in 1785. It is a large build

ing of fifteen bays and three storeys over a basement. It became

the City and County Infirmary in 1897, was closed in 1986, and

after a long period of neglect and vandalism is at last being con

verted to new usage.

In 1784 Roberts was a member of a consortium that leased from

the Corporation 'a plot of ground, formerly a garden, under

Dunderry wall' as the site for a playhouse and assembly hall.10

Completed by Roberts in 1788, it is a large, nine-bay, two-storey

building sited on the Mall, more subtle in style than its two robust

neighbours, the Bishop's Palace and Cathedral. The interior is dom

inated by a huge staircase leading to rooms of imposing size. In 1813

the Corporation bought out the lease for ?3,000 and transferred the

city offices there from the old exchange on the Quay. The Assembly

Rooms then became the Town Hall, but the 'playhouse' - now the

Theatre Royal - has continued in part of the building.



ARCHITECTURE

CLASSICISM AND CIVILITY

Roberts' finest secular creation is undoubtedly the splendid house he built at a cost of ?10,000 for William Morris, one of the

city's wealthiest merchants. Imposingly sited in what is now

O'Connell Street, it faces down Gladstone Street to the river. It is

of six bays and four-storeys over a basement. (Fig 9) There is a beau

tiful wide Doric doorcase with large fanlight. Inside there is a series

of fine reception rooms adorned with exquisite stuccowork. This

has been attributed to Patrick Osborne the Waterford stuccodore, but is perhaps closer in style to the work of Michael Stapleton. At

the back of the entrance-hall, a door to the left leads to the finest

feature of the house, the oval staircase. The lofty stairwell sur

mounted by a dome and lit by a skylight; the beautifully curved

doorways leading off the stairwell; the stairs themselves with their

brass balustrade; the delicate friezes of flowers and deer; and the

plaster eagles in high relief that surround the dome - these features

make up one of the most elegant staircases in Ireland. (figs 7& 8)

William Morris, for whom this palatial residence was built, never

lived to see it completed. We know from a codicil to his will dated

31 January 1785 that it was then under construction; he died a few

days later." In 1813 his family sold it for a mere ?2,500 to the city's

Chamber of Commerce. Perhaps the finest town house left in

Ireland, it is currently up for sale, its fate ominously uncertain.

In 1792 the Roman Catholics of Waterford obtained from the

Corporation a lease of land on which to build a new church, John Roberts was commissioned for this task, and building commenced

in 1793. It was an astonishingly ambitious undertaking, for the

remaining penal laws were still being dismantled in that year.

Moreover, there were already two Catholic churches in the city, the

Great Chapel in Barronstrand Street and the New Chapel, now St

Patrick's Church, besides several smaller mass-houses. It says much

for the wealth and self-confidence of Waterford's Catholics that

they should choose this moment to erect what in fact was Ireland's

first post-Reformation Catholic cathedral (Figs 11 &1 2).

The Great Chapel was demolished and the new building erected at right angles on the extended site. It is almost square in

plan, with a vast open interior, the ceiling supported on a forest

of fourteen giant Corinthian columns with gilded capitals. On

each side are bow-fronted balconies supported by Ionic columns,

and a third balcony at the west end holds the organ. The decora

tion of the woodwork is delicate and contrasts with the might of

the columns, round which the balcony fronts weave gracefully.

During the following century the ever wealthier Catholic com

munity enlarged the east end and adorned it with sumptuous fur

nishings - high altar, baldachino, chapter stalls, altar rails, and

magnificent oak pulpit; but the rest of the cathedral is much as

Roberts designed it - spacious, restrained and inspiring.

This, Roberts' last work, is also his masterpiece - 'a perfect epit ome of Georgian taste ... possibly the greatest forgotten building in

the history of 18th-century building in Ireland'.12 The work must

have been nearing completion when he died on 24 May 1796. The

facade was left unfinished, perhaps owing to the instability of the

site, until 1893. He was buried, not with his ancestors in the

medieval graveyard of St John's, but with his wife's Huguenot rela

tions in the old Franciscan friary, the 'French Church'. Their rest

ing-place is marked by a modest wall-plaque. His contribution to

the development of his native city was largely forgotten in modern

times, until in 1996 local historians (including the present writer)

demanded that his achievement be acknowledged on the bicente

nary of his death. Today the city's most central thoroughfare is

renamed John Roberts Square, and events in his honour are held

annually during the first weekend of May. Waterford is unique in Ireland for the number and quality of

its 18th-century public buildings, and the fact that nearly all of

these were the work of one local architect; unique, too, in that

Protestant and Catholic cathedrals were designed and built by the same man. Like Sir Christopher Wren, John Roberts could

well have remarked: Si monumentum requieris, circumspice. U

JULIAN WALTON is a local historian and works as a project assistant in the Boole

Library, University College, Cork.

I acknowledge with thanks the generous assistance of William Fraher (Dungarvan Museum), Eamonn McEneaney and Rosemary Ryan (Waterford Treasures), Donal

Moore (Waterford City Archives), Peter Lamb (art historian), Hilary Murphy and Fithnp Scallan (WPYfnrrd)

Sources: William Fraher: 'John Roberts, architect, 1712-1796' (thesis, Waterford RTC, 1983). Peter Galloway: The Cathedrals of Ireland Belfast, 1992.

Mark Girouard: 'The noblest quay in Europe' Country Life, 8, 15 and 22 Dec. 1963;

reprinted in the author's Town and Country, Yale, 1992, pp 149-168). Mark Girouard: 'Curraghmore, Co. Waterford Eire' Country Life, 7, 14 and 21 Feb.

1963. John Redmill: 'Christ Church Cathedral, Waterford: A feasibility study' (1993).

Margaret Price: 'The French settlers in Waterford after the revocation of the Edict

of Nantes' (1853); transcript with notes by Matthew Butler in possession of the

author. Transcript also in National Archives.

Minute-books of Waterford Corporation, 1700-1837.

W.J. Bayly, 'The Roberts family of Waterford', Jnl of the Waterford and S E of

Ireland Arch. Soc., II (1896), pp 98-103.

1 Edward McParland, Public architecture in

Ireland 1680-1760 (Yale, 2001), p. 136.

2 N Ruddock and N Kloss, Unending worship: A

History of Saint Iberius Church, Wexford

(Wexford, 1997), p.11. 3 Cited in W J Bayly, 'Roberts family', p. 101.

4 MS note in Waterford Treasures copy of [G.

Wilson], Historical remarks of the city of

Waterford [Waterford, c.1736]

5 Limerick MSS, National Library of Ireland, no. 19.

6 G St G Mark: 'Tyrone House' Irish Georgian

Society Bulletin, July-Dec. 1976.

7 Maurice Wigham, Newtown School, Waterford, 1798-1998: A history (Waterford, 1998), p.14: "R.J. Greer, when Superintendant of the school, [wrote] in an article in The Newtown Journal

1863-64: 'The architect being John Roberts,

great-grandfather to our present pupil, William."'

8 See article on Wyse family in this magazine. 9 Diary of William Savery: transcript in Library of

the Society of Friends, Dublin.

10 'Deed in Waterford City Archives.

11 H F Morris and T Reade Duncan, 'The Reades of

cos Tipperary and Kilkenny', Irish Genealogist, VIII (1990-93), pp 29-30.

12 Alastair Rowan: God's Houses. II: The Irish

Georgian Church (RTE, 1988).

10 The courtyard at

Curragmore Co.

Waterford

11 Holy Trinity

Cathedral, interior

12 The facade of

Holy Trinity Cathedral

13 SAMUEL FREDERICK

BROCAS C. 1812 View

of the Bishop's

Palace, New Rooms

and Mall, Waterford.

watercolour

(Collection Sir

Robert Goff)

SPRING( 2004 IRISH ARTS REVIEW | 107



classicism and civility

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