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“Optimistic” is how renowned conservation architect John O’Connell describes Robert O’Byrne’s The Irish Aesthete: Ten Years in the Making, a photography exhibition currently running at the Irish Architectural Archive on Merrion Square.
After travelling throughout the island of Ireland, the collection marks ten years of O’Byrne’s influential blog, The Irish Aesthete. Best known for his specialist interest in historic houses and gardens in Ireland, O’Byrne’s exhibition comprises a selection of photographs taken over the past decade of every house of importance or interest in the country, North and South, ruined and preserved.
A former vice-president of the Irish Georgian Society, O’Byrne has a long-held passion for Irish architecture, and is today one of Ireland’s best-known writers and lecturers specialising in the country’s historic houses and gardens. He launched his blog in 2012, inspired by his passionate interest in Ireland’s architectural heritage and deep concern for its preservation. The public appetite for his work saw him quickly expand its reach to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube as he documented both the grandeur and the dilapidation. “There is such a thing as a beautiful ruin, unfortunately, I wish there wasn’t. They can be very seductive.”
Remarkably, his photography is completely self-taught and shot exclusively on a smart phone, including all the images in this new exhibition. While the quality may vary with each handset upgrade, the content is captivating from start to finish. He’s managed to capture what he calls the “muscularity” of Irish architecture. “There’s a kind of weight about our historic buildings that you don’t have elsewhere. Irish people never went in for the kind of daintiness you might find in other architectural developments elsewhere around Europe, there’s a great solidity, a weight to what we do.”
“Taking on a historic property is not an easy task, that’s a lot of roof have to look after.”
The exhibition represents the mere tip of the iceberg of his work, collected over a decade-long pilgrimage around the country. The true total is an impressive 50,000 images spanning all 32 counties of Ireland, which he is now donating to Irish Architectural Archive, where they will be digitally archived and available in one place for ever more.
“This is why the Archive exists,” says Colum O’Riordan, CEO of the Irish Architectural Archive. “We were set up in 1976 to collect, preserve and make accessible records of every kind on or related to the architecture of Ireland. This donation is not just of 50,000 photographs, but 50,000 really well taken photographs, really well composed. And it is interesting because it is by far the largest digital collection that we’ve ever been given. We still collect drawings and paintings and have our own digital images but this is by far the largest collection.”
While O’Byrne’s passion and eye for detail makes the collection special, his extensive network make them exceptional. “It’s rare because of Robert’s access,” says O’Riordan. “He knows everybody and so when he wants to get into a building you tend to say yes because he’s charming and witty and gets into houses other people wouldn’t be able to. But also he’s not afraid of getting into buildings that are crumbling around him. One photograph has a sign which says ‘incredibly dangerous’ not just ‘dangerous’ but ‘incredibly dangerous’. He’s an adventurer in that way. Yes, doors open for him, but he also opens doors. From the Irish Architect’s Archive perspective, this is a really important addition.”
While the images form a treasure trove of architectural delights, O’Byrne is at pains to pick a favourite. “I like different buildings for different reasons,’ he says. “I’m very lucky, I live in a beautiful place called Ardbraccan – in a wing of that fine house, so I do love dearly Ardbraccan. There’s also a rather wonderful garden called Oakfield Park in County Donegal. A fellow called Gerry Robinson, a retired businessman, restored it and he’s done a fantastic job. And it’s open to the public and it’s worth going to see. So that would be another place.
“But also, there’s the quirky things I like such as the Howard mausoleum in Wicklow. It’s an extraordinary pyramid, which has been claimed to be the biggest pyramid outside of Egypt. It’s where the Earls of Wicklow were buried, and it dates from the late 18th century and is in this little graveyard in Co Wicklow. Then there’s the Barrymore mausoleum in a little village, Castle lions in Co Cork. It’s just this extraordinary tomb to the Earls of Barrymore. This is the whole point – you find all these little places of interest.”
While offering a reprieve from the Christmas madness, this exhibition also offers the viewer a whistle-stop tour of some of the country’s finest buildings and gardens. “I hope they’ll get pleasure, and I hope they’ll get maybe a better understanding of how rich and how diverse our architectural heritage is. And how magical a lot of it is. We we do have lots and lots and lots of wonderful buildings from over the centuries and a lot of the time we tend to have taken them for granted. So if you see a beautiful image of these buildings, you might be encouraged to pay a little more attention to it, to examine it.
“I’ve included some ancient monuments and some country houses, lots of interiors, and then lots of architectural details. Just little things that you might miss – a little piece of plaster work, a bit of sculpture, a bit of painting. There’s even a picture of some nice vintage wallpaper and a beautiful Victorian tiled floor from from Temple House in Co Sligo. It’s just these little details that you might otherwise not pick up. You suddenly realise we have all of these as well.”
O’Riordan agrees: “I hope that visitors get a sense of the richness of this collection. And I hope they’ll get an appreciation of the range and depth of Irish architecture. And I hope they’ll get an interest or a spark into what we do. One of the reasons we have exhibitions is to bring people in.”
Preservation is a key motive for O’Byrne who is very engaged in the organisation Historic Houses of Ireland “a kind of self help group for private owners of historic properties” and he hopes that this exhibition might encourage greater funding and support because he sees the owners as “the guardians of our history”.
“Almost every owner of a historic property battles, so you know, there are a lot of heroes that I admire greatly. Taking on a historic property is not an easy task, because that’s a lot of roof have to look after. We have this whole scheme at the moment for retrofitting. And it’s more challenging for historic properties because you also have to preserve the existing fabric, the historic fabric of the building, while at the same time trying to retrofit it so it can deal with present day climate issues. So it’s more challenging, and I think if there were more help in that area for historic house owners, from the government and from local authorities, I think that would be enormously helpful. A lot of them do worry a great deal about it, particularly if we’re not meant to be burning fossil fuels. How are they meant to keep their houses dry, and stay standing?”
Fortunately, the exhibition highlights a number of properties which have been restored since O’Byrne shot them, including Number 3 Henrietta Street. “That’s a wonderful house and there is an interior shot of it, which I took many years ago when it was in very poor repair, it looked like it would be lost. And it’s been impeccably restored. So there are some buildings which have sort of come back from the dead.”
Highlighting what has been saved affords the digital collection to be greeted with optimism. “It’s lovely to see the exhibition because one or two houses have actually been revived,” says O’Connell, who was the architect behind the restoration of Ballyfin and Abbeyleix. “Five or 10 years ago, these would have been under appreciated, undervalued. But we realised that every one we tamper with we lose. And so we diminish our patrimony (not a word used very often). It seems to have taken us a very long time to understand. It’s like throwing books out of a library and ending up with an empty bookcase and wondering why.”
The Irish Aesthete: Ten Years in the Making will run until December 22 with free entry.
