The Dragon Gates, Marino
When James Caulfeild, the 4th Viscount Charlemont (later to become the 1st Earl of Charlemont), returned in 1755 from his nine-year grand tour of Europe and North Africa, he began to create something special at the Donnycarney House & Estate. The estate was put together for him here in north Dublin by his step-father, Thomas Adderley. At that time the estate would have run down as far as the sea and Lord Charlemont wanted a residence where he could enjoy daily bathing in the sea. So this location was perfect for him. One of the first things he did was to rename the house, Marino House, and that name remains the name of this area to this day as we know.
As he took those early decisions about what he would do to the estate, designs for the gates were drawn up by Simon Vierpyl, a talented Italian sculptor who had come to Dublin from Rome to help Lord Charlemont achieve significant developments and improvements on the estate. This included working with Sir William Chambers on the Casino at Marino and Charlemont House, Rutland Square (now the Hugh Lane Gallery). The Dragon Gates incorporate elements of the Caulfeild coat of arms, Deo Duce Ferro Comitante, ‘with God as my guide and my sword as my companion’ and you can see that carved in the wonderful stone over the pedestrian gates.
And they are indeed ‘Dragons’ and not ‘Griffins’. The gates are often referred to as The Griffin Gates but that is incorrect. A griffin is a lion/eagle cross which has the body legs and tail of a lion but the neck head and wings of an eagle. A dragon is a large scaly lizard with longish tail and four legs. It also has shoulder mounted wings. So what we have are definitely dragons!!!
The gates were so striking that during a visit to Ireland in 1821, King George IV proclaimed that they ‘were the most perfect structure of their kind’ in all his dominions.
The painting above from 1853 is part of a collection of paintings in the National Library of Ireland by Edward McFarland, that includes several locations from the City of Dublin to Clontarf. We are lucky to have this as it shows the gates as they were including the original twin gate lodges as they were during the time of the 3rd Earl of Charlemont. We have no reason to believe these were additions so this is probably how James had the gates built almost 100 years earlier. It was he who sold the estate to Cardinal Cullen, who in turn sold it to the Congregation of Christian Brothers in 1881.
Below is a photograph showing the gates, still in that same position on Fairview Strand, but with the Brothers school, St Joseph’s (or Joey’s as it is known), just behind the gates.
This is where the gates remained until Griffith Avenue was built by the new Irish government at the time of the Garden city at Marino. It was during this move that the twin lodges ceased to be. The Brothers did not want to lose the gates and thankfully they were carefully moved, block by block.
In the late 1980’s, when the land was sold to a developer to build the Charlemont Estate, the gates were moved again to their current location, watching over our comings and goings.
Article by: Ciarán Fogarty - Head of Conferencing & Facilities.
