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The Gothic Room, Marino

‘The Gothic Cathedral’ Thomas Leeson Rowbotham, 1816

The Gothic Room, Marino

James Caulfeild, 1^st Earl of Charlemont, developed a very special series of buildings and structures on the estate here at Marino when he returned from his nine-year grand tour of Europe and North Africa.  The most iconic of his buildings still stands and is the Casino at Marino, currently run expertly by the OPW.  (Now closed to tours for the winter, this should be on your to do list next year when it reopens in March 2023.)  Lord Charlemont had immersed himself in arts, literature and architecture during his travels and he set about creating a number buildings in different styles on his North Dublin estate as an education to the people of Dublin and to show the styles he had seen while away.

Brocas, Rosamond’s Bower, 1820-1847

One of the lesser known buildings he created was the Gothic Room.  It appears on ordinance survey maps of the area from 1837 and 1867 and a structure is clearly visible at that location on earlier maps of circa 1770 although not named.  This building was so important to the pleasure derived from the estate.  It was positioned at the end of a serpentine lake and the vista would have been beautiful when walking or taking a carriage ride through the grounds.  There are only a few sketches to show us how it might have looked and I include ones from Lesson Rowbotham and Brocas. 

Lord Charlemont would have used this as a banqueting house and it is thought that the water source, so valuable to the kitchen gardens, now St Vincents GAA, ran under the building to the serpentine lake.  Similar to the Casino, we believe there were hidden elements to the design and it is likely that the spire was indeed a chimney from the furnaces and heating system.  Lord Charlemont liked to hide function elements within more beautiful architectural features.

Brocas, Entrance to an Ecclesiastical Building, 1820

Today, the footprint of the Gothic Room is the Christian Brother graveyard tucked away in the corner of MIE, near where we border St Vincent’s and the Fire Brigade. By the time the Brothers moved to this estate in 1881, the Gothic Room had fallen in to ruin and as the building looked like those of a ruined church, it was the ideal spot for the Brothers to lay their dead to rest.

Below you can see a sketch found in the Educational Record of the Congregation published in 1899. Remains of the spire, or chimney as we are sure it was, are still visible in this sketch.

The only way to see any of it today, is by looking at that wall from the pitch behind St Patrick’s Hall.   You can see the original stone work that would date to circa 1750’s or 1760’s when it was built.

Article by: Ciarán Fogarty - Head of Conferencing & Facilities.