The early residential buildings of Trinity College Dublin Architecture, financing, people

This book contains a history of the early buildings of Trinity College, from the Elizabethan Quadrangle up to the residential buildings of the early 18th century. Among all those red-brick buildings only the Rubrics remains, albeit much altered, to suggest what Trinity College looked like before the 1750s, when replacement of the early buildings began. Why and when were new buildings added to the College? How were they funded? Who designed them? Where were materials sourced? What can be said about the architecture of the buildings, all of which, apart from the Rubrics, were pulled down in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? Who managed their construction on the College’s behalf, and who carried out the building work? How were essential services provided? The book answers all of these questions, and en route it explores an almost forgotten event, the disastrous fire of February 1726/7, in which at least one house in Library Square was destroyed and several more were damaged. The book also explores the community of residents of the early buildings up to the end of the 19th century. The book ends with a personal memoir of the Rubrics in recent times.

R.A. Somerville, a fellow emeritus of Trinity, lectured in economics at the College for over forty years. He has a long-standing interest in architectural history and the history of the College.