Ruskin's `Irish peasant craftsmen'

The Oxford Museum, designed by Irish architects Thomas Deane and Benjamin Woodward, seemed to embody so much of the Gothic Revival aesthetic espoused by John Ruskin that there were some who believed he had actually designed it himself.

Deane, who was from Cork, and Woodward, from Tullamore, Co Offaly, were among the early followers of Ruskin's High Victorian dictums, enunciated in his influential book, The Stones of Venice (1849). And the "omniloquent" writer was a great fan of their work.

Deane and Woodward's stone carvers, the Dublin-based O'Shea brothers, were responsible for the wonderful and witty carvings which decorate the Oxford Museum; a 1971 guide published by Architectural Design described them as "Ruskin's Irish peasant craftsmen."

Their finest work, including such incomparable vignettes as monkeys playing billiards, can be seen on the former Kildare Street Club. But it is the Museum Building in Trinity College, on which the O'Sheas also left their indelible mark, which is definitively "Ruskinian" in character.

As Maurice Craig wrote in Dublin 1660- 1860, "Ruskin came all the way from England to see the Museum Building, pronounced Woodward the only architect in Europe and hauled the entire team - Woodward, Deane and the O'Sheas, to Oxford to build the museum there." Trinity's Museum survives, as does Oxford's, but most of the Kildare Street Club - notably its marvellous staircase hall - was gutted in 1971 and turned into offices, adapted for use by the Alliance Francaise. Part of it survives as the National Library's heraldic section. Other major losses included St Ann's Schools and Molesworth Hall - two lesser buildings of which Ruskin would have approved. Despite vigorous protests, they were demolished in 1978 to make way for the grim block which serves as the European Commission's Dublin office.

Frederick O'Dwyer chronicles and dissects the Ruskin connection in his definitive book, The Architecture of Deane and Woodward, published last year by Cork University Press; their work also included Queen's College, Cork, now UCC, and the Killarney Mental Asylum.