“No drunks need apply” would be the blunt way of summing up what the residents of an area of Cork definitely didn’t want in their neighbourhood in the latter part of the 19th century.
And we’re not talking a posh neighbourhood but rather, the Barrack Street area, home today to students and other renters as well as older working class residents, with pubs and a bohemian cafe making the narrow street a destination for socialising.
Back in 1873-74, 55 houses were built off Barrack Street on the site of an old barracks. In 1884, the Improved Dwellings Company advertised 42 new houses on a plot adjoining Friar Street.
The satisfaction of the Improved Dwellings Company with the work being carried out is expressed in their 1882 minutes: “A more beneficial work than the housing effort has never been undertaken. Its moral effects in the neighbourhood of Barrack Street was wonderful. The people say now that a man addicted to drink would not get a cottage there – they would not have him. A man who was in the habit of staggering home drunk must look for a lodging in a dirty back lane; but if he must enjoy the comfort and respectability of such a house as the Improved Dwellings Company gave its tenants, he must change his whole manner of living.”
READ MORE
This information is contained in a recently published handsome hardback book entitled The Hill Architects: A Cork Architectural Dynasty, 1827-1951, by historian Dagmar Ó Riain-Raedel and retired farmer and art collector Richard Wood (who restored Fota House.)
Fittingly, the publication had its Cork launch at Ballymaloe House as its former head chef and co-owner, Myrtle Allen, was the daughter of Henry Houghton Hill (1882-1951). Also the architectural drawings by the Hill dynasty were for many years kept in the loft above the piggery at Ballymaloe before being moved to the attic in Ballymaloe House for safekeeping.
The book, illustrated with the drawings and photographs of the Hills’ buildings, aims to rescue from “possibility anonymity” the design by three generations of the Hill architects’ legacy to Cork. Apart from a few exceptions, the names of Cork city’s modern architects are scarcely familiar to the citizens of Cork.
Myrtle Allen was entrusted with the old architectural drawings when the last of the Hill architects left the family company
Cork-based architectural firms had to compete with outsiders for contracts. While the buildings designed by the Hills comprised both residential and institutional structures as well as churches and banks, they often lost out on the big commissions.
Had they been successful in winning the commission for Queen’s College (University College Cork), one of the main projects in 19th century Cork, their name might have been up there with the brothers James and George R Pain or members of the Deane family or even William Atkins and William Burges.
The Hills were relative latecomers which meant they never became the architects to the gentry and nobility. But that is not to take from the achievements of three generations of the Hills. This includes the design of the extension to the Crawford Art Gallery by Arthur Hill, who was responsible for much of the better quality Victorian work in Cork.
Arthur Hill made an important contribution to the culture and commercial life of Cork. He was one of the people behind the Cork International Exhibition in 1902 as well as the Carnegie Library (now gone). It was the city’s first library.
One of Cork’s most iconic buildings is Our Lady’s Hospital on the Lee Road. Built between 1874-1852, it was known as the Cork District Lunatic Asylum. The architect of this building – crowned by spires, turrets and gables – was William Atkins. But later, because of a rift between Atkins and the board of works, William Henry Hill I was chosen as the new supervising architect in 1876. He chose red brick for some of the new building. Both in style and colour, it was in stark contrast to Atkins’s grey gothic structure.
The book suggests that Hill may have wanted to make a statement by taking a very different approach from that of his predecessor. While the building is now vandalised, the redbrick structure is eye-catching and in sharp contrast to the main hospital’s facade.
Myrtle Allen was entrusted with the old architectural drawings when the last of the Hill architects left the family company. The drawings were exhibited as part of Cork’s tenure as European Capital of Culture in 2005. Dagmar Ó Riain-Raedel became fascinated with them and said to Allen that something should be done with them. The academic began to research the Hill family and “doggedly kept at it for 20 years” says Richard Wood.
Allen apparently regretted not doing architecture herself. “She hadn’t much room for regret with the success she made of her life.”
When she and her husband, Ivan Allen, bought Ballymaloe House and grounds, it needed a lot of renovation and farming attention. The couple travelled to Denmark to learn more about farming. When they weren’t studying agriculture, they visited showrooms and furniture providers.
They returned to Shanagarry in east Cork with “magnificent furniture and fireplaces which were totally modern but had the same airiness and lightness about them that the rooms in Ballymaloe have.”
Clearly, Myrtle Allen inherited the good taste gene – in every sense.
