2016:651 - Pembroke Road, Lansdowne Road, Shelbourne Road, Dublin 4, Dublin

An initial assessment, comprising the mechanical excavation of four test trenches, was undertaken on foot of a grant of permission from An Bord Pleanála to investigate the possibility of there being surviving archaeological deposits present. The site was occupied by two large structures, the Ballsbridge and Clyde Court Hotels, and does not lie within a zone of archaeological potential. The closest known archaeological sites are Baggotrath Castle (DU018-055), some 550m to the west of the site, and the bridge at Ballsbridge (DU018-59), approximately 330m to the south.

The historical development of the area is connected with the development of the Pembroke Estate. However an initial phase of urban development was captured by the Ordnance Survey on the first edition mapping in 1837, where the Trinity College Botanic Gardens are depicted occupying the entire development site. The gardens were developed after 1806 when the college leased 8 acres of land from the Pembroke Estate for 175 years at 15 guineas per acre. The context for this development remains opaque, where the Estate was on the point of developing the surrounding area in a regular ordered fashion to accommodate a middle class escaping from a declining inner city. The development of a botanical garden may have been considered advantageous for the area, where suitable outdoor recreation facilities were not developed until Herbert Park was laid out after the 1907 Irish International Exhibition. Three acres were set aside for the Gardens and enclosed to the west and north within a 12-foot granite wall lined with yellow brick to the interior. An additional two acres was added on the south-western boundary in 1832, extending the Gardens to the present Pembroke Road frontage. In 1848 a further one and a half acres were added to the north-western corner, both extensions being defined by iron railings (Wyse Jackson 1987, 303), where the original walled area appears to have retained its boundary. The full extent of the Gardens can best be appreciated on the 1909 25-inch mapping, which depicts the internal layout comprising several glasshouses and ponds, a well and ancillary structures.

Over its period of operations the Gardens were to loose small parcels of land. In 1942 a strip at the south-eastern boundary was acquired by the Board of Works for the Royal Veterinary College where the loss of three acres in 1960 to Lansdowne Holdings reduced the Gardens by 40%, freeing up the area for the development of the Intercontinental (later Jury’s) Hotel. A further piece of ground was sold to the Veterinary College in 1965. With the lease nearing its end, the college began moving the more important species to Trinity Hall in Dartry in 1966-67. The remainder of the Gardens were disposed of in 1969 when the remaining portion of the site was sold to P.V. Doyle who developed the Berkeley Court Hotel on the corner of Lansdowne and Shelbourne Roads.

In any event, there was nothing of archaeological significance located over the course of the testing and the subsequent monitoring of ground reduction, where the scant evidence for the botanical gardens was truncated by the modern development of the hotel in the early 1970s. The perimeter wall to Shelbourne Road and some of the surviving exotic planting are being retained in the development.

Reference

Wyse Jackson, P.S. 1987. ‘The Botanic Garden of Trinity College Dublin, 1687 to 1987’ in Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 95, 301-11.

Archaeology and Built Heritage, St. Paul’s Smithfield, Dublin 7