This book argues that Nathaniel Clements (1705-77) was an enlightened
patron of architecture, not a practicing architect, and that he
influenced upper-class residential development in Dublin and popularized
a particular form of Palladian 'villa-farm' (or modest country house)
partly because of who he was - a high-ranking and well-connected
government official and an arbiter of fashion and taste. The two places
where his architectural influence is still strongly felt today are the
high-fashion enclave of Henrietta Street, Dublin, of which he created
about one-third in the period 1733-c.1740, and the Phoenix Park, of
which he was Ranger, where he made important improvements to the
landscape and where he built in 1752-57 a new Ranger's Lodge which forms
the nucleus of today's Aras an Uachtarain, the official residence of the
President of Ireland. The book provides a detailed analysis of these
aesthetic achievements and (following Clements' death) of the re-casting
of the Ranger's Lodge as a British viceregal residence during the period
1782-c.1800. It concludes with a broader discussion of the 'amateur'
tradition in British and Irish architecture and of Clements' place among
the 'amateurs' who dominated the art form in the decades before the
coming-of-age of a fully-fledged architectural profession. [Subject:
Biography, History, Irish Studies, Architecture]
