From the Dublin Evening Telegraph, 23 October 1909:
“JUDGE FITZGIBBON’S HOWTH RESIDENCE
In connection with the death of Lord Justice FitzGibbon there have been frequent references to his house at Howth, which is associated with so many prominent men. Many eminent Irish judges have houses outside the city, but none of them acquired the same unique individuality as that of Lord Justice FitzGibbon on the north-eastern slope of Howth Hill. A representative of the Evening Telegraph spent a quarter of an hour there on Thursday evening last with an Evening Telegraph artist. While the latter, from a bye-walk, was sketching the front of the seaside home that Judge FitzGibbon had made for himself on the northern cliffs of Ben Edar, he wandered around the grounds sloping down towards the sea, and wondered at the extraordinary judgment and taste of the young Gerald FitzGibbon of thirty years ago in selecting this spot – then practically a waste, as a Howth boatman described it to the present writer – for his future seaside residence.
The grounds of Lord Justice FitzGibbon’s residence are not very large, nor could they ever be mistaken for those of a great hereditary potentate, but they are laid out, small as they are, in a way which gives to the visitor to them, from beautifully planned walks and through umbrageous frames of trees, some of the most wonderful sights to be seen anywhere on the wonderful coast of Ireland.
The sketch of the house made by the Evening Telegraph artist, and which we give, is taken from the walk that runs down through the shrubbery and trees from the north side of the hall-door to the front of the grounds, where one has such beautiful views of Howth Harbour, Ireland’s Eye and Lambay. The other sketch is that of Lord Randolph Churchill and Lord Justice FitzGibbon on their way to Kilrock, the Lord Justice’s residence, from the railway station, just at the time, in the early eighties, when the statesman had reached the full flower of his evanescent fame.
When Lord Justice FitzGibbon determined to build his summer residence on the hill of Howth many years ago, Howth Harbour was the great resort on the east coast of Ireland of the herring fleet during the fishing season. Here at that period of the year a great concourse of vessels, manned by Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Welshmen, as well as Irishmen, anchored often six deep along the quays, and in the evening the Lord Justice could see as many as a hundred of those picturesque ‘smacks’ unfold their brown lug sails and drop out of the pretty harbour one by one.
Judging by the position of the Lord Justice’s house, it would seem as if, when choosing the site, he had in view a possible influx of the public as residents, for it stands on a shoulder of the Hill on the north side and cannot possibly be overlooked by any of the countless homes that have since been erected by Dublin capitalists. The entrance which is mostly used is the stone wicket, the path from which winds by zig zags through an evergreen shrubbery up to the plateau upon which the residence stands. The carriage entrance is situated higher up the Hill; inside the gate there is a pretty little red brick lodge. The main entrance is not much used, however, for none of the Lord Justice’s family would think of driving to the railway station except in bad weather. All the reception rooms are on the ground floor, and each commences a charming prospect, those on three sides of the house affording a combination of sea view and landscape unrivalled for beauty and picturesqueness.
From the writing table in this said residence at which the Lord Justice was wont to work there is a full view of Ireland’s Eye and Lambay, and the low-lying coast of North Dublin, and away, sixty miles to the north, on a clear day the Mourne Mountains appear in their grand and serrated outline, pencilled against the sky, lying magnificently east and west and out boldly to sea. The writing table mentioned is in the library, and the bookshelves are filled with a most varied collection of volumes, including many presentation copies, the authors of which were at one time or another Judge FitzGibbon’s guest on the Hill. These books include Lord Wolseley’s ‘Wellington,’ Lord Morley’s ‘Voltaire,’ Lord Roberts’ ‘Forty-one Years in India,’ Professor Webb’s ‘Faust’ and many others.
Naturally there are a large number of classical works, considering that the Lord Justice was a great Scholar, and that he passed brilliantly through Trinity College. He did not mind showing a visitor his case of medals, which included the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek, the Gold Medal in Classics, the Silver Medal in History, Law, and Literature, and two secured at the Historical Society, one for essay witing and the other for oratory.
In this room there are two large and very interesting photographs. One is a group of four young barristers – Edward Gibson, Samuel Walker, Gerald FitzGibbon, and RP Carton. The other represents a group of three – Lord Chancellor Ashbourne, Lord Chancellor Walker, and Lord Justice FitzGibbon – and it was only an accident, it appears, that Judge Carton was not present when this picture was taken.
Adjoining the library is the drawing room, from the windows of which there is a fine view of the Harbour and Balscadden Bay. The pictures in this apartment are nearly all by Irish artists, for Judge FitzGibbon did not feel, as unfortunately so many of our prominent Irishmen do, a compelling necessity to go outside Ireland on all occasions to for canvases to adjourn his walls. These pictures have all been hung at the Exhibitions of the Royal Hibernian Academy and include ‘Lough Fee’ by Colles Watkins, ‘Ballachulish’ by Bingham McGuinness, a Scotch landscape by Catterson Smith and ‘Still Life’ by Miss Curry.
In the dining room – a room as large and generous as Lord Justice FitzGibbon’s hospitality – there are Irish pictures also including ‘Adversity’ by JB Yeats, father of the poet, ‘St Patrick’s Dublin’ by Walter Osborne, a reproduction of which in pastel was purchased under the terms of the Chantrey bequest. There are several portraits of dogs by the same artist, ‘On the Thames’ by Augustus Burke, and ‘Skiddaw’ by Miss Benson.
Very few people are aware that the Lord Justice was an eager photographer. He used to show his friends his work in this line in several portfolios. At his famous Christmas week parties, he used to ‘take’ his distinguished guests either singly or in pairs, and there are Lord Morley, Lord Roberts, Mr Balfour, Lord Wolseley, Lord Ashbourne, and Lord Randolph Churchill. His interest in pictorial art is shown also in the fact that more than once he entertained at Howth the members of the Dublin Sketching Club. They returned the hospitality by presenting him with a souvenir in the form of a number of watercolours by themselves, which are also in a portfolio. Here too, may be seen the sketch book of the artist who represented the Illustrated London News at the great O’Connell State trial in 1844. The book contains a large number of drawings of the person concerned in that historic event.
An interesting object in the dining room is a handsome chandelier adapted to the use of oil. Ther is a similar one in the late Judge’s house in Merrion Square; and both were purchased out of two of the World’ first prizes for the best solutions of a series of acrostics.
As everybody knows, Lord Justice FitzGibbon was the chief promoter of the great Masonic Bazaar in aid of the Masonic Female Orphan School, which took place at Ballsbridge in 1893, and after dinner he used to pass round to his guests what he regarded as his most treasured possession, a gold and enamelled snuffbox presented to him by the committee in memory of his services on that occasion.
If you cross the road from the house, you find right below you what is popularly known as FitzGibbon’s Bathing Place. There are few Dublin bathers, we imagine, who do not know the steps cut out of the rocks by which one gets down to it along the steep cliff. These were made at Judge FitzGibbon’s expense, and it was he, too, who put up the iron ladders and the spring-boards. Anyone who has ever had a plunge at that most beautiful of bathing places can never fail to feel grateful to the man who is just gone for his great and unselfish thoughtfulness for those who, during the summer, go down to the sea for dips. Many of his kindnesses during life may, in time, be forgotten, but surely not this one while Dublin men love a swim and enjoy it at FitzGibbon’s Bathing Place.”
A ’Celebrity at Home’ article in the Irish Independent of 29 March 1899, from which much of the above information is taken, further described Lord Justice FitzGibbon as ‘a devoted member of the Masonic body,” also noting in his house “a picture in enamel representing two of the Masonic Orphan Schoolchildren in their quaint eighteenth-century dress, and in the other in the costume or uniform at present worn by the girls in the school.”
Lord Justice FitzGibbon, the eldest son of Gerald FitzGibbon, master in Chancery, was called to the Irish bar in 1860. The 1899 article says that:
“three years later he had made such headway in his profession that he felt justified in getting married, his wife being the second daughter of the late Baron Fitzgerald of the Irish Exchequer. From 1872, his advancement was very rapid, he was appointed law adviser to Dublin Castle, from which he was promoted to the Irish Solicitor-Generalship. Within a short period of six years from the date of becoming a QC he found himself a Lord Justice of Appeal in Ireland at the unprecedentedly early age of forty-one.”
An obituary in the Belfast Daily Telegraph of 1909 stated that:
“for some time past it was noticed that the deceased Lord Justice was failing in health… and was no longer characterised by that physical alertness which was such a distinguishing feature of his naturally commanding physique. For the first time he was absent from the half-yearly meeting of the Masonic Female Orphan schools…”
The same article went on to describe the late Lord Justice as
“Ireland’s most distinguished mason – its virtual head in Ireland, and adorning the most distinguished position open to any Freemason on this side of the Irish channel, being the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council for Ireland of the 33rd degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite – an office which he had held since the retirement through declining health of the late Commander of the Order, Vice-Chancellor Chatterton, some three years ago. He worked unceasingly to make the Orphan Schools, especially that of the girls, the finest in the country, and to see that the pupils were turned out thoroughly equipped for the duty of life, attending most regularly in the mornings at the School to talk familiarly with the orphan children, each of whom was known to him by name, while he was acquainted with the history of almost every child in the establishment.“
Lord Randolph Churchill’s friendship with Lord Justice FitzGibbon dated as far back as 1876, when the former was private secretary to his father when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Lord Randolph, father of Winston, always spent part of some of his Christmas holidays with FitzGibbon in Howth in the company of a select group of Dublin wits, literary men and raconteurs. Medical men, too, attended – on one occasion when Lord Randolph had to return to England early after Winston suffered an accident, he brought a fellow guest, a surgeon, with him to attend to his son.
A somewhat acerbic account of these Christmas parties is to be found in the Private Diaries of Sir Algernon West, former private secretary to Gladstone, and a man ‘who knew everyone that was anyone,’ published in 1922:
“Dined in shooting coats and slippers, or anyhow, provided they were not clean, at 7, ate and drank until about 8.30, Played cards till 12, then a supper of oysters and snipe, then cards till any hour… No woman was allowed in the house, and in the morning at 10 Lord Justice FitzGibbon, unshorn and untoothed, brought them each a cup of tea in his dressing-gown. They breakfasted at 11, they again began to play cards, and this went on for a week.”
An annual orgy of gambling, informal dress, oysters and snipe – no wonder hospitality at Kilrock House was so highly praised!
The house as it stands today may be viewed here.
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