Category: The Four Courts Building

The 1836 works to the Four Courts not only included fitting a new Law Library, Rolls Court and Nisi Prius Court into the back of the original building, but also involved the erection of an additional rear building comprising a Solicitors Building (situate where the current Law Library is today), Benchers’ rooms and coffee room and various Chancery offices and courts.

The construction of this rear edifice as a separate building linked to the main Four Courts by a small open passage caused much dissatisfaction among members of the Bar, culminating in the following threatened memorial to the Benchers published in the Dublin Evening Mail of 28 October 1857:

“Your memorialists beg leave respectfully to call your attention to the great inconvenience and danger to health to which those members of the Bar who practise in the courts and chambers of the Masters in Chancery are exposed when required to proceed in court costume to discharge their duties in those courts, especially during the winter season, in proceeding uncovered and unsheltered from the inclemency of the weather across the open court yards… members of the Bar being constantly called from overheated courts to proceed through the open air without change of or addition to their dress..”

It is not clear whether the memorial was ever sent. However all subsequent maps of the Four Courts show the passage covered over. An early victory for the Bar!

From the Dublin Weekly Nation, 14 August 1875, an illustration of the Liberator Daniel O’Connell exiting the original robing room of the Four Courts.

This room’s situation below the Round Hall rendered it vulnerable not only to flooding, but also to incursions by curious members of the public, one of whom was bold enough to publish the following letter of complaint in the Freeman’s Journal of 6 November 1851:

“During Term Time a person anxious for the encouragement of Irish Manufacture, who had easy access to the Dressing-Rooms of the Four Courts, counted all the outside coats which the Professional Gentlemen had left behind them whilst in their robes, and out of close of Four Hundred Paletots, how many of the owners had the humanity to think that Irish Tailors and Woollen Drapers could not live without employment? Neither more nor less than Twenty-Three…

Professional Gentlemen, who complain of the want of business, let me ask you, how can you have it, when you deprive the trader of his fair share of profit, and unless in the Bankrupt or Insolvent Court at the same time, deprive yourself of any chance of the tradesman’s ever becoming your client?”

An early campaign to buy Irish? Mr O’Connell, partial to a well-cut Irish coat himself, would doubtless have approved!

From Saunders’ News-Letter, 21 April 1821:

“EASTER HOLIDAYS

The Public are respectfully informed that Polito’s Grand Menagerie, is removed from Abbey Street, to Ormond-Quay, near the Four Courts, where they will be exhibited for a short time previous to their final removal from this kingdom, and in order that all classes may have an opportunity (which may not occur again) of witnessing this rare assemblage of Natural productions – the admission for Ladies and Gentlemen will be reduced to Ten-pence and for the working Classes and Children, Five pence.

N.B. – That most beautiful and astonishing Animal, the Boa Constrictor Serpent, is included in the above Grand Collection, which is a complete contradiction of the fabulous tale, that nothing of the Snake or Serpent tribe can exist in this kingdom, the above being in excellent health.”

Polito’s caged animals stayed on Ormond Quay for some time. Presumably they left some kind of atmospheric impression on the site. I wonder if barristers and mediators working late in the Ormond Meeting Rooms ever hear a low growl, a hiss or a gulp from time to time?

The annual State Trials for conspiracy and treason were a very exciting time at the nineteenth-century Four Courts.

Many members of the public of all political persuasions attended to observe and comment.  All tried to put their best face forward.  None more so than the Judges.   The style of their arrival on such occasions was so impressive as to merit the above illustration in the popular press.   Not only were the judicial means of transport slightly different from today, but their parking facilities were in a different location!

When a post-Famine judiciary sought to adopt a lower-key approach, this resulted in complaints in the popular press, such as the following letter by an anonymous correspondent published in the Catholic Telegraph of 3 April 1852:

“Formerly, the Lord Chancellor, Master of the Rolls, Judges and superior officers of the courts, were in the habit of driving to court in handsome private carriages.  The incomes are the same as formerly, and Free Trade has considerably reduced the price of most of the necessaries of life; yet, with one or two exceptions, the squares of the courts are now quite deserted by private equipages, and too frequently visited by inside and outside jaunting cars, which have a monopoly there.”

It seems that, in this delicately balanced political era, demonstrations of magnificence on the part of the judiciary were seen not as an indulgence, but as essential to the majesty of the law. Such pageantry, of course also gave employment to a wide variety of Dublin artisans and tradesmen!