When the Heritage Council bought the old Bishop's Palace in Kilkenny, they made some controversial chnages, but still kept faith with the elements of the old building, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Correspondent.
THE BISHOP'S PALACE in Kilkenny goes back a long, long way. Although the building appears to be mid-18th century, some of its fabric actually dates from medieval times - perhaps even to its foundation by Richard Ledred, the powerful Bishop of Ossory who condemned Alice Kyteler to be burned as a witch in 1324 (famously, she escaped).
It is known that Ledred built a house for himself in the grounds of St Canice's Cathedral in the aftermath of the Black Death, which hit many parts of Ireland, including Kilkenny, during the 1340s; he even used salvaged stone from churches in the diocese that became surplus to requirements because so many of their parishioners had died.
The original building was a "hall house", with an entrance at ground level and a grand room upstairs, rather than the type of tower house one might expect for the period. But a tower was added later and, in the late 17th century, an extra storey when the house was rebuilt after being left barely habitable by Cromwell's New Model Army.
In the mid-18th century, it was remodelled and embellished, including the installation of a magnificent staircase. Flanked by panelled walls and exquisite wood carving, it is among the finest of its kind in Ireland. It is also one of the few elements of the building that can be dated precisely; documentary sources show that it was made in 1739.
There are carvings of crooks and mitres in the casing of a Venetian window, with a big one over the door of an anteroom where Church of Ireland bishops would have received guests. Leading off it is the library, with elaborate floor-to-ceiling bookcases and a secret door, concealed by fraying book spines, that opens into the adjoining room.
By 1999, Bishop John Neill (now Archbishop of Dublin) felt that the house was too large and expensive to maintain. Coincidentally, the Heritage Council was looking for a new headquarters in Kilkenny, after spending two years in cramped conditions at Rothe House, so a deal was done to acquire the building from the Representative Church Body.
Inevitably, this was controversial. The Very Rev Robert MacCarthy, Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral and one-time Rector of Castlecomer, took grave exception to the idea of giving up the "house and home" of bishops of Ossory for 600 years. "I hope that we will not celebrate the start of the third millennium by turning it into an office block," he said.
Other objectors included architectural historians Maurice Craig and Peter Somerville-Large. In a letter to The Irish Times they complained that a major element of the cathedral close would be turned into offices, "thus admitting the secular world to an area of Kilkenny which has had a wholly ecclesiastical purpose for nigh on 1,500 years".
But neither Bishop Neill nor the Representative Church Body were deterred, and the contentious divesting went ahead - subject to planning permission being obtained for the conversion and extension of the old palace into the Heritage Council's headquarters and the construction of a modern two-storey See House in the grounds.
Kilkenny Borough Council duly obliged and, despite appeals by An Taisce, the Irish Georgian Society and others, so did An Bord Pleanála. One of the appellants, Johnny Couchman, claimed that the proposed glass-and-steel extension was "in the modern bus shelter idiom . . . totally incongruous and utterly at odds with the style of the old house".
Designed by architect and Everest climber Dawson Stelfox, of the Belfast-based Consarc Design Group, it projects at an angle from the east gable, set on a limestone-paved podium above the foundations of a 17th-century kitchen. With a slightly sloping "butterfly" roof, it reads like a conservatory - albeit one in a wholly contemporary idiom.
BUT THEN, ALL of the alterations carried out over the years on the old Bishop's Palace were contemporary in their day, so there is no valid reason why the latest shouldn't follow in that tradition. As the Heritage Council says, "it is supported on the foundations of the surviving older structure below, an apt metaphor for the work of the council".
Colm Murray, the council's architecture officer, strongly endorses this approach: "Everything about this building has cryptic layers of history, so every generation has a contribution to make that may become 'heritage' in the future. We have to accept that things must change, in the way heritage accumulates and the way buildings can be read."
The original scheme included an archive store, to be tacked onto the west gable, but this shed-like structure was omitted for budgetary reasons before the overall project went to tender. Supervised by Office of Public Works senior architect John Cahill, the renovation and extension of the building by Lissadell Construction cost €6.5 million.
The front façade is lime-washed, perhaps too pristinely white in colour, and the builders managed to save a vigorous old wisteria near the blocky Gibbsian doorcase marking the entrance. Inside, polished black Kilkenny limestone has replaced vinyl tiles from the 1960s on the floor of the hall that extends through an inner doorway to the staircase.
Given its importance, the addition of a separate glass-and-steel balustrade running parallel to the original chunky oak handrail, and about a foot away from it, seems unfortunate. Although the 1739 balustrade is too low to comply with modern building regulations, it would be interesting to discover how many people have fallen over it.
A stone-vaulted room off the hallway leading to the new extension (which serves as coffee area for the Heritage Council's staff) is an archaeological treasure trove in itself, with an old brick floor at the lower level and a single column, redolent of a pillar of salt, in the middle, and cut-outs in the walls showing their rubble stonework.
Giving clear evidence of their antiquity, the walls at ground-floor level are 1.5 metres thick. Rooms have vaulted ceilings, including the 19th century Gothic-style former chapel, off the entrance hall, and a room at the rear which will be used for exhibitions; it has slit window openings dating from the time this part of the building was a tower house.
Directly above it is a room with medieval corbels and windows on three sides, including one that was blocked up in the late 17th century. In another example of the nanny state at work, windows with sills deemed too low have all been supplied with internal glazed upstands. Again, one must ask: what evidence is there of people falling out? A lift had to be installed to give universal access to top-floor offices where the bedrooms used to be. This was done discreetly after a thorough archaeological investigation of the minor rooms it displaced, which revealed a great deal of information about the previous internal arrangements, and the top of the lift-shaft was kept below the roof.
THE LARGEST ROOM in the old palace, with fine views over the tiered gardens to the rear, provides a new council chamber for members of the Heritage Council. Right outside, on the western gable facing towards St Canice's Cathedral, is a spiral steel staircase offering means of escape in the event of fire; this is probably necessary.
Almost out of view is the bishop's new See House, designed in a respectful contemporary style by Waterford-based architects Tritschler and Tritschler; part of the reason why it's so discrete is the well-chosen location in the lower tier of the garden, partially screened by tree cover. The garden, mercifully, is to remain undivided by railings.
Among the loose ends yet to be tied up, following the official opening of the Heritage Council's new headquarters by President McAleese in April, is the former robing room, which is set in the boundary wall en route to the cathedral and needs a new roof, and the development of a "biodiversity garden" to the east of the building.
"The old palace is full of mysteries and complexities," says Colm Murray. "We're showing its idiosyncrasies, because we never believed that it should be 'restored' to a particular point in time." As for the new pavilion, it could be taken down in the future if this "21st century room", as he calls it, is no longer needed.
But, whatever else the extension might resemble, it certainly doesn't look like a bus shelter.