James Franklin Fuller, who died 100 years ago on December 8th, could well be described as a renaissance man. A distinguished architect, he was also a successful novelist and published on history, archaeology, antiquarianism and genealogy.
He was born near Derryquin, Co Kerry, in 1835 (date and month unknown) into a family of minor gentry; his father, Thomas, was a landowner, and his mother, Frances Bland, was of Derryquin Castle. Tutored by James Murphy, who later conducted the Crown case in the trial for the Phoenix Park murders, he then attended boarding school at Blackrock, Cork, where he befriended Thomas Newenham Deane, afterwards a well-known architect.
Moving to England in 1850, he worked as an actor for a time and was a mechanical-engineering apprentice for a year before studying architecture in London and Manchester. In London, he contributed literary work to journals such as Truth, Dark Blue and Once a Week, and joined volunteer regiments while working in Manchester, Sheffield and London. In 1860, he married Helen Prospére, a descendant of one of Napoleon’s generals, and returned to Ireland.
Appointed architect of the Irish Ecclesiastical Commissioners (a government Church of Ireland agency), he oversaw the building and renovation of churches all over Ireland. When the Church of Ireland was disestablished (1869), he used the compensation he received to set up practice in Dublin on Brunswick (now Pearse) Street. An early commission was the restoration of Annaghmore House, near Collooney, Co Sligo, which was carried out “in an unusually restrained classical style”, according to the Historic Houses of Ireland website.
Form and function – Brian Maye on architect and novelist James Franklin Fuller
Belleek prospect – Brian Maye on pottery entrepreneur Robert Williams Armstrong
For the birds — Frank McNally on folklorist and freedom fighter Ernie O’Malley
Swift justice – Frank McNally on the height of the Drapier’s Letters controversy
The Church of Ireland Representative Church Body had replaced the IEC and he was fortunate to be appointed its architect and continued to work for it for 40 years. Commissions for new churches followed as well as for important restoration work on cathedrals but he also received commissions for secular buildings such as Dalkey town hall, the maternity hospital at the Coombe and several schools in Dublin.
Linde Lunney and Andrew O’Brien, who wrote the entry on him in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, described him as “the leading architect of country houses of his day” and list Kylemore Castle (Galway), Ashford Castle (Mayo) and Tinakilly House (Wicklow) as among his restorations, as well as Farmleigh House in the Phoenix Park. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland and a member of the Royal Irish Academy.
For his published fiction, Fuller used the pseudonym “Ignotus” and, occasionally, “An Old Boy”. In his three-volume novel, Culmshire Folk (1873), the Scotsman newspaper detected similarities to George Eliot’s work, which was quite a tribute. Lunney and O’Brien believed that “the strongest part of his writing was dialogue and character observation”. Other stories published by him were John Orlebar, Billy, or The Young Idea, Chronicles of Westerly and Doctor Quodlibet. An article in this newspaper by Gemma Tipton (October 22nd, 2015) described his fiction as “melodramatic”.
He also published extensively in local history, antiquarianism and genealogy, in such periodicals as the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, the Kerry Archaeological Magazine and the Genealogist, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland and of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
His memoir, entitled Omniana: The Autobiography of an Irish Octogenarian, published in 1916, “is a rambling but engaging recollection of a varied life”, according to Lunney and O’Brien. In it “he gives some space to outlining his ancestry to prove his pretensions to the aristocracy, tracing his family back to Charlemagne – which turned out to be true”, The Irish Times article referred to above tells us.
Curiously, there is little reference in Omniana to his architectural achievements but The Irish Times article just cited may have the explanation: “The things that mattered most to Fuller – pedigree, social connections, a ‘gentlemanly’ disdain for the necessity of working for a living (which perhaps accounts for his attitude to filing and the relative lack of any architectural musings or descriptions in his autobiography) – are ironically perhaps the most potent reasons why he is relatively forgotten today.”
He died at his residence on Eglinton Road, Donnybrook and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery. His wife, son and daughter survived him; three other children predeceased him.
His wife died eight months after him and on their gravestone in Mount Jerome is carved: “Their spirits departed in peace with the viaticum of a conscience void of enmity of offence.”
The actress Peggy Cummins was his great-granddaughter.