Madam, – Fifty years ago, I, with other student architects, set ladders against the facade of Aldborough House, the last-built of Dublin’s great 18th-century townhouses, to measure the classical orders of its principal elevation. Some 70 years previously, my maternal grandfather, uniformed with his fellow Post Office engineering cadets, posed for a sepia photograph on its front steps. Today I pass appalled as its walls soak rain admitted by the stripped roof, windows gape, paint peels and dereliction overtakes the most monumental of the three heritage buildings newly threatened by our economic reverses.
Heritage in this instance consists not only of my own memories, but also in the remarkable person of its constructor. Edward Stratford, second Earl of Aldborough was architectural autodidact, volunteer colonel, serial litigator and consequent bankrupt, indeed a true forefather of the unlamented Tiger era. His Canute-like attempt to reverse the southbound tide of Dublin fashion has left this splendid whale beached for more than two centuries overlooking the North Strand. A perceived want of designer pedigree may be the reason for some scholarly denigration of such an impressive complex, but its dominant presence in the north-east inner city is undeniable.
Only in recent decades has the building suffered such a grievous reverse.
This threatened loss is just one part of the damage from the privatisation of telecommunications by a part of our political establishment. Much of Irish society was complicit in the greed of those times and we should not walk away from the regrettable consequences. Our city is not so well endowed that a building of such quality can be expunged from its fabric. In its previous 19th-century redundancy educational, military and postal uses were found for this building. Surely in a new millennium some fitting solution to its current difficulties can be arrived at. – Yours, etc,