Irish plasterer, stuccodore and builder (1747–1801)
Michael Stapleton (born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1747, died 8 August 1801, in Dublin) is regarded as having been the most skilled stuccodore working in the neoclassical or "Adam" style that dominated Dublin interior decoration in the final decades of the 18th century.
Stapleton was born in Dublin, the son of George Stapleton, who may have been a plasterer by trade. He married Frances Todderick, the daughter of a Dublin timber merchant, in 1774. They lived for a few years in No. 59 Camden Street, until about 1781. Being a Catholic, he was not allowed to become a member of a Guild (this law was relaxed in 1793).[1] In 1777 he was working on the Examination Hall at Dublin University (Trinity College).[2] In 1784 he was working in Trinity College where some of the exceptional contributions he has made to stucco work are to be seen. The Stapletons had four children: Robert who died young; George took over the family business when his father died; Margaret married a stone-cutter called John Taylor; and Mary married into a family of paper-stainers and house painters.[3]
The family moved to Mecklenburg Street, then associated with those in the building trade. Stapleton associated with the master builder, Robert West, the progenitor of the Dublin School of Plasterwork of the 1760s. When West died Stapleton was his executor. He inherited his pattern books and both modelled himself on, and refined the style of, this central figure in the shaping of architecture and design in Dublin and in the country.
He died in 1801 and is buried at Malahide Abbey, just outside Dublin City.[4] After his death his son George continued his work, a famous example being the Chapel Royal in Dublin Castle. Two of his grandchildren married members of the Conlan brewing family of Dublin.
Architecture and Plaster work
Stapleton's name has become synonymous with the elegant ornamental plasterwork of the late 18th-century townhouse. His collection of decorative designs was presented to the National Library of Ireland in 1940 by the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland, which enabled previously unknown works by him to be identified. In connection with prominent Dublin buildings he was recorded by the Georgian Society Records (Dublin 1909–1913), and was credited with "much of the fine work in Dublin at this period".[5]Sacheverell Sitwell commented that: "...the Dublin artisans (of the period) were second to none in Europe, and the reader need only glance through the volumes of the Georgian Society to feel certain of this."[6] The first studies specifically devoted to Stapleton were published in articles by C. P. Curran in 1939–40,[7] who added significantly to the canon of Stapleton's executed works.[8]
Examples of Stapleton's include:
(All dates are approximate).
Powerscourt House, 59, South William Street, Dublin. The most publicly available example of Stapleton's work can be seen by every shopper who visits there (1777–80).
Belvedere House Belvedere College in Great Denmark Street, Dublin where generations of students have gazed upon Stapleton's work.
House built by Stapleton at 9 Harcourt Street, Dublin
Stapleton built a number of houses in Dublin. The only house to have survived the "vicissitudes of time and site redevelopment" (Lucey) is the present No. 9 Harcourt Street, built around 1785. He built two further houses on Harcourt Street, corresponding to Nos. 3 and 4 (the latter the birthplace of Edward Carson). He was among the first leaseholders in Luke Gardiner's development on Mountjoy Square. The houses he built and decorated to the highest standard corresponded to Nos. 43, 44 and 45 Mountjoy Square. These houses became part of the struggle in the 1970s between the Georgian Society, who wanted the houses restored, but had not the resources to do so, and developers led by Matt Gallagher, of the Gallagher Group, who wanted to demolish the houses to build offices. Without security or maintenance the houses fell into a state of decay and for safety reasons Dublin Corporation had to demolish them.[12]
He spent the last years of his life in a house he had built at No. 1 Mountjoy Place.[13] This house was illegally demolished by the Jesuit owners of Belvedere College, although it was under a preservation order, on 26 April 1968. The carved ceilings and other works of Stapleton were destroyed. After protests by the Dublin Civic Group and others, Dublin Corporation immediately called a halt to the demolition work, but by then it was too late.[14]
Stapleton's will (proved in 1801) listed his profession as "builder", suggesting that house-building had become an important part of his career. He would have co-operated with his brother-in-law, Thomas Todderick, with whom he had qualified,[1] and the plasterer Andrew Callnan in various developments.[15]
Lucey, Conor (2007). The Stapleton Collection: Designs for the Irish neoclassical interior. Tralee: Churchill Press. ISBN978-0-9550246-2-7.
Sitwell, Sacheverell (1945). British Architects and Craftsmen: a survey of taste, design, and style during three centuries, 1600–1830. London: Batsford.
Curran, C. P. (1967). Dublin Decorative Plasterwork of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
The Chapel Royal in Dublin Castle is a 19th-century Gothic revival chapel which served as the official Church of Ireland chapel of the Household of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1814 until the creation of the Irish Free State in December 1922, which terminated the office of Lord Lieutenant. In 1943, the chapel was reconsecrated as a Catholic place of worship and rededicated as the Church of the Most Holy Trinity, but it has not been used for worship since 1983.
Georgian Dublin is a phrase used in terms of the history of Dublin that has two interwoven meanings:
to describe a historic period in the development of the city of Dublin, Ireland, from 1714 to the death in 1830 of King George IV. During this period, the reign of the four Georges, hence the word Georgian, covers a particular and unified style, derived from Palladian Architecture, which was used in erecting public and private buildings
to describe the modern day surviving buildings in Dublin erected in that period and which share that architectural style
Belvedere College S.J. is a voluntary secondary school for boys in Dublin, Ireland. The school has numerous notable alumni in the arts, politics, sports, science, and business. Alumni and teachers at Belvedere played major roles in modern Irish literature, the standardisation of the Irish language, as well as the Irish independence movement – both the 1916 Rising and the Irish War of Independence. The school's notable alumni and former faculty include two Taoisigh, one Ceann Comhairle, several cabinet ministers, one Blessed, one Cardinal, one Archbishop, one signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, two Supreme Court Justices, one Olympic medallist, thirty Irish international rugby players and numerous notable figures in the world of the arts, academia and business. Belvedere College forms the setting for part of James Joyce's semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Dublin 1, also rendered as D1 and D01, is a historic postal district on the northside of Dublin, Ireland.
Mountjoy Square is a garden square in Dublin, Ireland, on the Northside of the city just under a kilometre from the River Liffey. One of five Georgian squares in Dublin, it was planned and developed in the late 18th century by Luke Gardiner, 1st Viscount Mountjoy. It is surrounded on all sides by terraced, red-brick Georgian houses. Construction of the houses began piecemeal in 1792 and the final property was completed in 1818.
Ely Place is a street in central Dublin with Georgian architecture. It is a continuation of Upper Merrion Street and the place where Lower Baggot Street and Merrion Row meet. Both the latter and Hume Street link it to St Stephen's Green.
Francis Johnston was an Anglo/Irish architect, best known for building the General Post Office (GPO) on O'Connell Street, Dublin.
Gardiner Street is a long Georgian street in Dublin, Ireland. It stretches from the River Liffey at its southern end via Mountjoy Square to Dorset Street at its northern end. The Custom House terminates the vista at the southern end, and the street is divided into Gardiner Street Upper, Gardiner Street Middle and Gardiner Street Lower.
Loughlinstown is a southern Dublin suburb, located in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, on the N11 national road.
George Stapleton was a prominent Irish stuccodore, son of Michael Stapleton.
Robert Hunter was a portrait-painter and a native of Ulster. He studied under the elder Pope, and had a considerable practice in Dublin in the middle of the eighteenth century. He modelled his tone of colouring on the painting of old masters.
Henry Joseph Monk Mason was an Irish writer who, although not a native speaker, specialised in Irish-language activities. He was a founder of The Irish Society, dedicated to spreading the Scripture in Irish, and a campaigner for prison reform.
Liam Price was a County Wicklow judge, historian and former president of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI) who published work on historical topography and the history of placenames, especially for the county of Wicklow, where he was a district justice. His work on these areas has been published in journals and books and his contribution, totalling about 40 papers, was acknowledged in a special issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland in 1965, shortly before his death in 1967.
Great Denmark Street is a street in Dublin, Ireland. It leads to Mountjoy Square, is crossed by Temple Street/Hill Street, and is part of Gardiner Row.
Belvedere House is a historic townhouse located on Great Denmark Street bookending North Great George's Street in Dublin, Ireland. It was built by George Rochfort, 2nd Earl of Belvedere between 1775 and 1786 at a cost of £24,000. The design and stucco of the interior ceilings was carried out by Michael Stapleton, a leading stuccodor and craftsman of his time. In 1841 it became a Jesuit college which houses the school Belvedere College.
Richard Wingfield, 3rd Viscount Powerscourt was an Anglo-Irish politician and peer.
Powerscourt House is the former Dublin townhouse of Viscount Powerscourt and now the Powerscourt Townhouse Centre, located on South William Street, Dublin.
North Great George's Street is a street on the Northside of Dublin city first laid out in 1766 which connects Parnell Street with Great Denmark Street. It consists of opposing terraces of 4-storey over basement red-brick Georgian townhouses descending on an increasingly steep gradient from Belvedere House which bookends the street from a perpendicular aspect to the North.
William StreetSouth, commonly known as South William Street, is a street located on Dublin's Southside.
Blessington House, Blessington Manor, the Manor House of Blessington, or Downshire House (post-1789) was a large estate house in Blessington, County Wicklow built in 1673, and destroyed during the 1798 Rebellion. It was never rebuilt.
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