A Profile of Maurice Craig

Irish Arts Review

A Profile of Maurice CraigAuthor(s): Judith HillSource: Irish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 23, No. 1 (Spring, 2006), pp. 110-115Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25503358 .

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A PROFILE OF MAURICE CRAIG

ARCHITECTURE

A Profile of

Maurice JUDITH HILL meets Renaissance man Maurice Craig, a writer whose name is

synonymous with architectural history, yet whose interests and studies have ranged from

bookbinding to steam ships with equal authority

1 Maurice Craig

portrait by David

DavisonOThe Irish

Picture Library

2 The Four Courts

Dublin, as restored

after the destruction

of 1922. Maurice

Craig catalogued the

deviations from the

original in Dublin

1660-1860, and

persuaded the

Board of Works to

reinstate the dies

above the cornices on the wings

3 View along Merrion

Street Upper towards Ely Place; Maurice Craig lived

in an attic nearby in

the late 1940s

As the author of three substantial books on Irish

architectural history, a seminal work on Irish book

bindings and numerous other publications mostly

on Irish architecture, Maurice Craig has a solid if

quiet reputation, as befits a scholarly writer in specialist fields.

Sixteen years ago his wife, Agnes Bernelle, edited D?cantations, a

book of essays by friends in tribute to him, from which he

emerged as an Irish writer of multifarious interests who was par

ticularly inspired by 18th-century Ireland.1 His present house is

almost entirely given over to books; he lives, essentially in a

library. His intellectual lineage is here; rows of 19th-century

^^Hl i* ^JMI^Biii^T^

poets -

Tennyson, Walter Savage Landor, Robert Browning - in

leather bindings, a section dedicated to W B Yeats and the works

of significant 18th-century Irishmen - Grattan, Burke and

Goldsmith. His familiarity with poetry puts him in the Victorian

tradition, as does his appreciation of the Bible as literature. This

tradition is echoed in his cultivated taste for literary rigour - he

particularly enjoys the correct use of vocabulary where it produces

unexpected results. He feels that a good education, rather than

instinct, made him a writer. His library is also a repository of his

own work and that of his friends. There is a shelf of Louis

MacNeice's poetry in first edition Fabers. The work of architec

tural historians - John Summerson, Howard Colvin and

Desmond FitzGerald - are all prominent, and there are sections

on vintage cars, steam ships, bookbinding - all enthusiasms fol

lowed with passion at various times. The books are ordered, but

not rigidly so. Each has its place, but its neighbour is the book

that it has stood beside it for years rather than the book whose

author is alphabetically adjacent.

Maurice Craig a large, vigorous man (Fig 1), and despite his

tastes no relic of a bygone era is willing to talk about his work,

and admits to a feeling of satisfaction in what he has been able to

do; though he is also critical of the results and as interested in

doing the interviewing as being interviewed. He is open and

interested, intellectually stimulating and entertaining, as he was

in his miscellaneous collection of opinion, autobiography and

meditation, The Elephant and the Polish Question. 'One of the

results of having very little talent is that you must put everything

you have into whatever you do. If you manage to accomplish any

thing, there are no reserves left by the time it is done', he writes

in Elephant.1 It is vintage Craig, direct, almost brutally realistic

but not without a sense of satisfaction. An intelligent person who

has encountered a great many talents during his life Craig is

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keenly aware of his abilities and limitations. He has placed him

self in a heirarchy and has then got on with what he wanted to

do. In many ways it is a recipe for a happy working life.

Maurice Craig is most readily associated with Dublin where

he has lived for forty-five years and about which he has written

so much. His roots though are in Belfast. Here his father was an

eye surgeon, and he was brought up in cloistered comfort, largely

untroubled by religion or literature. From here he was sent to

boarding school in Dalkey and later to Shrewsbury School in

England. He never returned, and the impression is that Belfast

is forgotten. However, in 2005 he told an Irish Times journalist

that he treasures Hubert Butler's 1948 translation of CP

Cavafy's poem 'The City'. Butler was a friend and he had dedi

cated the translation to the memory of James Joyce and Trieste;

at nineteen Craig had sought out Joyce in Paris and been

rewarded with conversation. But the poem, which starts with the

poet's desire to leave his home for a 'worthier town' and con

By the ultimate test of architecture the Casino succeeds

beyond a doubt: it has repose. The balance between lightness and stability must always be

struck, though the precise blend will vary enormously

tinues with the realisation that his home city will accompany

him wherever he goes, is also perhaps significant.

It was in Cambridge, where he had won a scholarship to read

history at Magdalen, that he began to develop the interest in archi

tecture that had been awakened in his time in Paris. In 1941 - he

unapologetically avoided the war - he went to Dublin to study the

poet W S Landor for a Phd at Trinity College. He would not leave

the city until 1951. Once his Phd was completed, and supported

by a small private income, he pursued the interests that were pre

occupying him. And Dublin began to possess him. He lived in an

attic flat on the corner of Merrion Square, Upper Mount Street

and Lower Fitzwilliam Street (Fig 3). It is at the heart of Georgian

Dublin, and from there the city still stretches away in four wide

uninterrupted lengths of magnificent brick Georgian terrace. At

that time many of the houses were still inhabited by families and

Craig particularly remembers the felt hung over the doors in sum

mer to protect the paintwork from the sunshine.

Inspired by the beauty of the Casino at Marino (Fig 7) and by

easy access to the Charlemont Papers in the Royal Irish Academy,

Craig's wrote a biography of the first Earl of Charlemont, The

Volunteer Earl, which his friend from Cambridge, John Haywood

of The Cresset Press, published in 1948. In many ways the real

subject of the book is the earl's buildings. In Elephant Craig writes

that the aesthetic element lies at the root of all his responses and

decisions. By then he could also identify it in the mundane, the

112 I

IRISH ARTS REVIEW SPRING 2006



incidental and the vernacular. In the 1940s he found it where peo

ple traditionally found it; in great art. 'By the ultimate test of archi

tecture the Casino succeeds beyond a doubt: it has repose. The

balance between lightness and stability must always be struck,

though the precise blend will vary enormously', he wrote with a

slightly heavier hand than he would in his succeeding books.3

By 1951 Craig was married and in need of a job and he was

appointed Assistant Inspector of Ancient Monuments in the

Ministry of Works in London. The work, which entailed reporting

on buildings for which grant applications to the Historic Buildings

Council had been made, strengthened his appreciation of the

functioning of buildings and honed his observational skills.

Dublin 1660-1860, researched and written out of his enchantment

with the city, established Craig's reputation as an architectural his

torian.4 In the preface he confidently cleared an intellectual area

for himself: the book was more 'portrait' than ... 'history', based

on observation rather than sources, with only passing references

to political context; it was structured around people who had

contributed to Dublin, but was not to be the aimless chitchat that

he assumed Cresset, who had commissioned the book, expected.

With its urbane easy-going style, its stories and absence of sus

tained argument, it is of its period. But, focusing steadily on the

development of the city, it is an early study in urbanism, inspired

by John Summerson's similarly engaging Georgian London of

1945. Although Craig often focuses on the great classical build

ings of Dublin (Figs 2 6k 10), the book also deals with city ter

races built without architects, and thus he began to investigate

less exalted and vernacular architecture. He was also defining as

Irish an architecture that was popularly associated with British

culture and rule and in many quarters despised (Fig 8). The book

found a much wider audience when it was reprinted in 1969. By

then modest prosperity was beginning to threaten Dublin's

18th-century heritage and the book raised awareness of what was

being targeted. It helped to fuel the conservation movement.

4 Timoleague Friary Co Cork. The

illustration used in The Architecture

of Ireland with Craig's Delage parked

conspicuously in front. Craig considered the Delage to be the 20th

century equivalent of the 18th

century books of Irish Bookbindings

5 The Trench Mausoleum at

Wood lawn, Co Gal way. The largest Mausoleum in Ireland and one of

many drawn by his son, Michael

Craig for Mausolea Hibernica

6 Grand Canal Harbour, Dublin

cl780. A place defined by the

unpretentious but well-proportioned

buildings that Craig delighted in - the

harbour has now been filled in

7 Casino at Marino. Admiration for

the building which was designed

by William Chambers and built in the

years after 1798 led Maurice Craig to write his biography of its patron, Lord Charlemont

?--~,J?" ' ' .1 I.I

SPRING 2006 IRISH ARTS REVIEW | 113



^B A PROFILE OF MAURICE CRAIG ARCHITECTURE

8 No 38 North Great

George's Street, Dublin c.1785, illustrated in Dublin

1660-1860. The

residence of John

Pentland Mahaffy, Provost of Trinity

College in the late

19th century, by the

mid- 20th century it was subdivided

into flats

9 Kilcarty, Co Meath,

designed by Thomas

Ivory and probably built 1770-1780.

Modest, perfectly

proportioned and

occupying a 'pivotal

position on the

frontier between the

farmhouse and the

mansion', it is a

classic Irish house

of the middle size

10 River front, Custom House,

1781, designed by James Gandon

rebuilt after 1921

externally little was

changed except for

the use of

Ardbracean rather

than Portland stone

for the dome

Craig's sense of responsibility to the

past is extended to the present and he is also keen that contemporary designers have their opportunities too

During these years in Dublin Craig was also gathering rub

bings, photographs and notes on Irish 18th-century bindings,

encouraged by William O'Sullivan of Trinity College Library.5

Having been persuaded to make a book of his findings, he care

fully applied an archaeological approach gleaned from Harold

Leask, Inspector of National Monuments and a friend. He cate

gorised the work by observing the binding materials, the use of dif

ferent tools, page layout, places of printing and early ownership,

giving many categories, particularly the binders of 18th-century

Irish parliamentary papers, code-names rather than trying to iden

tify individuals. The result is a book which is almost incompre

hensible to the non-specialist but within the field is still regarded as indispensable.6 For Craig it was 'the happiest of all my books by a large margin'. It is also the most beautifully produced of his

books (Craig is highly sensitive to all aspects of book design), not

least because of its confident 1950s modernism. In 1976 Easons

published a very readable account, proposed and written by Craig,

for its Irish Heritage Series. Craig revealed his particular talent

with his work on bookbinding: he focused on an unsung craft and

then homed in on its most outstanding examples; the work of the

Irish 18th-century Parliamentary Binders is unparalleled.7

Craig returned to Dublin in 1970 as Executive-Secretary of

An Taisce. When this post folded he worked freelance for devel

opers, and later for An Foras Forbartha, reporting on buildings.

He also began writing books again. Although a supporter of the

conservation movement in Ireland his work prevented him

being very active, and occasionally he has confounded the con

servation lobby by, for example, arguing against keeping a build

ing that has been compromised with later additions. In his

contribution to the debate in 1975, European Architectural

Heritage Year, he argued for the retention of relatively ordinary

urban buildings where they form a remarkable cityscape, before

this position was popular.8 But his sense of responsibility to the

past is extended to the present and he is also keen that con

temporary designers have their opportunities too: even quite

large areas of central Dublin, he wrote, could be transformed

without 'robbing us of anything that we ought to value'.9

In 1976 he published the quirkily but aptly named Classic Irish

Houses of the Middle Size.10 Here, applying the sensibility he had

shown in Irish bookbindings to Irish architecture, he highlighted often well-crafted, sometimes architect-designed, but until then

largely unsung, 18th-century houses whose qualities he described

and assessed, in the process identifying an Irish type (Fig 9). The

type lies between the great and the low, the fine art tradition stud

ied by connoisseurs and the vernacular tradition investigated by

archaeologists and anthropologists, confirming the 18th-century as

a period when there was a continuum between these two extremes.

When Sam Carr of Batsford asked Maurice to write a general

history of Irish architecture Craig was glad to accept the com

mission.11 He had turned down two earlier requests on the

grounds that not enough was known about the buildings, but by

the early 1970s what might be regarded as the second generation

of Irish architectural historians -

Alasdair Rowan, Charles Brett,

Desmond FitzGerald, Edward McParland, Rosemary ffolliott,

Roger Stalley, Rolf Loeber - had laid down a fairly broad base of

1 1 4 I IRISH ARTS REVIEW SPRING 2 006



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knowledge. Craig had contributed to this with his books,and

with his discovery of some of the buildings of Edward Lovett

Pearce.12 He rose to the challenge with The Architecture of Ireland

from the earliest times to 1880: 'There is a great deal to be said for

arriving on the scene at or soon after the birth of an academic

discipline ... one is in a position

... to help in framing the rules

by which the game is thereafter played.'13 One of his aims was to

discuss unregarded but distinctive vernacular building types such

as Catholic barn-churches of the early 19th century. One of his

achievements was to integrate popularly regarded medieval archi

tecture with still derided post-1700 buildings in a continuous

narrative which intermittently addresses the issue of the

Irishness of Irish architecture.

Maurice Craig, never a theorist, retained his conversational,

urbane tone in the book which, although it has its disadvantages

(an occasionally frustrating vagueness about economic or political

background for example), has the great advantage of matching the

elusiveness of his material. There was (and is) much still to learn,

and the flexibility of Craig's approach easily accommodated this.

The writer of The Architecture of Ireland (Fig 4) appears happiest when he has a definable group of buildings

- early 19th-century

courthouses, for example - about which relatively little is known

but about which he can say a great deal by observing their simi

larities and differences, tracing influences, suggesting groupings,

asserting quality. His ability to observe, note and assess is his

great strength, and it is this element in Architecture which makes

it a still indispensable and enjoyable book.

His last book is Mausolea Hibernica, written in collaboration

with his son, Michael who contributed the delicately detailed

robustly representative drawings (Fig 5). It appeared in 1999

almost as a postscript to his oeuvre. An authoritative account of

a neglected building type there is, ironically, given the subject, a

joie de vive in the production in his relish for the subject and in

the symbiosis of text and illustration.

JUDITH HILL is an architectural historian and writer.

With the exception of Fig 1 all photography ? Maurice Craig, courtesy of the Irish

Architectural Archive, Dublin. An exhibition in tribute to Maurice Craig runs at the

Irish Architectural Archive, 45 Merrion Square, Dublin, 20 April - 22 September.

1 Agnes Bernelle, ed, D?cantations, A tribute to

Maurice Craig, The Lilliput Press, Dublin, 1992

2 The Elephant and the Polish Question, The

Lilliput Press, 1990, p. 51

3 The Volunteer Earl, being the life and times of

James Caulfield, First Earl of Charlemont, The

Cresset Press, London, 1948, p. 138 4 Dublin 1660-1860, The Cresset Press, London,

1952, reprinted Allen Figges Ltd, 1969, 1980,

Penguin, 1992

5 William O'Sullivan, 'Binding Memories of Trinity

Library', D?cantations, op. cit, pp. 168-176

6 Irish Bookbindings, Cassell & Co Ltd, London, 1954

7 Joseph McDonnell, Five Hundred Years of the

Art of the Book in Ireland 1500 to the Present, National Gallery of Ireland in association with

Merrell Holberton, London, 1997

8 Maurice Craig, The Architectural Historian, atti

tudes in context', Architectural Conservation: An

Irish Viewpoint, a series of papers read to The

Architectural Association of Ireland, Dublin,

1975, pp. 9-20

9 Ibid, p. 19

10 The Architectural Press, London, 1976.

Reprinted, Architectural Book Publishing Co, New York, 1977. A new edition due in 2006

11 The Architecture of Ireland from the earliest

times to 1880, Batsford, London, 1982, paper back edition, 1989

12 Architectural Drawings in the Library of Elton Hall

by Sir John Vanbrugh and Sir Edward Lovett

Pearce, edited by Howard Colvin and Maurice

Craig, Oxford, 1964, for the Roxburghe Club

13 Elephant, op cit, p. 59

14 The Lilliput Press

SPRING 2006 IRISH ARTS RE VIEW | 1 1 5



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A Profile of Maurice Craig