Urban Planning I: Urban Estates

Urban estates and the origins of urban planning

Melanie Hayes

The establishment of peace and with it relative prosperity following the Williamite wars had a transformative impact on the development of Ireland’s urban centres over the subsequent century. Walls, bastions and other fortifications came down, lands were reclaimed from rivers and seas, quays were erected and regular streetscapes set out, lined, in fashionable enclaves, with elegant buildings of brick and (to a far lesser degree) stone. Populations, urban and sub-urban grew, as did the extent of city limits, spurred on by a growing stability – in contrast with the preceding period of siege and destruction –  that saw increased trade with foreign markets and improved conditions (for a sector of society at least) at home. Such development, however, was uneven across the island, with varying political, legal and regulatory systems in place across the major urban centres.(1)

Dublin, as the largest conurbation, led the charge, followed by Cork, Limerick and Waterford, with ambitious new schemes by corporate and private proprietors alike. These tended to follow the aristocratic model of estate development established in London in the seventeenth century (which appears to derive from the system used at the Place Royale in Paris in 1604), whereby the hereditary landlord divided his freehold land into plots, which were let out in building leases to developers; they in turn sold subleases to speculative builders who, having raised capital on the strength of underleases, constructed the houses. The landlord set out to maximise his return by carefully planned control of building and land use, keeping street frontage to a minimum, which resulted in narrow deep plots of land, and in turn ensured tall narrow houses. Although more recent scholarship has shown this model of development to be somewhat simplistic, the reality being a much more complex ‘web of financial and contractual arrangements with many intermediate levels and half levels,’ the basic principles applied.(2) In Dublin the Corporation’s transformation of St. Stephen’s Green from ‘rough pasture and marshy’ commonage into a vast residential square in 1664 drew on this model, establishing the pattern for urban planning in the capital.(3) Here, however, in an effort to generate revenue, broad building lots were laid out on municipal land, with 60ft frontages to the street (1.1). These were let out, by means of public lottery, on increasingly long leases, often with the right of reversion or renewal, effectively privatising public holdings.(4) The lack of building controls and, as David Dickson notes, the relative weakness of city government in the strategic implementation of this and their equally ambitious scheme at Oxmantown Green on the north-side of the city diminished the physical cohesion of these urban set pieces. A similar lack of municipal authority can be seen in other urban centres, though Waterford Corporation was responsible for the development of new streets in the 1720s and extensions to the line of quays. In Cork infrastructural improvements were also made to the quays, but plans for a new urban quarter on reclaimed land south of the River Lee never fully materialised.(5) Similarly, while the work of the Wide Streets Commissioners had an impact on the urban plan of Dublin, limitations to their compulsory purchasing powers, among other factors, meant they did not have the same success in Cork and Waterford.

Later eighteenth-century developments built on these practices. Astute operators like Luke Gardiner had a profound impact on the urban landscape of Dublin City, developing large tracts of land on the north-side of the river for residential building in the first half of the century. Gardiner (alongside his protégé Nathaniel Clements) kept a firm control of construction, contracting architects and builders himself, and even granting mortgage finance to prospective tenants (including builder-developers) as a mean of encouraging a speedy development and ensuring the right caliber of residents, who leased these properties at the highest rates the market would bear.(10) As William Hendrick had done at his earlier speculative venture at Smithfield in Dublin, Gardiner drew on the increasingly sophisticated mortgage and finance markets that emerged in Dublin’s building industry during this period, which according to Brendan Twomey, looked to the complex system of credit at play in London’s building sector.(11) Another incentive was to provide rent-free building terms for builder-developers, often of one year (there by incentivising a speedy building term), during which time the leaseholders were charged a nominal peppercorn of ground rent. So called ‘building knots’ formed, whereby craftsmen from different building trades would join forces, quid pro quo, in the construction of the buildings. At Sackville Street in Dublin a high proportion of the sites on the west side of the street were leased to tradesmen like George Darley (mason), Robert Ball (timber supplier) Leonard Buckley, Alexander Thompson and George Stewart (carpenters), many of whom were connected through marriage as well as professional ties, and engaged in speculative building activity elsewhere on the Gardiner estate.  Although such arrangements served to spread the financial burden of development, this was risky business for smaller-scale operators many of whom found themselves in debtors prison as a result of their enterprises.(12) The financial risk involved in such speculative building may account for the often more modest and economical treatment of these houses.