Clúdach: Cover

[View Cover Image]

The holdings of the Irish Architectural Archive/Cartlann Ailtireahta na hÉireann comprise Ireland’s most extensive collection of materials relating to the built environment—and inevitably, also the environment that was never built. Our cover presents a detail from an ambitious but unrealized design for a railway colonnade proposal by the civil engineer Charles Blacker Vignoles (1793–1875). The elevated rail line would have run along the south quays of the Liffey connecting King’s Bridge (now Hueston) Station with Westland Row (now Pearse) Station. This 1838 plan proposes an almost delicate structure—a single line on a raised track partially over the river, partially over the quay, and supported by Ionic columns with a classical motif decorating the elevation.

Vignoles was born at Woodbrook, County Wexford, and raised and educated in England. After an early military career, he resided in the American South where he worked as a civil engineer in South Carolina and published an early map of Florida. In 1823 he returned to England, where he grew increasingly involved in railway engineering throughout Britain and Ireland. Rail historians remember him for his promotion of the Vignoles rail, which became a standard design for railroad track.

Located at 45 Merrion Square in Dublin, the Archive’s collections range in date from the late-seventeenth to the late-twentieth centuries. They include more than a quarter-million drawings, more than 400,000 photographs, and a reference library of some 15,000 printed items. We thank the Irish Architectural Archive, and especially Colum O’Riordain, archive administrator, for generous assistance in providing this cover image.