MONAGHAN, CO. MONAGHAN
By Damian Murphy
Monaghan town occupies a fertile tract in the north of the county and, encircled by small hills, takes its name from Muineachán, meaning ‘a place full of moneys or drums’. The development of the county town and the improvement of its economy were actively pursued in the late eighteenth century by its two owners, William Henry Fortescue (1722–1806), first Earl of Clermont and Custos Rotulorum of County Monaghan (fl. 1775–1805), and General Robert Cuninghame (1726–1801), MP for Monaghan Borough (fl. 1768–96), the former in 1792 securing the rights to hold a market, the latter in the same year gifting for ‘the convenience of [its] inhabitants’ a market house whose proportions, pure symmetry and refined detailing have earned it the title of one of the finest neoclassical buildings in Ulster.
Cuninghame, raised to the peerage of Ireland as Baron Rossmore in 1796, ensured that the memory of his generosity would be perpetuated for posterity by including in one gable-end pediment his coat of arms, impaled with those of his wife, Elizabeth Murray (c. 1733–1824), the shield framed by sprigs of bay tied with a ribbon, with on the opposite gable-end pediment an inscribed oval panel, framed by stiff foliage, which names the architect as ‘S.H. of Avondale’.
Samuel Hayes (1743–95), amateur architect and dendrologist, is best remembered for the rural retreat that he designed and built for himself, with or without a guiding hand from James Wyatt (1746–1813), in a lush setting on the bank of the Avonmore River in County Wicklow. For Cuninghame, a fellow resident of the Garden of Ireland, he superimposed elements of Avondale onto a long-established market house prototype, the porticoed breakfront of the former reinvented as arcaded breakfronts in the twin long fronts of the latter, the flanks given blind openings with sills and simple frames. The twin pedimented sides feature a triumphal arch-like arrangement of arch and niche, which has no obvious precedent in Avondale, but also feature boldly rusticated stonework which in County Wicklow is used sparingly as a trim on the corners.
The stone for the market house was quarried at two different sites on the outskirts of Monaghan town, one supplying the hard dove-grey limestone for the superstructure, the other supplying the softer, malleable creamy-coloured limestone for decorative detail. The central set of draped swags in rectangular frames and the acanthus leaf medallions in the flanks are stylistically first cousins of Avondale, where they take the form of ribboned festoons and paterae respectively.
The market house with its twinned façades was the ideal centrepiece for a spacious square where its architectural qualities might be best appreciated in the round. Its actual setting was and remains far more humble, however, its stepped platform partly absorbed by the sloping site, a medley of houses and offices hemming it in on three sides.
Monaghan Market House was a hive of activity throughout the nineteenth century, the coming and going of produce assisted by the opening of the Ulster Canal (1839) and the Ulster Railway (1858), but the grocery shop and later the supermarket brought about its terminal decline. It languished unloved for several decades before its potential for reuse was identified. Purchased by Monaghan Town Council in 1999, it was rehabilitated and its previously open arcades glazed in; it was reopened in 2003 as the Market House Arts Centre.
Damian Murphy is Architectural Heritage Officer, NIAH. Series based on the NIAH’s ‘building of the month’, www.buildingsofireland.ie.