ABSTRACT
Ireland is an ancient country, alive to the Christian message during the Middle Ages, when the country reinvested much of the rest of Europe with fresh thinking and the spread of monasticism. However the arrival of the Normans introduced Henry II’s attempt to colonise the country, ending with the conquest of Ulster in 1603, and the Williamite Settlement leading to the removal of native landlords in the main. With the impact of the French Revolution and the Famine, serious revolutionaries organised in secret to expel the British, leading to violent change during and after World War I. Perhaps it was no accident that such changes allowed the emergence of modern architecture, in the hands of a solitary Professor of Architecture, maybe even encouraging those in power to appoint him for this or other allied reasons. And the Professor of Architecture in University College, Dublin, was William A. Scott, appointed in 1911, following Sir Thomas Newenham Drew, who had died soon after his appointment.1 It must be remembered that several factors did not permit the establishment of a large system of architectural education, there being only two graduates of Scott in his time – being used to the pupillage system, perhaps he resented or was unfamiliar with the Beaux-Arts studio system. University College Dublin was struggling to be established – it was re-founded in 1908 as part of the National University of Ireland. Of wider import was the general cultural climate in Ireland of those days, and how it may have related to architecture and design.
