ANNUAL REVIEW 2021
Inigo Jones, Christopher Wren and Irish Marble by Tony Hand, Architectural Historian Inigo Jones (Fig.1), the first significant British architect of the modern period, wrote to Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford and Lord Deputy of Ireland, in July 1637, requesting black marble for the steps, which ‘will goe for the worke of St Pauls’. In this letter, Jones provided Strafford with the measurements he required to put the steps in place in St. Paul’s cathedral in London. A few years previously in 1634, Thomas Howard, (Lord Arundel) and Jones were involved in shipping Irish marble to England. Jones was commissioned to design an annexe for Howard’s new house, Arundel House, in London. Jones was so impressed while using Irish marble there that he decided to use it, along with ‘other stones from Ireland’, for the portico of St. Paul’s Cathedral, which was under construction at the time. (Fig. 3).
It is believed that the location of the quarry Arundel and Jones were using was at Drean in county Donegal. The workers employed by the Englishmen ‘digged and prepared a good quantity of Marble’ on lands belonging to a Captain Dutton. Situated on the eastern shores of Lough Swilly, the quarry would have been ideally placed for the loading of stone onto ships to transport it around the country and across to Britain, unfortunately the colour of this marble is not mentioned in the correspondence. The British Geological Survey has, in its collection, a sample of rock from Drean. This piece of rock is called phyllite and is of a green or silvery grey colour, not black or dark grey. Adjacent to Drean is an area known as Whitehill, most likely known by this name due to the pale colour of its soil and underlying rock. Both these factors would indicate that dark or black marble was not in abundance here and the likelihood is that the black marble requested by Jones was sourced elsewhere. Samuel Lewis,
Fig.1 Inigo Jones (1573- 1652). Photo credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
64
www.imqs.ie
writing in 1837, states that ‘Many species of valuable marble have been discovered’ in Donegal, including ‘Grey and black marble of very fine quality’, yet he does not elaborate on the exact location of this marble, or exactly when these deposits would have been worked. In a reply to Arundel, 14 September 1635, Strafford does not mention the northern part of the country at all. Recognising the possible public and private benefits of Arundel’s enterprise, Strafford wished ‘your trade for marbles may succeed…to breed a greater Commerce and familiarity betwixt the two nations.’ Strafford informed Arundel that the agents he had sent over ‘will find very good black and mingled with white, about Galway and, in some part of Munster, excellent good white and red.’ Strafford considered that he himself might ‘get a barque laden to send about to Hull and so into Yorkshire’, in order to have the marble made into chimneypieces for the house he was building at Woodhouse, near Wentworth
Fig. 2. Christopher Wren (1632–1723). Photo credit: The Royal Society. St. Paul’s cathedral is visible through the drawn curtain.
