My wife's ancestors - Fitzwilliam - Contents
The E Avenue, Mount Merrion House
Now Sycamore Crescent.
Sycamore Crescent, looking uphill to the church, showing the old gates.
Drawing by J. O'Sullivan, 1925.
Printed in [Mount Merrion Estates, 1925-26].
"A double avenue of beech trees shades the roadway which runs, straight as a rule, for a full quarter of a mile to the entrance gates on the Stillorgan road. This roadway, whose immaculate pebbled surface was raked daily, had a broad border of century old shaven turf, the pride of the Scottish gardener" - [Wilkinson, 1925].
The fine stone gates that once stood at the Stillorgan Road entrance still exist. They are now the gates of Willow Park school on the Blackrock Road. Blackrock College purchased Willow Park house in 1925 and opened it as a preparatory school. They installed the Mount Merrion gates c.1926, removed from the sold-off Mt Merrion estate.
It is not so obvious now, since Sycamore Crescent has been blocked off, but this avenue formerly ran down to join Mt Merrion Ave, so that the entire 1-mile length of Mount Merrion Avenue itself formed a drive up to the house. There were also main gates to the whole estate down at the bottom of Mt Merrion Ave.
"Mount Merrion, the Irish seat of the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, can compare in the beauty of its demesne with many of the great places in England, and has few rivals in Ireland. Entering by the high gates on the road from Dublin to Stillorgan, which face the broad avenue from Blackrock, a straight drive with wide borders of closely cut grass, and rows of lofty elms on either side, leads to the house, which is covered with creepers." - [Ball, vol.2, 1903]
The old E Avenue (now "Sycamore Crescent") leading up to Mount Merrion House.
Click to rotate and move.
From Google Street View.
Photo 1999 of the old E Avenue (now "Sycamore Crescent")
leading up to Mount Merrion House.
In 1956 a grand Catholic church almost symbolically displaced the old Anglo-Irish house
at the top.
The new church is not actually built on the site of any of the old buildings though,
and 2 blocks survive up there
beside the church.
The new church
The gap at the top of the avenue has been filled by the massive new Catholic church (built 1956), set a little further back up the hill. The middle of the avenue is now devoted to its car park.
The new church. Photo 2010.
See full size. From here.
Return to
Mount Merrion House.
