Marino, Fairview and Marino Terace.

NORTH-EAST SUBURB.

Marino, Fairview and Marino Terrace.

Taking** **the “Clontarf” tramcar from the Nelson Column, in Sackville Street, to the Crescent, Fairview, we take the road to the left of the Crescent, and at the end of a high stone wall, which encloses its grounds, reach the entrance gate of **Marino, **(pictured, below) formerly the residence of **James Caulfield Earl of Charlemont. **

Marino, Clontarf.gif (10172 bytes)Glimpses of the house, and of the white dome of the famous casino, may be obtained from the road, and with these the visitor must be perforce content, the “Christian Brothers,” to whom the house now belongs, not permitting the admittance of strangers within their gates; unless, it may be, on special application to the Superior (the Casino is now open to the public, KF).

The house is a square of Portland stone, sixty feet to each side, and has been in its day the shrine of some of the richest treasures of sculpture and painting, selected by the most critical taste from abroad.

The special feature of the place is the casino above-mentioned, which contained vestibule, saloon, study, and boudoir, the floors being of inlaid woods. “Long galleries of groined brickwork extended on all sides under the soil of the park,” writes Mr. Prendergast *(Irish Times, *Sept., 1886), “to give the site of the casino a proper elevation. So great was the cost of cutting the stones for the cornice, that one of the work-men is said to have cried out to his comrade on the scaffolding above, ‘Look out! Here goes another townland.”’

The house was originally on the road side; the course of the road being diverted so as to give an addition to the park. Lord Charlemont died at Charlemont House (see RouteIV). He left among his papers his own epitaph: “Here lies the body of James, Earl of Charlemont, a sincere, zealous, and active friend to his country. Let his posterity imitate him in that alone, and forget his manifold errors. The house was sold in 1880.

3 Marino Tce.gif (6774 bytes)Returning to the road by the Bay we pass three rows of small houses of varied design. One of these is Marino Terrace. At No.3 (pictured, right)** William Carleton, **the author of *Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, *was living in 1853. This was more than twenty years after the publication of the first series of his tales, which appeared in 1829. It is said that Carleton, who was the son of a small farmer, in county Tyrone, “attended a hedge school, travelled as a poor scholar, and fed his literary tastes by reading all the books he could lay his hands on,” and was led to try his fortune in Dublin, with only a few pence in his pocket, by a perusal of *Gil Blas *and the stimulus to adventure excited by that romance.

Among the occupations which he sought for a livelihood - and for which he proved ignominiously incompetent - was bird-stuffing.

In a biographical notice of him, in the *Dublin University Magazine, *1841, it is said: “He has not been exempt from the difficulties which attend the pursuits he has chosen, nor, truth compels us to add, free from the eccentricities, the imprudence, and the faults which are too often the attendants on genius… In private Mr. Carleton is not often distinguished by any of the humour which appears in his writings. His conversation is generally of a thoughtful and melancholy cast, and, unless when he is excited, distinguished by no very remarkable quality.”

He removed from here to Rathgar Avenue, about 1855 and died in 1869. (See Southern Suburbs).

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