Irish Houses of Parliament - Plans For The New Building

Plans For The New Building

Chichester House was in a dilapidated state, allegedly haunted and unfit for parliamentary use. In 1727 Parliament voted to spend £6,000 on the building of a new parliament building on the site. It was to be the first purpose-built two-chamber parliament building in the world. The then ancient Palace of Westminster, the seat of the English (before 1707) and, later, British Parliament, was merely a converted building; the House of Commons's odd seating arrangements was due to the chamber's previous existence as a chapel. Hence MPs faced each other from former pews, a seating arrangement continued when the new British Houses of Parliament were built in the mid-19th century after the mediæval building was destroyed by fire. (It was also followed in the 1940s, when the then House of Commons chamber was bombed during World War II, though consideration had been given to replacing it with a semi-circular chamber instead.)

The design of this radical new Irish parliamentary building, one of two purpose-built Irish parliamentary buildings (the other being Parliament Buildings, Stormont), was entrusted to a talented young architect, Edward Lovett Pearce, who was himself a Member of Parliament and a protégé of the Speaker of the House of Commons, William Conolly of Castletown House. While building was begun, Parliament moved into the Blue Coat Hospital on Dublin's Northside. The foundation stone for the new building was laid on 3 February 1729.