Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720 - 1940

Architect, of Dublin. John Talbot Ashenhurst was awarded premiums by the Royal Dublin Society's School of Architectural Drawing in 1836 and 1837.(1) He is possibly the 'J.A.' who wrote to the Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal from Dublin on 12 October 1840 complaining about the conduct of architectectural competitions and the 'degraded' state of the architectural profession in Ireland.(2) He exhibited a design for a Grecian church at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1842 and a 'restored view' of Caisiol-na-Righ at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1850.(3) He also drew a number of the street panoramas in Henry Shaw's Dublin Pictorial Guide (1850).

Several persons of this name are recorded in Dublin in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. A J. Talbot Ashenhurst married a Miss Reed in Dublin in 1775;(4) another was living in Dublin in the 1780s.(5) A John T. Ashenhurst was admitted a Freeman of the City of Dublin as a member of the corporation of Merchants by Grace Especial at Christmas, 1811,(6) a John Talbot Ashenhurs was the first Dublin agent for the Phoenix Insurance Company in 1817, and a John Talbot Ashenhurst was the proprietor of an Irish tabinet warehouse at 4 St Andrew St in 1844 and at 5 Malpas Street in 1847.(7)

Address: 97 New Street.(8)



References



(1) Royal Dublin Society Proceedings 1836,1837.
(2) Civil Engineer & Architect's Journal 3 (Nov 1840), 379.
(3) RHA 1842, No. 449, RHA 1850, No. 252.
(4) www.familysearch.org.
(5) Eilish Ellis and P. Beryl Eustace, eds., Registry of Deeds Dublin Abstracts of Wills…1785-1832, (Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1984), 8 (no. 15), 85 (no. 138).
(6) 'An alphabetical list of the Freemen of the City of Dublin, 1774-1824', Irish Ancestor XV (1983), Nos. 1 & 2, 6.
(7) Post Office Directory 1844,1847.
(8) Post Office Directory 1853, and see note 2, above.