Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720 - 1940

Robert Stevenson signed an undated design for formal gardens which was formerly in the collection of architectural designs at Headfort, Co. Meath, and is now in the Irish Architectural Archive.(1) If the design is for Headfort, it may predate the present house, which was begun in 1758.

A nurseryman of this name had premises at 'The Orange Tree' on the east side of St Stephen's Green, Dublin, from the 1730s until the 1750s.(2) In an advertisement in Faulkner's Dublin Journal for 9-12 June 1744, he announces that in addition to selling 'all manner of grasses, flower seeds, flower roots and plants' and 'A choice collection of fruit trees, forest trees, flowering shrubs etc', he 'designs and lays out all types of gardens'. He is presumably the Robert Stevenson who was paid in 1754 for designing the Rotunda Gardens in Dublin.(3)



References



(1) Acc. 098/068.3/3/12 (repr. in E. Malins & the Knight of Glin, Lost Demesnes: Irish landscape gardening, 1660-1845 (1976), Pl. 104.
(2) Ray Desmond, Dictionary of British & Irish Botanists and Horticulturalists (1994), 654.
(3) Rotunda MSS (Old Records, etc.) (IAA, Edward McParland files, Acc. 2008/44).


1 work entries listed in chronological order for STEVENSON, ROBERT [1]*


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Building: CO. DUBLIN, DUBLIN, PARNELL SQUARE, ROTUNDA GARDENS
Date: 1749a
Nature: RS paid for designing Rotunda Gardens. Gardens first illuminated in 1749.
Refs: Rotunda MSS (Old Records, &c.) (IAA, Edward McParland files, Acc.2008/44);  Christine Casey, The Buildings of Ireland: Dublin (2005), 220.