The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 49, June 5, 1841Various
History
The Irish Penny Journal, Vol. 1 No. 49, June 5, 1841
Various
Ireland -- Periodicals
THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.
NUMBER 49. SATURDAY, JUNE 5, 1841. VOLUME I.
[Illustration: VICTORIA CASTLE, KILLINEY, COUNTY OF DUBLIN.]
Our metropolitan readers, at least, and many others besides, are aware
of the magnificent but not easily to be realised project, recently
propounded, of erecting a town on the east side of Malpas’s or Killiney
Hill--a situation certainly of unrivalled beauty and grandeur. Plans,
most satisfactory, and views prospective as well as perspective of this
as yet non-existent Brighton or Clifton, have been laid before the
public, with a view to obtain the necessary ways and means to give it a
more substantial reality; but alas! for the uncertainty of human wishes!
Queenstown, despite the popularity of our sovereign, is not likely, for
some time at least, to present a rivalry, in any thing but its romantic
and commanding site, to the busy, bustling, and not very symmetrically
built town which has been erected in honour of Her august eldest uncle.
The good people of Kingstown may therefore rejoice; their glory will not
for some time at least be eclipsed; and the lovers of natural romantic
scenery who have not money--they seldom have--to employ in promising
speculations, may also rejoice, for the wild and precipitous cliffs of
Killiney are likely to retain for some years longer a portion of their
romantic beauty; the rocks will not be shaped into well-dressed forms
of prim gentility; the purple heather and blossomy furze, “unprofitable
gay,” may give nature’s brilliant colouring to the scenery, and the wild
sea-birds may sport around: the time has not arrived when they will be
destroyed or banished from their ancient haunt by the encroachment of man.
But however this may be, the first stone of the new town has been laid;
nay, the first building--no less a building than “Victoria Castle”--has
been actually erected; and, as a memorial of one of the gigantic
projects of this speculating nineteenth century of ours, we have felt it
incumbent on us to give its fair proportions a place in our immortal and
universally read miscellany, in order to hand down its pristine form to
posterity in ages when it shall have been shaped by time into a genuine
antique ruin.
Of the architectural style and general appearance of Victoria Castle, our
engraving gives a good idea. Like most modern would-be castles, it has
towers and crenellated battlements and _large_ windows in abundance, and
is upon the whole as unlike a real old castle as such structures usually
are. It is, however, a picturesque and imposing structure of its kind,
and, what is of more consequence to its future occupants, a cheerful and
commodious habitation, which is more than can be said of most genuine
castles, or of many more classical imitations of them; and its situation,
on a terrace on the south side of Killiney Hill, is one as commanding and
beautiful as could possibly be imagined.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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