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BUILDING OF THE MONTH - November 2009
Ballyduff Garda Síochána Station

FREDERICK O'DWYER describes the construction of fortified police barracks by the Board of Works in the aftermath of the Fenian Rising, exemplified by the example at Ballyduff, County Waterford, which remains in use as a Garda Station.

In 1831 legislation was enacted at Westminster to consolidate Irish public works departments under a new body, the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland, commonly known, like its Georgian predecessor, as the Board of Works. However it was not until after the retirement of its first architect, the Welshman Jacob Owen, in 1856 that its remit was extended to building police stations nationwide. Progress was slow and, as late as 1878, the overwhelming majority of the 1,465 barracks in the country were still in rented premises, only forty-five being under the Board's charge. Owen, whose fourteen surviving children included several architects, had arranged for one of them, James Higgins Owen, to succeed him. Later, in 1863, an assistant architect, the apparently unrelated Enoch Trevor Owen, was appointed.

AARCHIVAL PHOTOGRAPHS ILLUSTRATING THE ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY BARRACKS AT BALLYDUFF IN 1915 (top) AND IN 1923 (bottom) FOLLOWING DESTRUCTION BY ARSON DURING 'THE TROUBLES' (1919-23)