User:SeoR/sandbox/Marino Demesne

Marino Demesne was an estate north of Dublin city, established by James Caulfeild, 1st Earl of Charlemont in the 18th century. Along with the mansion known as Marino House, it featured the Casino at Marino, built as a summer house, a Gothic house also known as Rosamund's Bower, up to three ponds, and a range of other architectural features, and both landscaped and walled gardens. The estate was sold to the Catholic Church in, and subsequently mostly passed to the Irish Christian Brothers. On its site, aside from the Casino, are now several schools, a parish church, the Marino Institute of Education, much housing, a care home, the O'Brien Institute, and other facilities.

Origins
On Viscount Caulfeild's return in 1755 from a nine-year Grand Tour, he was presented by his stepfather, Thomas Adderley, with an estate of around 50 acres tied to Donnycarney House, then some miles to the northeast from Dublin city. He did not care for the house's situation, and quickly began plans for a new mansion house and a reworked surrounding estate. He acquired control of an extended land-holding, running from the seafront at Fair View to Donnycarney, and this became the townland (and later the core of the district) of Marino.

The main elements of the Marino estate developed over more than twenty years, and some development continued in the succeeding decades. The Casino and the Gothic Room were externally complete by 1763, when Charlemont were elevated to the rank of Earl.

The 1st Earl died in 1799, and development of the estate was continued by the 2nd Earl, who applied to the city for an extension of his leasehold in 1813 and 1822; after the lands were surveyed, it was granted until the end of 1821.

Sale and breakup
The 3rd Earl of Charlemont, the nephew of the 2nd Earl, whose children pre-deceased him, succeeded in 1864. The estate was put up for sale on the death of the Dowager Countess in 1876, and bought by Cardinal Cullen, who then sold most of it on to the Irish Christian Brothers, retaining a portion (30 or 39 acres) for the O'Brien Institute, which became the School of the Twin Sisters, a residential school for orphan boys.

The part sold to the Christian Brothers saw various developments, notably the building of St Mary's College, and later primary schools and a church for the local Roman Catholic parish, the secondary school Ard Scoil Rís, Marino Institute of Education and the provincialite of the Christian Brothers. Parts were sold on to the city authorities, and saw the development of the garden suburb core of Marino. Near the former southern gates of the estate, the Christian Brothers also built St Joseph's secondary school.

The O'Brien's Institute estate was in turn broken up, with 11 acres left around the Casino, a large adjacent tract built up with housing, a grazing field sold to a religious order for the construction of a care home for the elderly, and the remainder, in the hands of Dublin City Council, largely used as the Dublin Fire Brigade Training Centre.