Gate lodge to St. George’s

Originally built as the gate lodge of St. George’s in 1882 this lodge later became the residence of the artist, Mia Cranwill. Designed by the renowned architect George Coppinger Ashlin the lodge displays many of the design elements used in the main house. Ashlin clearly left his mark in the brickwork over the two central windows.

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Mia Cranwill 1880-1972

Mia Cranwill was an Irish designer and metal artist, and was one of the leading artists of the Irish Celtic Revival. She lived in the lodge which she called Drum-Goibhneann in the 1920’s to 1930’s. She turns up again in the 1940 Thom’s Directory listing. It appears that she was renting out the house when she was living elsewhere at various times.

Extract from Dictionary of Irish Biography by Frances Clarke

Throughout the 1920s she was engaged in producing a monstrance, tabernacle, sanctuary lamp, and frames for altar cards for St Patrick’s catholic church, San Francisco, USA. The monstrance, which she executed with the help of Newland Smith, was exhibited in the National Museum of Ireland (July 1927) before being shipped to San Francisco. Another significant commission came from Alice Stopford Green (qv) to produce a metal casket to house a scroll with the signatures of the Free State senators. The casket (gold, silver, and enamel on a copper foundation) received universal praise on its completion (1924), when it was exhibited in the National Museum and later at the Manchester Art Federation. In reviewing the piece F. Newland Smith spoke of Cranwill as a ‘designer and craftswoman who understands the national Irish style and can interpret it, create anew within it, and add to the old and delightful forms a personality and expression quite new’ (Newland Smith, 240).

Extract from The Arts and Crafts Movement: Making it Irish. Edited by Vera Kreilkamp 2016

Other women participating in the Arts and Crafts movement chose roles within equally complex webs of aesthetic and political involvement. Mia Cranwill, who had stored weapons for War of Independence insurgents in her Dublin studio, created the Revivalist-themed Senate casket ; it sat on the Senate chairman’s desk during each session and held the names of Free State senators inscribed on vellum in the shrine-like container, whose shape recalls that of a Golden Age house-shaped reliquary. Helmers and Rose note that if in shape, the casket draws on Ireland’s medieval past, its elaborate Revivalist decoration alludes to a still threatening present.

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Records from Thom’s Directory

Year	Occupant	Property name
1924	No record
1926-34	Miss Mia Cranwill	Drum-Goibhneann
1936-37	Cecil B. McWeeney	Druim Goib-neann
1940	Miss Mia Cranwill	Druim Goib-neann
1943-54	Miss Large	Druim Goib-neann
1969-1986	Michael Dalton	Kilda Lodge