History of Earlscliffe

Back in 1995 when the warmest summer for many years had dried out the ground on the Eastern Hillside next to Earlscliffe, fire broke out clearing away a huge swath of gorse and bracken. This revealed row after row of 'lazy beds' where the Irish staple diet of potatoes would have been grown, probably over a hundred years previously. Although this seems like a distant memory to the current owners, it wasn't that long ago that cattle grazed at Earlscliffe.

Earlscliffe house was built not long after the potato famine around 1850 on the hillside overlooking Doldrum Bay in an area called Censure. At the time when it was built there were few other houses around. Most of the area was farmed.

The house was probably built as a summer residence purely for the stunning views over Dublin Bay and right up until the mid twentieth century much of the land was farmed.

The following pages give a short history of both the house at Earlscliffe and it's garden, from the time the house was built, possibly by Alderman Cornelius Egan, to ownership by Capt William Bunbury McClintock, Mahaffy, Provost of Trinity, and the Very Rev. CT Ovenden, Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, and to when Dr. Ella Webb, Sir John Lumsden, and William Martin Murphy's grandson lived here. It will take us right up to the time of David Robinson and his family and the work carried out to turn Earlscliffe into a world renowned horticultural paradise.

• History of the House
• History of the Garden