THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.
| Number 49. | SATURDAY, JUNE 5, 1841. | Volume I. |
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 realisedproject, recently propounded, of erecting a town on the eastside of Malpas’s or Killiney Hill—a situation certainly ofunrivalled beauty and grandeur. Plans, most satisfactory,and views prospective as well as perspective of this as yetnon-existent Brighton or Clifton, have been laid before thepublic, with a view to obtain the necessary ways and means togive it a more substantial reality; but alas! for the uncertaintyof human wishes! Queenstown, despite the popularityof our sovereign, is not likely, for some time at least, topresent a rivalry, in any thing but its romantic and commandingsite, to the busy, bustling, and not very symmetricallybuilt town which has been erected in honour of Heraugust eldest uncle. The good people of Kingstown maytherefore rejoice; their glory will not for some time at leastbe eclipsed; and the lovers of natural romantic scenery whohave not money—they seldom have—to employ in promisingspeculations, may also rejoice, for the wild and precipitouscliffs of Killiney are likely to retain for some years longer aportion of their romantic beauty; the rocks will not be shapedinto well-dressed forms of prim gentility; the purple heather andblossomy furze, “unprofitable gay,” may give nature’s brilliantcolouring to the scenery, and the wild sea-birds may sportaround: the time has not arrived when they will be destroyed orbanished from their ancient haunt by the encroachment of man.
But however this may be, the first stone of the new townhas been laid; nay, the first building—no less a building than“Victoria Castle”—has been actually erected; and, as a memorialof one of the gigantic projects of this speculating nineteenthcentury of ours, we have felt it incumbent on us togive its fair proportions a place in our immortal and universallyread miscellany, in order to hand down its pristine form toposterity in ages when it shall have been shaped by time intoa genuine antique ruin.
Of the architectural style and general appearance of VictoriaCastle, our engraving gives a good idea. Like mostmodern would-be castles, it has towers and crenellated battlementsand large windows in abundance, and is upon thewhole as unlike a real old castle as such structures usuallyare. It is, however, a picturesque and imposing structure ofits kind, and, what is of more consequence to its future occupants,a cheerful and commodious habitation, which is morethan can be said of most genuine castles, or of many moreclassical imitations of them; and its situation, on a terrace onthe south side of Killiney Hill, is one as commanding andbeautiful as could possibly be imagined.
Nothing in nature can indeed surpass the beauty, variety,and extent of the prospects which may be enjoyed from thisspot or its immediate vicinity, and we might fill a wholenumber of our Journal in describing their principal features.To most of our readers, however, they must be already familiar,and to those who have not had the pleasure of enjoyinga sight of them, it will convey a sufficient general idea of what[Pg 386]they must be, to acquaint them that Killiney Hill from thesame po