The Irish Heritage Trust, in partnership with Poetry Ireland/Éigse Éireann, has delivered a masterclass in Georgian restoration and modernisation at No 11 Parnell Square, a 300-year-old townhouse in Dublin. Following a €5.5m conservation and refurbishment project, the building now serves as a shared headquarters for the three organisations.
The project, led by McCullough Mulvin Architects, achieved an exceptional A3 Building Energy Rating (BER), balancing historical integrity with 21st-century environmental standards. This was made possible through a fabric-first approach, using breathable materials such as mineral wool insulation and traditional slate, lead flashing, and timber details.
Conservation and Restoration
The conservation work focused on retaining as much original fabric as possible, using traditional materials and making all modern interventions reversible. The envelope works involved roof replacement and façade repointing, with careful scaffold management and dust containment to prevent damage to the historic building.
The project team also removed and restored important Victorian furniture, including the original boardroom table and seating, to prevent site damage during major structural works. These items were tendered separately from the main contract as a specialist subcontract package and restored off-site before being re-installed in the Council Chamber.
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The building’s mechanical system features a bivalent heating configuration, designed to balance low carbon emissions with reliable heating during peak cold periods. This system pairs air-source heat pumps with condensing gas boilers, allowing heat pumps to supply baseload heating and boilers to handle extreme peaks.
The project’s success can be attributed to the rigorous conservation principles and modern sustainability requirements that were integrated into a unified building strategy. The design team used heritage constraints to drive cleaner engineering solutions, demonstrating that historic urban assets can meet the highest operational, accessibility, and environmental standards without losing their historic soul.
One of the key challenges faced by the project team was resolving the compartmentation and fireproofing of the Council Chamber, which features a delicate timber parquet floor and a Victorian low-relief fibrous plaster ceiling. The team carefully removed damaged lath and plaster ceiling, fitted fire-rated board and insulation between the timber joists, and reinstated the ceiling using traditional lath-and-plaster techniques.
This approach allowed the parquet floor to remain completely untouched, achieved full passive fire compartmentation between floor levels, and freed up plant space needed for the bivalent heat pump infrastructure. The net savings from this approach also allowed other conservation works to be completed that otherwise would not have proceeded.
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Monthly financial governance played a critical role in the project’s success, with Brendan Merry & Partners issuing 17 full monthly cost reports over a 21-month period. These reports were reviewed by the project steering committee and made available to funding bodies, creating an auditable paper trail.
The project steering committee, consisting of representatives from the Irish Heritage Trust, Poetry Ireland/Éigse Éireann, and the government department, met monthly to review progress on site. The contingency was treated as a strictly controlled project resource, with every variation requiring initial assessment by Brendan Merry & Partners and formal authorisation by the steering committee before instructions were issued to the site.
Technical Performance
The successful revival of No 11 Parnell Square was completed in March 2026, within its overall planned budget and timeline, and now serves as a shared headquarters for Poetry Ireland/Éigse Éireann, the Irish Heritage Trust, and the Irish Landmark Trust. The building’s transformation into an energy-efficient, fully accessible public facility provides a useful template for urban regeneration and carbon reduction goals in Ireland.
