Alfred Henry Wynne
Born 1839, agent to the Burnaby, Singleton and Massereene estates, and thought honourable and courteous by the tenants he dealt with. He died at Burnaby Lodge in April 1908, aged 69.
History
The History of The Burnaby
The Burnaby is a residential district in the very centre of Greystones. It was the brainchild of Alfred Wynne, agent to the Burnaby / Hawkins-Whitshed estate, who also suggested the estate seek permission for a golf course — the course that still wraps around us to the west and south. The name comes from Frederick Burnaby, adventurer and army officer, who married Elizabeth Hawkins-Whitshed, heir to over 5,000 acres and Killincarrick House.
1880
A plan on paper
The architect James Rawson Carroll draws up a proposal for a residential district on the Burnaby / Hawkins-Whitshed lands in the centre of Greystones. The scheme eventually built was smaller than this first ambitious sketch.
1889
Building ground advertised
On 29 June the Dublin Daily Express advertises building ground on The Burnaby Estate: "immediately adjoining the Railway station and Strand… dry gravelly soil; perfect sewerage system; splendid sea and mountain views; Vartry water at high pressure; lease 999 years."
1890s
Wynne's vision
Alfred Henry Wynne, agent to the estate, believes residential rents will provide a steady income — and also suggests seeking permission for a golf course, today's magnificent links to the west and south. Much of the land stayed a home farm, managed by the Evans family at Killincarrig Farmhouse. Commercial activity was forbidden; even keeping chickens was out.
1892
Carroll and Batchelor
Carroll takes English-born architect Frederick Batchelor into partnership. The grid of roads, generous set-backs and plots of 0.2 to 0.8 acres — many with room for a tennis court — are the work of their practice.
1900
Modern sanitation on show
The Builder records the Architectural Association of Ireland's sketching club visiting the estate's septic sewage system, hosted by Batchelor. Designed for 500 inhabitants and built to be extended, it was genuinely advanced engineering for a small seaside town.
1905
A fashionable summer address
The Queen Newspaper Book of Travel notes that on the Burnaby "beautiful houses can be had all through the summer from £16 to £40 a month" — a three-month let even came with a free railway ticket to Dublin.
1907
The builder honoured
Patrick Joseph Kinlen, the contractor who built much of the estate, is made a Commissioner of the Peace. The Irish Builder and Engineer writes that the estate "shows what the owners of a building estate, when possessed of some taste and a little firmness, can do."
1910
An object lesson in town planning
With building largely complete, The Irish Times calls the Burnaby "an excellent example of what town planning can do" — every road and plot mapped out before a single house was built.
1943
A world of its own
An Irishman's Diary teases that by taking up residence in the Burnaby "one automatically is transformed from an ordinary person into a Burnaby person" — set slightly apart from the rest of Greystones.
1950s–60s
Later building
The estate is added to by builder W. R. Lendrum, who put up several of the bungalows on Manor Avenue during the 1960s on numbered sites.
1969
A park for the town
Mrs H. A. G. Burnaby of Killincarrig Manor, then owner of the estate, offers the council four acres for a new public park, alongside plans for further houses and a shopping area.
James Rawson Carroll
Born 1830 and schooled outside Delgany, Carroll set up his Dublin practice in 1857 and drew the first proposal for the estate in 1880. He retired in 1905 and died in 1911.
Frederick Batchelor
English-born, he came to Ireland in 1882, rose to partner with Carroll, designed many Burnaby houses and lived locally at The Gables for several years.
Patrick Joseph Kinlen
The contractor behind large parts of the estate, plus the Greystones convent and the Roundwood reservoir. Made a Commissioner of the Peace in 1907; died in 1918.
The streets
Whitshed, Portland, St Vincent and Burnaby Roads all nod to the Burnaby family. Killincarrig Road follows the old lane from the station to the village; Pavilion Road led to the first golf pavilion; Kinlen Road honours the builder.
Garden-suburb thinking
Low density, a grid of roads, generous plots often big enough for a tennis court, and houses set well back — one of the first Irish estates laid out on garden-suburb lines for local families.
From the Burnaby to Hollywood
Geraldine Fitzgerald (1913–2005) was born on the Burnaby on 24 November 1913, the daughter of a prominent lawyer whose firm was mentioned in James Joyce's Ulysses. The Fitzgeralds lived in a house called "Merlin" at Portland Place, and later at "Rath" on St Vincent's Road. She was educated at a junior school run by Miss Duncan behind the Presbyterian church.
After early stage work at the Gate Theatre in Dublin she went to England in 1934, then joined Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre in New York and signed for Warner Brothers. Her role in Wuthering Heights (1939) brought an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress, and she appeared alongside Bette Davis in Dark Victory the same year. In 1982 she became one of the first women nominated for a Tony for directing on Broadway. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and was mother to the director Michael Lindsay-Hogg.
Notes from the archive
A few details gathered from local history collections, for anyone curious about the corners of the estate.
Glenart and the Beare family
An old postcard shows Glenart, the Beare family home on the Burnaby, with four children at the gate — Cecil, Denis (later a prisoner of war in Japan), Reginald (a doctor in Oldcastle) and their young sister Noreen.
The estate boundary at South Beach
Near the children's play area on South Beach, two ornamental cut boulders mark the boundary between the Burnaby Estate and the La Touche Estate. It was once a wall, parts of which survive — and it bisected the railway station, so each estate owned half.
The gate lodges
Opposite the railway arch, on the corner of the park, stands one of the surviving gate lodges of the Burnaby Estate. Nearby on the old road is a letter box bearing E.R. and a crown for Edward VII.
Thatched houses on Rathdown Road
Rathdown Road once had a line of thatched cottages, among them the home of the carpenter John Francis Doyle, with others owned by the Martin, Connolly and Carr families.
The Woodlands Hotel
Later known as the Woodlands, and before that the Clyda and the International, the hotel began as a house connected to the Burnaby family; a gate lodge stood at its entrance until a public house was built on the spot.
Greystones Golf Club
The club that still wraps around the estate dates from a meeting at the Grand Hotel in 1892, with the lease completed in 1894. Membership began at twenty-five, the subscription was 10/6, and nine more holes were laid out by the professional Tom Walker around 1910.