What is that elephant in the room, the curious rendered building amongst the (demolished) brick houses of Dublin's Hardwicke Street? It had a chequered historic as a house, a convent, a Jesuit community, a Catholic school, a Methodist chapel, a Protestant school and a theatre.

Most remarkably, it predated Hardwicke Street itself, built as a private house off Drumcondra Lane (Dorset Street) in the early 1700s for one Major Favier/Ferière. Here it is mapped in 1756 with the modern street line in orange, and shown again in 1797 in better detail.

In 1752, Poor Clare sisters moved into the house where “after a few years they built a neat chapel with eight cells over it at a cost of £800.” Photos suggest this was a remodelling of the old house, including 8 box frame sash windows. Their presence is clearly mapped in 1798...

All the while, the smart new terraces of Hardwicke Street and the magisterial Protestant ‘temple’ dedicated to St. George were slowly engulfing the modest building.

In 1816, the Jesuits secured it as their first public chapel, before moving to Gardiner Street in 1832. They converted it into a day school, the precursor to Belvedere College, which operated until 1841. The building then became a Methodist chapel, captured on the 1847 OS map.

Latterly, it operated as a Protestant school, followed by the Dun Emer Guild and George Moore’s Theatre of Ireland. It was demolished along with the rest of the street in the 1950s. Only a handful of houses at the Frederick Street end survived the massacre.

The question is: was Hardwicke Street set out on the line of the preexisting chapel? Was this more important than the resulting misalignment with St. George’s? Indeed, why wasn’t St. George’s dragged right on Temple Street, drawing Hardwicke Street with it into perfect alignment?

Though a failure of pure classical planning, the skewed siting of St. George’s nonetheless creates three-dimensional architectural drama, magnetically drawing the viewer up Hardwicke Street - as if the church is facing something else that's worth knowing about.

This atypical positioning, coquettishly addressing multiple vantage points, also ensures theatrical views of the portico from Eccles Street and Temple Street – surely the main aim of the game.

*chequered history