Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720 - 1940

Architect and measurer, of Dublin. Richard Lucius Louch, son of RICHARD LOUCH  RICHARD LOUCH and his wife Hannah, was born in Shoreditch, London, on 30 April 1767. His family had moved to Armagh by the time he was eight.  He was living in Dublin by 22 July 1792, when he married Martha Collins at St Bride's Church.(1) He makes his first appearance in Wilson's Dublin Directory in the edition for 1796 and is presumably the Richard Louch who was admitted a Freeman of the City of Dublin as a member of the Guild of Carpenters by Grace Especial in 1801.(2) He was an entrant in the Bank of Ireland competition of 1802(3) and was clerk of works at the King's Inns in 1804.(4) According to his grandson FITZGIBBON LOUCH' FITZGIBBON LOUCH' s 'Statement of the Louch family'  he also worked for the Grand Canal Company and built the first three houses in Blessington Street, in one of which he lived himself.   Fitzgibbon Louch also states that his grandfather's relatively early death was occasioned by a cold which he caught while travelling round Ireland to assess the damage which had been sustained by Loyalist properties during the rebellion of 1798 and its aftermath.   He died at home in 1806, leaving his widow, Martha, with four young children. He was buried in St Kevin's churchyard.(5) JOHN HOWARD LOUCH  JOHN HOWARD LOUCH was his second son.

Addresses: 44 Brunswick Street, 1796; 141 Great Britain Street, 1797-99; 27 Poolbeg Street, 1800-1803; 26 Poolbeg Street, 1804; Mountjoy Place, 1805; 4 Blessington Street, 1806 until death.

See WORKS.



References

All information in this entry not otherwise accounted for is from Mrs Dorothy Anderson (nee Louch), 7/88 Clowes Street, South Yarra, 3141, Australia, and from Fitzgibbon Louch's 'Statement of the Louch family  from their Transplanting to Ireland in 17--' (copy in IAA). .

(1) Curiously, according to www.familysearch.org, a Richard 'Lucins' Louch married in Cork on 22 July 1796.
(2) 'An alphabetical list of the Freemen of the City of Dublin, 1774-1824', The Irish Ancestor XV (1983), Nos. 1 & 2, 79.
(3) Louch's south elevation is in the Bank of Ireland archives; see Brenda Doyle, 'Catalogue of architectural drawings entered for the competition…for the alteration of the Old Parliament House…to the Bank of Ireland', Moderatorship (Part II) thesis, Trinity College, Dublin, 1986, 31-32, Pl. 70.
(4) 'King's Inns Misc. MSS etc.' (IAA, Edward McParland files, Acc. 2008/44).
(5) Shirley Arabin, Tauranga, New Zealand, ‘Keady to Katikati: Fitzgibbon Louch, Ulster Architect’, paper read at the conference 'The Hidden Irish: Ulster/New Zealand Migration and Cultural Transfers' held at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, in July 2004.


1 work entries listed in chronological order for LOUCH, RICHARD LUCIUS [1]


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Building: CO. DUBLIN, DUBLIN, COLLEGE GREEN, BANK OF IRELAND
Date: 1803
Nature: Competition entrant. (Competition announced, Aug 1802.)
Refs: Drawings in IAA, Bank of Ireland drawings collection (Acc. 2006/65); see Brenda Doyle, 'Catalogue of architectural drawings entered for the competition…for the alteration of the Old Parliament House…to the Bank of Ireland', Moderatorship (Part II) thesis, Trinity College, Dublin, 1986, 31-32, Pl. 70