The above gentleman, Welbore Ellis MP, was the person ultimately responsible for deciding the location of today’s Four Courts, Dublin. In so doing, he was motivated primarily by the possibility of personal profit.
By the 1770s, all were agreed that the old Four Courts in Christchurch were no longer suitable. There were a number of alternative locations touted, and some even suggested rebuilding on the old site, but Ellis, who owned a large estate in Oxmantown, favoured relocating the courts to Inns Quay because of the value he believed this would add to his nearby property.
By coincidence – or not! – Ellis had long been opposing the erection of a new Customs House on what is now Custom House Quay. Eventually, in the early 1780s, a deal was struck whereby Ellis would withdraw his opposition to the Customs House provided that the Inns Quay site was chosen for the Four Courts.
Both buildings, of course, were designed by James Gandon, who suffered a setback in the course of erecting the Customs House due to the mysterious death of his assistant on site. Fortunately, no such tragedies marked the erection of the Four Courts, which opened for business in 1796, twenty years after the move had been first discussed.
Ironically, the move of the Four Courts to Inns Quay did not result in increased prosperity for the Oxmantown area, which went into a pattern of decline after the Act of Union.
But perhaps Ellis had by then disposed of his property by long lease or otherwise? See below an advertisement placed on his behalf in Saunders’s News-Letter from August 1784, not long after the site of the new Four Courts had been conclusively determined, offering to lease portion of his lands for such term as should be agreed on. The premises referred to are off Arran Quay, close to the site of today’s barristers’ chambers…
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