Life
1699-1733 [ODNB d.1733], arch., and MP Ratoath, 1727; designed Summerhill, Fingall, now extinct; also parliament house on College Green, from 1729; completed by Arthur Dobbs, 1739. ODNB DIB BREF
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References
W. B Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; this edn. 1984), Edward Lovett Pearce, prob. b. 1699, Co. Meath; mixed Anglo-Irish and Gaelic ancestry; travelled in Italy; Houses of Parliament, details, stately Ionic colonnade, domed Commons Chamber, aspidal, barrel-vaulted Lords Chamber; corridor lit by smaller domes on three sides of Commons; also Drumcondra House, Cashel Palace, and Bellamont Forest; shared in Castletown; knighted 1732, d. 1733. Bibl., H. Colvin and M. J. Craig, Architectural Drawings in the Library of Elton Hall by Sir John Vanbrugh and Sir Edward Lovett Pearce (Oxford, 1964); also refers to Craig’s notice on Pearce, in Bulletin of the Irish Georgian Society, xvii (1974), pp.10-14.
Henry Boylan, A Dictionary of Irish Biography [rev. edn.] (Gill & Macmillan 1988), bio-data: prob. b. Co. Meath; cornet in Col. Morris’s dragoon at 16 or 17; visited Italy and made drawing in Venice; PH atoath, 1727; succeeded Thomas Burgh as surveyor-general in 1730; knighted 1732; his great work, the Houses of Parliament, College Green, foundation stone, 1729; also designed the obelisk in Stilorgan, and a theatre in Aungier St. Died of an abcess at his house in Stillorgan, 7 Dec.
Brian de Breffny, ed., Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopaedia (London: Thames & Hudson 1982) Brian de Breffny, ed., Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopaedia (London: Thames & Hudson 1982), bio-data: c.1699-1733; cousin of Sir John Vanbrugh, for whom he worked in London; prob. first arch. to travel in Italy to see buildings of antiquity at first hand; corresponded ther with Alessandro Galelei; his annoted copy of Palladio’s Quattro Libri is in the Elton Hall collection; credited with the introduction of Venetian and Diocletian windows to Ireland; authenticated surviving works, Stillorgan obelisk and grotto; palace at Cashel, 1731; Bellamont Forest, 1729; Castletown House, 1722-32, which he supervised for Galilei; south side of Upper Castle Yard; Parliament House, begun 1728, with colannaded entrance court and sumptuous House of Lords; Surveyor-Gen. in 1730; other buildings attributed on stylistic grounds. Bibl., Maurice craig, ‘Sir Edward Lovett Pearce’, Irish Georgian Society Bulletin, vol. xvii (1974), p.10. Note that there is a Malton aquatint print of the colonnaded entrance, as seen from the Dame St. prospect (looking East), 1793.
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