A typical example of a Dublin’s Victorian Bourgeois home

The Belgium Residence was built in 1881. It is a very good example of Victorian semi-detached houses as originally it was 2 separate houses. At the time houses didn’t have a number but rather a name. One of them was called Leighton (left) and the other one Olney.

Usually very little is known about those involved in the creation of these buildings, from the builders to the landowners, the architects to the speculators.
We don’t know who the architect of this house was, but we know that before it was purchased by the Belgian government it has been mostly the house of John Boyd Dunlop and his son Johnny.
John Boyd Dunlop was a Scottish inventor and veterinary surgeon. Watching his son struggling with an uncomfortable wooden wheels tricycle he invented the rubber tyre. At the time, he was living in Belfast where he had one of the largest veterinary practice in Ireland.
When he retired in 1895, he bought these 2 houses for himself and his son and lived here until his death in 1921. It is said that he died of sadness, following the death of his son.

The 2 houses were bought by the Belgian government in 2 phases, the first house in 1950 and the second one in 1967.

Drop-in tour. No booking required.