page_title: Richard MacDonnell (scholar)
section_title: Sorrento Terrace, Dalkey
hierarchical_section_title: Richard MacDonnell (scholar) / Sorrento Terrace, Dalkey
caption_attribution_description: English: Vico Road from Killiney Hill Looking towards Sorrento Terrace and Dalkey Island.
context_page_description: Richard MacDonnell LL.D., D.D., S.F.T.C.D. was an Irish cleric and academic, who became was the Reformist 29th Provost of Trinity College Dublin. He was also the projector of Sorrento Terrace, Dalkey, today known as the most expensive row of houses in Ireland.
context_section_description: MacDonnell had inherited Knocklyon House near Dalkey, but after his mother died there the previous year, in 1837 he leased it out and bought a plot of land by the sea front at Dalkey, where he built a new country retreat, Sorrento Cottage, now owned by The Edge of the Irish rock band U2. Named after Sorrento on the Bay of Naples, the allure of Sorrento Terrace is its situation and the view across Killiney Bay to the Wicklow Mountains, the Great Sugar Loaf taking the place of Mount Vesuvius.
  In the early 1840s, MacDonnell devised a plan for the construction of 22 houses right into the corner near the boundaries of the cottage, a huge undertaking at the time that was stalled almost immediately due to the Irish Potato Famine - the family having decided to help those around them rather than themselves. In 1845, the family had built the first and largest of the terrace residences, 'Sorrento House', and then MacDonnell leased the rest of the land to his son, Hercules Henry Graves MacDonnell, who from the 1850s built the remaining houses at a price of £1,000 each. The family stipulated that each house had to adhere strictly to the design of architects Frederick Darley and Nathaniel Montgomery. The houses today are known as 'millionaire's row', famous for being the most expensive row of houses in Ireland.
caption: Sorrento Terrace from Killiney Hill
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