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Overview of the House
Basement Area
Hall Floor
Piano Nobile
Private Quarters
Attic Floor
A photo of the attic at Number 29

Nursery

For the children of Number Twenty Nine their quarters were tucked away in the attic at the top of the house, free from unnecessary decoration, such as carpets and plaster work. In the Beatty family, at least three of the boys, Edward, Frederick, and Thomas, went to Trinity College, where they most probably were boarders. Their sister, Olivia married at the age of 15.

Those educated in the home may have been taught by a governess such subjects as English, History, Geography, music, needle work, and a continental language, probably French. Attitudes towards the education of children varied and many were taught simply to repeat by rote, but progressive ideas, expounded for example, by Maria Edgeworth were beginning to find favour in the early nineteenth century. Edgeworth wrote that a child's "love of knowledge" and "spirit of activity" should not be "repressed by the undistinguishing correction of a nursery maid, or the unceasing reproof of a French governess".
 


Governess's Room

The live in teacher or governess would come from a respectable background but may have been without property or fortune in her own right, and in a precarious financial and social position. When her charges had grown a governess would find another position. It was therefore important for her not to be employed in a family associated with scandal. When a governess became too old to work and remained unmarried she could have faced destitution.

It is perhaps no surprise that one 'English gentlewoman' placing an advertisement in a Dublin newspaper looking for employment as a governess aspired to work in a "in a worthy family, whose sentiments will lead them to treat her as a friend". In Dublin in the nineteenth century a charitable home for the care of aged governesses was established in Marlborough Street, later moving to Harcourt Terrace.


A photo of the governess's room at Number 29
Governess's Room

A reproduction of an early 19th century lesson
An early 19th century lesson
Georgian House Museum
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