The Irish Architectural Archive has said it found many more Irish court houses than it expected when it set out to compile a gazetteer of the buildings last year.

The list, published last year in Ireland's Court Houses, edited by Paul Burns, Ciaran O'Connor and Colum O'Riordan, contained 763 entries.

Petty sessions

In a post on the body’s website last week, Colum O’Riordan and Eve McAulay wrote that an initial analysis of previous lists had suggested a number between 250 and 300.

“The most common court type in Ireland by the end of the 18th century was the petty sessions, and it was the provision of accommodation for sittings of the petty sessions that laid the foundations for the court house network across the country,” they write.

Above the petty sessions was a hierarchical court structure rising through quarter sessions and county assizes to the supreme courts, each of which required accommodation.

Idenitified

At its height in the mid-19th century, there were over 560 petty sessions areas across Ireland. An individual court house has still not been identified for fewer than 50 of the known petty sessions locations, and the authors hope these might still be identified over time.

Apart from in the six counties of Northern Ireland, in 1923 petty sessions courts became District Courts, and as a result there was a substantial continuity of court house use into the mid-20th century.

Reduced

But many court houses then fell out of use as the number of District Court locations was steadily reduced.

“From a high of over 600 buildings in active regular use as court houses in the 1880s, there are now fewer than 120 across the island,” the architects write.