Court of Appeal Rules on Ownership of Harry Clarke’s Stained Glass Windows at Bewley’s Café

The Court of Appeal has delivered two significant judgments concerning the ownership of six stained glass windows created by Harry Clarke for Bewley’s Café on Grafton Street in Dublin. The court affirmed the ownership of the ‘Four Orders’ windows by RGRE Grafton Limited (RGRE), while overturning the High Court’s decision on the ‘Swan Yard’ windows, ruling them also as part of the building’s fabric.

Eversheds Sutherland acted on behalf of RGRE, the plaintiff/appellant, who holds the landlord’s interest in the premises and claimed ownership of all six windows. The defendants/respondents, holding the tenant’s interest and having assigned it to the second named defendant/respondent, argued that the windows were tenant’s fixtures and thus belonged to them.

 

High Court Ruling

The High Court initially ruled that the appellant owned four of the windows on the western wall, referred to as the Four Orders windows, as they formed part of the building’s fabric. The second named respondent was deemed the owner of the remaining two, known as the Swan Yard windows, as they were considered tenant’s fixtures installed in a ‘double fenestration’ system in which the stained-glass windows were fixed parallel to, and operated in tandem with, an external clear glass windows. The High Court concluded that the Four Orders windows were part and parcel of the premises and were an expense to be paid by Ernest Bewley, the landlord, but the Swan Yard works were tenant’s fixtures because they were to serve the purposes of the tenant and not the landlord.

 

Court of Appeal Ruling

The appellant appealed the High Court’s decision regarding the Swan Yard windows, while the respondents cross-appealed the decision concerning the Four Orders windows. The Court of Appeal reviewed evidence from the café’s construction, Harry Clarke’s correspondence, the 1928 lease, newspapers articles from the 1940’s and subsequent alterations to the café. The Court of Appeal noted that Harry Clarke’s correspondence shows that he visited the site while it was under construction and consistently referred to the works as windows, not panels. The board minutes of the company from 9 March 1928 record that the premises were finished before April 1927 and that the work done thereafter consisted of fittings necessary to adapt the premises for use as a café. The lease of 1928 did not identify any tenant’s fixtures, nor did it make any reference to stained glass windows. The real evidence shows that the original frames for the windows are still in situ and have not been disturbed since they were installed.

The Court of Appeal concluded that the High Court was correct in its decision regarding the Four Orders windows, affirming that they were part of the building’s fabric. However, the Court of Appeal found that the High Court erred in its judgment concerning the Swan Yard windows. It held that the Swan Yard windows were also part and parcel of the premises and not tenant’s fixtures, as they were designed and functioned as the exterior windows of the building. The court determined that there was no sufficient basis to infer that a ‘double fenestration’ system postulated by the respondent’s expert architect was employed in 1928.

Further briefings on the details of the judgment will follow.