Tour description: Maynooth Historic Campus Walking Tour

Maynooth Historic Campus Walking tour

HNS delegates will have an opportunity to view parts of the Maynooth campus that are not readily accessible to the public.

Maynooth College was founded in 1795 as a seminary for the education of priests and by 1850 had become the largest seminary in the world. The College was founded because it was urgently needed. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it had not been possible to educate Catholic priests in Ireland. Institutions had been established in Catholic Europe, where they had become concentrated in France. The French Revolution confiscated all of these in 1792 and 1793. In Ireland the Penal Code was being dismantled, and the British Government, at war with revolutionary France, was anxious to placate Irish Catholic dissatisfactions, and certainly did not wish to see ‘revolutionary’ priests returning from the continent. In consequence, a petition to Parliament by the Irish Catholic Bishops was successful, and ‘An Act for the better education of persons professing the Popish or Roman Catholic religion’ was passed in June 1795. Three separate guides will show HNS members around this unique historic site.

St Patrick's House and the College Chapel

Our guide will lead HNS members around St Patrick's House, including St Joseph’s Square, Pugin Hall and the cloisters. HNS members will then be shown the College Chapel. Its foundation stone was laid on 20 October 1875, and it was finally opened for worship on 24 June 1891. The stunning chapel is designed in French fourteenth-century Gothic style, with beautiful stained glass and a great Rose window. The choir stalls form the main part of the Chapel. The 454 carved stalls or seats, the largest number in any church in the world, face across the aisle rather than towards the altar to facilitate the recitation of the Divine Office.

https://sppu.ie/about/history

Russell Library

This fascinating library houses the historical collections of St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. The reading room was designed by renowned British architect and designer Augustus Pugin and completed in 1861. The Russell Library contains approximately 34,000 printed works dating from the 16th to the mid-19th century across a range of subjects including: theology, mathematics, science, geography and history. Other important collections include: medieval and Gaelic manuscripts, archival material and incunabula (pre-1501 printing). There are over 12,000 pamphlets in bound volumes, principally from the 18th and 19th centuries, mostly published in Ireland or England. The pamphlets cover a wide range of topical and controversial issues. The tour includes interesting historical nuggets and humorous anecdotes.

https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/library/russell-library

Science Museum

This displays scientific instruments and apparatus belonging to the renowned Professor of Natural Philosophy, Rev. Professor Nicholas Callan. These include induction coils, electromagnets, the ‘repeater’, condensers, electric motors and batteries, amongst these his cast-iron cells. The museum now has the largest collection of scientific instruments on public display in Ireland, most of which were manufactured in Ireland between 1880 and 1920. Early telegraphy apparatus includes items used by Guglielmo Marconi in the first published newspaper story obtained by "wireless" transmission in 1898. The museum also houses a collection of ecclesiastical artefacts from the past three centuries.

https://museum.sppu.ie/

Accessibility

St Patrick's House, the College Chapel, and the Science Museum are all wheelchair accessible.

Russell Library is accessed via four short flights of stairs that are not suitable for wheelchair accessibility or those with mobility issues.