1851 – St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Co. Kildare

To appease the Irish bishops after the foundation of the three “godless” colleges in Dublin, Cork and Galway, a building grant of £30,000 was made available for Maynooth. It was the height of the Gothic Revival, and its leading exponent, Augustus Welby Pugin, was chosen as architect. He produced three sides of St. Mary’s Square in plain thirteenth-century Gothic. While it dominates the humbler earlier buildings, it is much plainer than Pugin’s dream. His greatest grievance was that he did not get to build his College Chapel. This project was to be given to Irish architect J.J McCarthy. Pugin’s crowning interior at St. Patrick’s College is the Russell Library, a beautiful lofty, Gothic room with timbered roof and ornately decorated walls with stencilled borders. The exterior of Pugin’s buildings as finished at Maynooth are very severe especially in their minor elevations.

The building has suffered, notably the ‘Big Fire’ which began on the morning of 1st November 1878 outside the St. Mary’s building. Flames caught the main building and began to engulf the roof. The Dublin fire engine was summoned and eventually arrived by special train. In the meantime, volunteers removed all the manuscripts, books and documents from the library, including all Pugin’s original plans and drawings for the College. Much of the Pugin building was badly damaged as the fire had spread to the central section. The highly ornate timber roof of the Russell Library survived.

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