View All Hallows College Historical Guide

A HISTORICAL
GUIDE TO
ALL HALLOWS COLLEGE
LANDS
AND BUILDINGS
CONTENTS
The Lands of Clonturk
2
Drumcondra House
4
From a Home to a College
10
Dunboyne
10
The Old College Chapel
10
Junior House
14
Senior House
16
The Fire of 1895
18
The New Chapel
18
O’Donnell House
22
All Hallows College Today
23
Benefactors of the College
24
Sources
25
Junior Library.
THE LANDS OF CLONTURK
Originally, the lands of Clonturk belonged to
the Augustinian Canons of the Priory of All
Saints (or ‘All Hallows’), which was founded
by Diarmaid McMurrough around 1166 and
was situated on the south side of the Liffey on a
plain called the ‘Stein’ or ‘Staine’. In 1538, after
the passing of Henry VIII’s Act for the
Suppression of the Monasteries, the Priory of
All Saints (also known as the priory of the Holy
Trinity) with ‘all its lands and advowsons’ was,
by the voluntary act of Prior Hankoke and his
community, surrendered to the Crown. In 1539
the same lands were granted in turn by the
King to ‘the Mayor, Bailiffs, Citizens and
Commons of Dublin’. These lands later formed
part of the lands of Dublin University or Trinity
College.
After the suppression, the land around the
A map of Drumcondra in the 1840s.
site of Drumcondra Castle (now in the grounds
of St. Joseph’s School for the Visually Impaired)
was leased by the Dean of Christchurch to a
James Bathe in 1550. The Bathe family,
originally from County Meath, remained
Catholic and Royalist, and was dispossessed
after the Revolution of 1642. James Bathe’s son,
John Bathe, built the Castle. When he died in
1586, his widow married an English adventurer,
William Warren, who was in connivance with
the Earl of Tyrone. Hugh O’Neill, the Earl of
Tyrone, and Mabel Bagenal, daughter of the
General – ‘the Helen of the Elizabethan Wars’ –
were married in the Castle in 1591.
The Civil Survey of 1654 divides the parish of
Clonturk into three divisions. The first was
‘Drumconrath’ (Drumcondra) – that is, the 200
acres of land which surrounded Drumcondra
Castle. According to the Survey it contained
“one fair stone house, slated, one office-house,
slated, a small church, a garden and an
orchard”. In 1684 the lease of the Clonturk
property passed into the hands of Sir John
Coghill, Master of the Chancery, who resided in
Belvedere House on the other side of the road
(today the central residence of St. Patrick’s
College of Education, Drumcondra). In 1726-27
his son, Sir Marmaduke Coghill, built
Drumcondra House on the site, presumably, of
the “fair stone house, slated”, mentioned in the
Survey.
DRUMCONDRA HOUSE
Sir Marmaduke Coghill, a child prodigy who
entered Trinity College at the age of fourteen,
later became, at various stages, Judge of the
Prerogative Court, Privy Councillor, Chancellor
of the Exchequer, Commissioner of the
Revenue, and Representative in the Irish
Parliament – at first for Armagh and later for
Dublin University.
The splendid Drumcondra House, considered
one of the finest examples of the early Irish
Georgian Style, was built between 1726 and
1727. Architecturally, Drumcondra House has
always been a puzzle. Not only are there two
different fronts – the one simple, austere and
Doric, the other floridly Corinthian – but these
two fronts also show different techniques of
construction. It is now certain that the Southern
façade was designed by Sir Edward Lovett
Pearce. (Pearce was also responsible for the old
Irish House of Parliament – now the Bank of
Ireland, the Bishops Place in Cashel town,
Bellemont Forrest in County Cavan and No. 10
Henrietta Street, Dublin).
Drumcondra House.
T he house designed by Lovett Pearce was
a shallow depth, designed mainly to
accommodate the south-facing rooms on the
middle floor. This house later received a large
addition behind, and there was considerable
restructuring. The new Eastern front was so
designed as to have a florid Corinthian
entablature at the centre, with two ‘wings’ on
either side – one of them in the new added
building, and the other the existing end of the
Lovett
Pearce
house
re-structured
to
correspond with it. Re-structuring also took
place inside.
The crest which surmounts the eastern façade
of ‘Coghill quartering Cramer’, would suggest
that it was done by Hester Coghill’s second
husband, Captain Mayne. The origin of the
‘Temple’ across the lawn, (now the College
Cemetery), is also obscure but such buildings
were not uncommon in the grounds of houses
built around this time.
Sir
Marmaduke Coghill never married and
died of gout in 1738. He left the house to his
spinster sister Mary, who built the Protestant
Parish Church at Drumcondra, and erected
therein a handsome marble monument with
full-length statue in wig and robes, to the
memory of her devoted brother.
Mary Coghill died in 1755 and bequeathed
the house and estate to her niece Hester, the
wife of Lord Moore of Tullamore. Two years
later he was elevated to an earldom, and Lady
Hester became the Countess of Charleville.
On the death of Lord Charleville in 1764, his
wife married a young army officer, Major
Mayne of Buckinghamshire, on condition that
he assumed the Coghill name, and that the
ceremony be performed in the temple on the
grounds.
Both conditions were fulfilled.
Mayne later became Sir John Coghill.
In a few years, however, the Countess was a
widow again, and she left Ireland to live in
Twickenham. She leased the mansion and
grounds to Alexander Kirkpatrick, Governor of
the Bank of Ireland. The Kirkpatrick family
lived here for over twenty years. Then, when
the Countess of Charleville died in 1789, she
bequeathed the property to her cousin, Sir John
Cramer, who in his turn assumed the name of
Coghill.
Early in the nineteenth century, the notorious
Drumcondra House interior.
John Claudius Beresford, who belonged to one
of the most powerful and influential families in
Ireland, came to live here. His father, John
Beresford
(1738-1805),
through
family
connections and political alliances, boasted that
he was ‘King of Ireland’. John Claudius, like his
father, held a lucrative office in the Revenue.
Like him too, he was a vehement opponent of
the relief of Catholics from the Penal laws, and
an advocate of the strong repressive measures
against the men of 1798. He was Captain of a
corps of yeomanry that for its savagery against
the United Irishmen won for itself the title of
‘Beresford’s Bloodhounds’.
He kept a riding school in Tyrone House,
Marlborough Street, which was the scene of
torturing and flogging of patriots to extort from
them secrets of the Rebellion. It has been said
by some that John Claudius Beresford built the
stables at Drumcondra House (on the site of the
present Purcell House) for the use of his
‘Bloodhounds’. An ancient tradition of all
Hallows says that an old chestnut tree,
nicknamed ‘Pompey’ was the gibbet on which
the rebels were hanged.
Although
‘Pompey’ is no longer with us,
another interesting link with the Beresford era
does survive in the form of a doorway in the
boundary wall between Dunboyne and the
Church of Ireland church yard, (now sealed up
but clearly visible). According to an account of
‘The Old Mansion’ in the College annual of
1914-1915:
“The Beresford children, passing through this doorway
and taking their places in the chief pew of the
neighbouring church, used to be as familiar a sight to the
congregation as was the minister in the pulpit”.
The account goes on to record that:
“Some years later another group of children for whom the
public, at least those outside the Church, had more
welcome, used to pass through the same doorway and sat
in the same pew”.
These were the children of the last occupiers
of Drumcondra House before it became a
college. They were Sir Guy and Lady Campbell.
Sir Guy was a General in the British Army, and
his wife Pamela was a daughter of the
celebrated patriot, Lord Edward Fitzgerald.
Drumcondra Church 1790.
Then in February 1842, a young priest called
Fr. John Hand, who had the idea of opening a
college in Ireland to train priests for the foreign
missions, received permission from Rome to
pursue his ambition. On his return to Ireland in
April he began looking for a suitable location
for the college, and found Drumcondra House
vacant.
As the lands had originally been granted to
Sir Marmaduke Coghill.
Fr. John Hand.
John Claudius Beresford.
‘the Mayor, Bailiffs, Citizens and Commons of
Dublin’ in 1539, it was from Dublin Corporation
that Father Hand sought the lease for
Drumcondra House in 1842. Since the Priory of
All Saints had been the original owner of the
property, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Daniel
Murray, suggested that the new establishment
should be called ‘All Hallows’.
FROM A HOME TO A COLLEGE
On 30th September 1842, Father Hand paid a
year’s rent in advance on Drumcondra House
to Dublin Corporation, and signed a lease for 31
years with an option for extension. (The lease
was extended to 1,000 years, 31st May 1852).
Daniel O’Connell was Lord Mayor of Dublin
and it was mainly through his influence that Fr.
Hand acquired the property. The Liberator
personally contributed £100 to the new college.
DUNBOYNE
The
Fr. Hand’s Grave.
college officially opened on 2nd
November 1842, and the stables next to the
Mansion House were converted into a
temporary college chapel, study hall and
dormitories. In the autumn of 1844 Fr. Hand
began work on an extension of the Mansion
House, now known as “Dunboyne”. This
building provided a refectory and dormitories;
the division into single rooms is of relatively
recent origin. Where the students had meals
before the building of Dunboyne and where the
first kitchen was is uncertain. In January 1850,
work commenced on a “new kitchen”, the old
kitchen was rebuilt and used (so says an old
college tradition) as a Bursar’s office by Mr.
Bedford. The mound in the grounds (near the
present Sacred Heart Shrine) was constructed in
the eighteenth century and served as an “ice
house” for the preservation of food.
THE OLD COLLEGE CHAPEL
Fr. Hand died on 20th May 1846, without
having realised his desire to see the college
provided with a suitable chapel. But his
successor Dr. Moriarty (President 1846-1854)
soon got to work. He secured the services of the
most distinguished architect of the day, Mr. J. J.
McCarthy, known as ‘The Irish Pugin’. (Pugin
himself much admired the college chapel when
he visited it). The first stone of the college
chapel was laid on 14th September 1848, and
exactly two years later (15th September 1850) it
was solemnly opened by the Most Reverend Dr.
O’Connor, former Vicar Apostolic of Madras.
This chapel was situated at right angles to the
present chapel. It was part of a comprehensive
plan for the Senior House. This plan envisaged
a quadrangle of which, however, only the north
and west wings were built. The chapel, when
completed, was to occupy the greater part of the
south side. It was intended to furnish it was a
tower and spire. (Actually only the choir and
sacristies were built; the resulting edifice was
eighty feet long and twenty-six feet wide with
sidewalls thirty feet high, and a high-pitched
roof.) The style was Gothic. Over the High
Altar at the eastern end was a great pointed
window of five lights with traceried heads, and
the southern wall contained windows each of
three lights, also with traceried heads. On the
left side, as one faces the altar, there was a
The Stables of Drumcondra House.
monument to Fr. Hand. The chapel could
accommodate eighty students.
The
stables of Drumcondra House were
unusually adjacent to the house itself. For over
forty years they served as hostel for the junior
students, before being replaced by the new
Junior House building, now Purcell House in
1885.
Father Hand acquired the splendid Drumcondra House
during the autumn of 1842. No early engraving of the
house has been found but Father Hand’s first impressions
may be gauged from this drawing, which he used as a
letterhead. Instead of the idealised project to the left,
however, one has to conjure up a stable house, which lay
in unusually close proximity to the house itself.
JUNIOR HOUSE
The stables next to Drumcondra House were
In 1885, the old Beresford stable, which had
situated on the site of the present Purcell
House. The first stable had been converted into
the college’s first temporary chapel. Early in
1843 the second stable was converted into a
study hall for the students and the lofts
overhead into dormitories. There was also an
ambulatory.
While we can no longer
reconstruct its plan, we can imagine the early
students of All Hallows crowded at night on
palliasses in the upper storeys, and in the
evening huddled over battered desks, shivering
in the cold and doing their best to study in the
vivid gleam of tallow dips. Gas was introduced
into the college in the late 1850s.
served the college so long, was pulled down
and the new Junior House (now Purcell House)
was erected in its place. The architect was Mr.
J.J. O’Callaghan.
The then President, Dr.
William Fortune, travelled to the United States
and Canada in 1880 to collect funds for the new
building. A few years later in 1885, Dr. Patrick
Delany, a professor of the college (later
Archbishop of Hobart) made a journey to
Australia for the same purpose. When the
Junior House was built the Swords Road
entrance to the college was closed and a new
gate lodge erected at Grace Park Road to replace
Jack Farrell’s old thatched cottage.
Dr. William Fortune.
Dr. Patrick Delany.
Junior House.
SENIOR HOUSE
The All
Hallows Annal for 1859 gives a
description of the Senior House that had
recently been erected. It consisted of the north,
west and part of the south wings of a
quadrangle two hundred and twenty feet
square. The projected east wing was never
built. The work was begun in 1853, during Dr.
Moriarty’s presidency, and completed by Dr.
Woodlock (President, 1854-1861).
Mr. J.J.
McCarthy was the architect. A new avenue was
constructed directly from the hall of the new
house to the Swords Road and a double line of
lime trees was planed alongside it.
The
west wing, facing the Swords Road,
contained the entrance hall with a porter’s
lodge and a grand staircase in the centre. The
hall on the right was then the Aula Maxima.
The elevated dais was intended for the
reception of distinguished guests. The hall on
the left was a general reception room. It also
served as a museum of Natural History and of
the costumes and antiquities of foreign lands, to
which former pupils, dispersed over the globe,
contributed.
Various study halls and
class-halls, as well as the rooms of the college
debating society occupied the ground floor of
the north wing. Rooms for the president and
some of the professors were provided in the
west wing.
The east wing was to have
contained the library as well as students’ rooms
and study halls.
Senior House.
An Engraving of the Senior House and the College Chapel made in 1859 by the architect J.J. McCarthy.
THE FIRE OF 1895
On
the morning of 13th May 1895, fire
completely destroyed the college chapel. The
marble high altar was shattered, the sacristies
with their vestments were burnt out and the
whole building on which £2,000 had been spent
the previous year was reduced to ruins. The
burning of the chapel, although a great loss was
in reality providential. Three years previously
the former President, Dr. Woodlock of Ardagh,
had written to Fr. Moore pointing out to him the
inadequacy of the college chapel; it was built
for 80 students, and in 1895 there were over 170,
and he recommended the construction of a new
college chapel.
THE NEW CHAPEL
The men who erected the new chapel had
The College Chapel.
every reason to be proud of this noble edifice.
No detailed description of it is necessary here.
It may be noted, however, that the style is early
Gothic. Its overall length is 144 feet and is built
throughout with granite ashlar facings and
limestone dressings. The nave is 77 feet long
and 32 feet wide. The transepts measure 20 feet
by 22 feet. The broad sanctuary, unencumbered
by steps and slightly elevated above the body of
the church, gives ample space for solemn
ceremonies such as ordinations. The total
width across the transepts is 72 feet.
The carved stalls are of solid oak, the lofty
grained ceiling of pitch pine, the flooring in oak
blocks with walnut borders. The five central
stained glass windows in the apse represent
Christ giving his Apostles their commission to
“go teach all nations” (Euntes docete Omnes
Gentes). The other four windows in the apse
represent, respectively, four great Apostles of
the Irish nation: St. Patrick, St. Columba, St.
Virgilius and St. Brendan.
The High Altar is executed in marble and
Caen stone. It has five crocketed canopies each
supported on columns, the central canopy
rising to a height of 20 feet and crowned with a
foliated cross. The altar, designed to fit well
into the apse, is 20 feet wide. Every detail is
designed to emphasise the high office of a priest
and missionary – the elaborately carved
sacrifices of Abel, Abraham and Melchisedech
in front, the groups of adoring missionary saints
in the reredos, the angels bearing scrolls and
emblems at the sides, the four beautiful statues
of Our Lady, St. John, St. Peter and St. Paul. The
architect of the chapel was Mr. George Ashley.
Having
completed the chapel, Fr. Moore
proceeded to remodel and rebuild the kitchen
department and staff residence and to build an
Aula Maxima; the latter was opened on
December 8th, 1907.
College Chapel Interior.
J.J. McCarthy’s projection for the new college of All Hallows in 1853 shows the rural character of Drumcondra
at that time. The stable house is on the extreme left. Beside it is the wing which Fr. Hand added in 1844. Only the choir of the chapel
was actually built. The East Wing (lower right) was never built. The houses in the background are on the ‘Santry Road’.
O’DONNELL HOUSE
On 20th May 1958, the 112th anniversary of
the death of Fr. Hand, O’Donnell House was
solemnly blessed and opened by His Grace the
Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev. Dr.
McQuaid, in the presence of a distinguished
company of prelates, ecclesiastical and civil
dignitaries and alumni from all over the world.
In his address His Grace said: “I would wish
O’Donnell House.
you to-day no greater blessing than that
through the powerful assistance of our Blessed
Lady, God will enable you and future
generations of All Hallows to prove yourselves
the worthy sons of an institution so venerable
and privileged”. The architect of the new
building was Mr. Simon Leonard (of Messrs
W.H. Byrne and Son).
BENEFACTORS OF THE COLLEGE
The All Hallows Annals of 1860 records the
prayers said in the college for its benefactors:
“daily for nearly twenty years has the holy
sacrifice of the Mass been offered by one of the
Directors, each in his turn, for all the
benefactors of the college, living and dead, and
for their intentions. This, we trust, will be
continued as long as All Hallows exists. The
Directors and students likewise celebrate each
year in the college chapel a solemn office and
High Mass for the deceased members and
benefactors of the institution and their kinsfolk,
for whom also as well as for all their
benefactors still living, public prayers are daily
offered”. This desire of our predecessors has
been fulfilled daily for the past century. Mass
has been offered for all benefactors, living and
dead. An annual solemn office and Mass is also
celebrated during November for deceased
benefactors. Public prayers in the chapel are
said daily for all benefactors.
All
ALL HALLOWS COLLEGE TODAY
The aerial photo of All Hallows shows the Belfast Road in the background and Grace Park Road (formerly ‘Goose Green
Lane’) in the foreground. At the bottom is Drumcondra Castle, now St. Joseph’s School for the Visually Impaired. The
‘Beresford Stables’ have been replaced by the new Junior House (Purcell House), behind which is the Drumcondra Church and
graveyard. O’Donnell House, in the middle foreground, was built in 1957-58. The former chapel was gutted by fire and
replaced by the present one at the end of the last century.
Hallows owes an undying debt of
gratitude to its benefactors. All that the college
possesses is due to their alms and prayers. The
reports sent annually to benefactors in the
earliest days of the college contain a long list of
subscribers. These subscriptions came from all
parts of Ireland and around the world. Bishops,
priests and people subscribed. Members of the
staff travelled the country preaching annual
parochial appeals for All Hallows.
The
Directors of the college at this time accepted no
salary. They were satisfied with food and
board. They devoted even the stipends for
Masses and other ecclesiastical duties to the
work of the college. Former pupils, too, rallied
to the help of their Alma Mater.
Generous
subscriptions also came from
friends in England and Scotland, from Rome
and other parts of the continent, as well as from
the Central Council of the Association for the
Propagation of the Faith. Yet it must be said that
it is above all to the people of Ireland that we
owe gratitude. A phrase that often occurs in the
early Reports is: “All Hallows is Ireland’s
Promise to God”. Ireland promised and Ireland
gave, even in days of poverty, pestilence and
famine (M. O’Callaghan C.M.)
SOURCES
Campbell C.M., Rev John
‘Two memorable Dublin Houses’
published in Dublin Historial Record Vol II No. 4
(June/August 1940)
Condon C.M., Rev K
The Missionary College of all Hallows 1842-1891
published by All Hallows College, (1986)
O’Callaghan C.M., Rev M
‘The College Buildings’
published in the All Hallows Annual (1959-61)
Text compiled by
Colm McQuinn, Arcline Ltd.
Edited by
Caroline Guihan and Colm McQuinn
June 2000
Published by
All Hallows College,
Grace Park Road,
Drumcondra, Dublin 9, Ireland
Tel (01) 8373745 Fax (01) 8377642
Email: [email protected]
www.allhallows.ie