MAYNOOTH COLLEGE
From Atlas and Cyclopedia of Ireland (1900)
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Description of County Kildare | Maynooth College | Franciscan Friary, Castledermot | Round Tower, Castledermot | Kildare Map
MAYNOOTH COLLEGE.—This celebrated institution is devoted to the education and training of the Irish Catholic priesthood. About one-half of the priests of Ireland, and many in other lands have passed through Maynooth. The course comprises eight years, and the system and high standing of the professors make the institution the peer of any ecclesiastical establishment in Europe. It was founded in 1795 by the Irish Parliament, not so much as an act of justice or generosity, as a means of averting by home education the evils likely to arise to Great Britain from committing the education of the Irish priesthood to foreign teachers on the continent, which the Irish people were compelled to do previous to that date. But the Maynooth priests did not turn out to be loyalists, as was confidently expected. The present edifice was erected in 1846 from designs by Pugin. In 1869, by the Disestablishment Act the yearly grant of £26,360 was commuted to a capital sum of £36,940, which, with additional private bequests, suffices to conduct the institution as before.
Maynooth College, Kildare
Description of County Kildare | Maynooth College | Franciscan Friary, Castledermot | Round Tower, Castledermot | Kildare Map