01 September 2018

Former Kilkenny College
building is an elegant
presence on River Nore

Kilkenny County Hall, the former premises of Kilkenny College, seen from the banks of the River Nor, below Kilkenny College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

As I made my way along John Street in Kilkenny a few times this week, I passed Kilkenny County Hall, now the principal offices of Kilkenny County Council, but for over 300 years the site of Kilkenny College, one of the oldest secondary schools in Ireland.

What was once the main school building at Kilkenny College is a seven-bay, three-storey classical-style building, built in 1782 on the site of the earlier college, built in 1667.

Despite the dates 1667 and 1782 given for this building, the origins of Kilkenny College date back to the College of Vicars Choral established at Saint Canice’s Cathedral in 1234. In 1538, Piers Butler (1487-1539), 8th Earl of Ormonde, and his wife, Lady Margaret FitzGerald, founded a school to the west of the cathedral, where the library now stands. Both Piers and Elizabeth are buried in a fine tomb in the cathedral.

The Library, to the West of Saint Canice’s Cathedral, stands on an earlier site of Kilkenny College, provided by Piers Butler, Earl of Ormonde (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Kilkenny College was closed for a period in the 1650s during the Cromwellian era.

When James Butler (1610-1688), 1st Duke of Ormonde, re-established Kilkenny College in John Street, around 1666, he was following the Butler tradition of promoting education in the city. At one time in the late 17th century, the college received a royal charter from James II and had aspirations to become a university.

Kilkenny College became a famous school, and in the 1780s a new college was built on the same site, overlooking the River Nore.

Yet, numbers had fallen to one pupil at one time in the 19th century, and an amalgamation with the nearby Pococke school roved to be a life-saver. More recently, Kilkenny College was amalgamated with the Collegiate School, Celbridge, in 1973, and it became co-educational.

The best-known past pupils must be Jonathan Swift (1668-1745), author of Gulliver’s Travels, satirist and Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, and George Berkeley (1685-1753), philosopher, Bishop of Cloyne, and benefactor of Yale and Harvard, who gave his name to Berkeley in California.

Other past pupils include: Peter Lombard (1555-1625), Waterford-born theologian and Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh; his cousin Luke Wadding (1588-1657), Waterford-born Franciscan theologian; William Congreve (1670-1729) and George Farqhuar (1677-1707), both Restoration playwrights; Thomas Prior (1681-1751), founder of the Royal Dublin Society; Kilkenny-born novelist John Banim (1798-1842); William Magee (1821-1891), Archbishop of York; Wellesley Bailey (1846-1937), founder of the Leprosy Mission; Admiral of the Fleet David Beatty (1871-1936), 1st Earl Beatty, First Sea Lord and Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet during World War I; and Victor Griffin (1924-2017), Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin (1969-1991).

Recent past pupils include Daryl Jacob, winning jockey in the 2012 Aintree Grand National, and Irish international hockey players Lisa Jacob and Daphne Sixsmith, along with many leader figures in business, agriculture, sport and the professions.

Past headmasters have included Edward Jones, later Bishop of St Asaph. and John Mason Harden.

When Sam McClure was headmaster, Kilkenny College moved in 1985 to a new campus that an attractive complex of classrooms, dormitories, catering and dining facilities on a landscaped 50-acre site. The newest extension of classrooms is called the Jonathan Swift block in honour of Dean Swift.

Kilkenny College is the Church of Ireland school of the Diocese of Cashel, Ossory and Ferns. Today it is the largest co-educational boarding school in Ireland, and also has a large number of day pupils from Kilkenny City and the surrounding area.

The coat-of-arms of the Ormonde Butlers over the entrance to Kilkenny Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The 18th century college building was designed in 1782 by Charles Vierpyl on the site of its earlier counterpart, built in 1667 through the patronage of James Butler, Duke of Ormonde.

The building has classical proportions, with each range of windows diminishing in scale on each floor. The building is slightly obscured and often missed by passers-by because of it is set well back from the line of John Street, and I find it is often best seen from the opposite bank of the River Nore beneath the walls of Kilkenny Castle.

This building has an eight-bay, three-storey side elevation, and the old school building was extensively renovated almost a quarter of a century ago, in 1994, when it was converted into the county hall. The interior was remodelled at the same time, but many of the original features have been retained, including the enriched doorcase, regarded as one of the best in Ireland, with its delicate fanlight of considerable design significance.

The coat-of-arms used by Kilkenny College is derived from the coat-of-arms of the Ormonde Butlers

The school’s coat-of-arms, derived from the coat-of-arms of the Ormonde Butlers, has evolved with some changes over the centuries. The modern version is supported by the letters K and C at the sides, and the date 1538, the year the college was founded, is at the bottom. The motto, Comme je trouve (‘As I find’), also come from the Ormonde Butler coat-of-arms.

The school history, Where Swift and Berkeley Learnt, by Lesley Whiteside and Andrew Whiteside, was published in April 2009.

The former buildings of Kilkenny College, now Kilkenny County Hall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

How two philanthropists gave
Kilkenny its first public library

The Carnegie Library on John's Quay, Kilkenny, the gift of Andrew Carnegie and the Countess of Desart (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

When I first took an interest in researching the genealogy and history of the Comerford family almost 50 years ago in the late 1960s, one of the first libraries I used was the Kilkenny City Library on John’s Quay.

In a day when libraries were often dour and lacking in adequate library, the staff there were cheerful and helpful, and they generously allowed an enthusiastic teenager on day trips open-shelf access to important sources such as William Carrigan’s four-volume History of the Diocese of Ossory.

It was a time long before the internet offered so many facilities to genealogical researches, and I am reminded of their cheerful attitude each time I see the library in its attractive setting on the banks of John’s Quay, reflected in the waters of the River Nore.

The library, which opened in 1910, was built through sponsorship from Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919). It was designed prepared by the Tyars and Jago practice in association with E Stewart-Lowrey and Son on a site donated by Ellen Odette Cuffe (1857-1933), Countess of Desart, widow of William Ulick O’Connor Cuffe, 4th Earl of Desart.

Lady Desart was born Ellen Odette Bischoffsheim in London, and became a philanthropist and politician, as well as President of the Gaelic League. She could be described as the most important Jewish woman in Irish history.

She was the daughter of Henri Louis Bischoffsheim, a wealthy Jewish banker of German origin. He was responsible for founding three of the largest banks in the world: the Deutsche Bank, Paribas Bank, and Societe Generale. She married William Cuffe (1845-1898), 4th Earl of Desart, in Christ Church in Down Street, Mayfair, on 29 April 1881. Her younger sister, Amélie Bischoffsheim, married Sir Maurice FitzGerald, 20th Knight of Kerry. For much of their life, the couple lived at Desart Court, between Kilkenny and Callan.

The library on John’s Quay is one of the many philanthropic projects in Kilkenny she sponsored with or in memory of her brother-in-law, Captain Otway Frederick Seymour Cuffe (1853-1912), a former Mayor of Kilkenny. Other projects included Aut Even Hospital (1915) and the Desart Hall. She also established local woodworking and woollen industries.

This Carnegie Library. is a distinctive landmark in the streetscape of Kilkenny. It is a detached, three-bay, single-storey classical-style building, with an elegant bowed Doric portico at the centre, single-bay, single-storey, gabled flanking end bays, and four-bay, single-storey side elevations. The classical theme of the composition is enhanced by finely-detailed dressings to the window openings, and an open work steel turret on an octagonal plan with a copper-clad square-profiled base and a lead-lined ogee dome.

In a cost-effective measure that appealed to Carnegie’s frugal agent, James Bertram (1872-1934), the library was built almost entirely in fine concrete block imitating local Kilkenny limestone. This was an early use of concrete block in the Kilkenny area.

Most of the original fabric has survived in intact, although the unique fittings made by the family-owned Kilkenny Woodworkers Company were removed some time in the 1990s.

Before the library was built, the Kilkenny Circulating Library had a reading room for members in the Tholsel which is now known as City Hall. The annual subscription fee was 11s 4d.

In 1903 and 1904, Kilkenny Corporation agreed to adopt the Public Libraries (Ireland) Act 1855, which allowed the establishment of public libraries in towns with populations of more than 5,000. The Library was to be supported from the rates, but and the maximum rate that could be levied was one penny in the pound.

Kilkenny Corporation approached Andrew Carnegie for a grant to aid the establishment of a free library. The Scottish-born US steel industrialist and philanthropist provided grants for building public libraries in the US, the UK, Ireland and throughout the English-speaking world.

He built and equipped libraries on condition that local authorities provided the site and maintained the service. He promised £2,750 for Kilkenny but then cut this to £2,100 because the rate struck by the Corporation was too low – the rate was to yield £140 but yielded only £105.

The site at John’s Quay was bought for £600 by Lady Desart, who also paid for the furniture. The foundation stone was laid in 1908. The library was handed over to Kilkenny Corporation in 1910 and was opened on 3 November by Lady Desart. Later that day, she was conferred with the Freedom of the City.

Membership of the Library was free to the residents of the borough, but there was a charge for non-residents of 2s 6d or a half crown.

The Reading Society books were transferred to the new library in 1911.

The library was all contained in a square shaped single floor. Originally it had six rooms: a gymnasium used for the library, a reference room, librarian’s room, lending department, reading room and the ladies’ room with an attached toilet.

Until 1972, the Carnegie Library was the only purpose-built facility offering a range of library services in Co Kilkenny. The main changes to the library over the years reflected changes in library practice, as it moved from closed access collections to open access and the rooms were reduced in number.

A country library service did not begin until 1923. The Kilkenny County Library Committee first met that year in the library on John’s Quay. Lennox Robinson attended that first meeting, when Lady Countess of Desart was co-opted to the committee.

Constant debates arose about the censorship of books. On 19 December 1923, for example, it was agreed to remove the works of George Bernard Shaw from circulation.

By 1924, 2,415 volumes had been circulated to various small repositories around the county, known as ‘centres’ and later as ‘adult centres,’ and run by local volunteers. By 1925, 52 centres had been set up around Co Kilkenny, 5,412 volumes were in stock, there were 5.410 registered readers, 2,243 books were in the centres, and 15,820 books had been issued. That year, Kilkenny County Council took responsibility for the County Library Service.

The Kilkenny People reported late last year [25 October 2017] that plans to develop a new city library at 75 and 76 John Street — the former Meubles site — have been shelved in favour of plans to develop the Carnegie library and transform John’s Quay into a cultural quarter.

The chief executive of Kilkenny County Council, Colette Byrne, said the development would be ‘far more than just a library,’ and would offer a multi-functional space of at least 1,5000 sq metres that involves extending the Carnegie Library to the rear.

The proposed designs include the public realm around the library, including the Evans Home building behind the library, towards John Street. The estimated cost of the project is about €4.5 to €5 million, and €2.5 million of that will have to be found locally. The council has plans to relocate the Butler Gallery from Kilkenny Castle to a fully-renovated Evans Home.

As for Lady Desart, she was appointed to the Irish Free State Senate as an independent Senator in December 1922, becoming one of the four women in the new Senate and the first Jew to serve as a Senator in Ireland.

She remained a senator until she died at Waterloo Road in Dublin on 23 June 1933. In her will, she left £1.5 million to the charities she was associated with. She is commemorated in the Lady Desart pedestrian bridge, which was opened beside the library in 2014.