Qualla: Maynooth University

Maynooth University: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 瑞丽江的河水, CC BY-SA 4.0. Ireland's youngest university grew from one of its oldest religious houses. For most of the twentieth century the buildings at Maynooth were a Catholic seminary - the largest in the world for a while - filling each year with young men preparing to be ordained as priests. In 1966 the seminary did something its founders in 1795 could not have imagined: it admitted lay students. A trickle became a torrent. The Universities Act of 1997 split the institution in two. The new Maynooth University, with its arts, science and Celtic studies faculties, took the old Georgian south campus and built a modern northern one across the Kilcock Road. Today over sixteen thousand students and a thousand staff from twenty different countries call it home.

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Image: 瑞丽江的河水 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Maynooth University: The Fear of Revolutionary France

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit P199, Public domain. The college was founded in 1795 for a very particular reason. Before then, Irish Catholic priests had been trained on the European mainland, mostly in France. The French Revolution had begun in 1789 and the Dechristianization that followed alarmed the British and Irish authoritie...

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Image: P199 | Public domain

Maynooth University: Two Centuries as a Seminary

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Davechip, CC BY 4.0. The lay college closed in 1817, and for nearly a hundred and fifty years Maynooth functioned solely as a Catholic seminary. At its peak it was the largest seminary in the world, ordaining as many as ninety priests a year for service in Irish parishes and the missions overseas. Th...

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Image: Davechip | CC BY 4.0

Maynooth University: 1966 and After

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Davechip, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1966 the college reopened its doors to lay students. The change was tentative at first, but Irish society was shifting fast - the Second Vatican Council had just ended, free secondary education was about to be announced, the number of vocations to the priesthood would soon beg...

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Image: Davechip | CC BY-SA 3.0

Maynooth University: South Campus, North Campus, Two Worlds

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chickenkicker96, CC BY-SA 4.0. Walk across the Kilcock Road and you walk between centuries. The south campus is built around St Joseph's Square, a formal garden surrounded by Georgian and Victorian buildings. The eastern side of the square holds Callan Hall and Physics Hall, named for Nicholas Callan, the prie...

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Image: Chickenkicker96 | CC BY-SA 4.0