University College Dublin and its Building Plans

University College Dublin and its Building Plans

LA56/1181 University College Dublin and its Building Plans

Published for University College Dublin BY Browne & Nolan LTD. Dublin 1959

CONTENTS

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THE COLLEGE; ITS HISTORY AND SIGNIFICANCE:

I. The Catholic University of Ireland, 1854-83 . . . . 3 II. Royal University and Jesuit University College, 1883-1909 6 III. University College, Dublin, 1909-59 . . . . 7

TOWARDS BUILDING THE COLLEGE:

I. Struggle with Fortune, 1912-49 . . . . . 10 II. A Fresh Start, 1949-59. . . . . . 11 III. The College Plans . . . . . . 12 IV. The Commission's Report . . . . . . 15 V. Transition and Improvisation, 1949-59 . . . . 18

RETROSPECT, 1959-1909 . . . . . . 22

THE COLLEGE; ITS HISTORY AND SIGNIFICANCE

I. THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, 1854-83

In the revival of the Irish nation which went on slowly through the nineteenth century, a very significant episode was the foundation of the Catholic University of Ireland, from which University College, Dublin, derives its origin. ¹ Just before the Bishops began to plan the Catholic University, Sir R. Peel had come forward with something quite different. His foundation, the Queen's University, with Colleges in Belfast, Cork, and Galway, was undenominational, of a utilitarian character, and closely controlled by the State. Of the sixty professors nominated, seven only were Catholics. A further weakness of the Queen's University, regarded as an arrangement to meet the majority demand for higher education, was the fact that it had no College in Dublin. In 1850 the Bishops condemned the Queen's Colleges and decided to proceed with their own University, for which they could expect from the state neither endowment nor a charter.

In Matthew Arnold's essay Irish Catholicism and British Liberalism ² there is a remarkable synopsis of the Irish university situation in the period following 1850. It recalls vividly the background against which the Catholic University began its work, the difficulties it had to contend with, and the neccessity of that almost heroic undertaking:

They [the Irish] are told they have the Queen's Colleges, invented expressly for Ireland. But they do not want colleges invented expressly for Ireland; they want colleges such as those which the English and Scotch have in Scotland and England... They are told that Mr. Gladstone's

1 Continuity from the Catholic University to the Jesuit University College and thence to the present College was made largely by the coming over of the students and most of the staff from the older to the newer institution in each case.

2 Written soon after 1870. Arnold wrote a good deal on Irish Affairs. He was also, though not a Celtic scholar, a notable propagandist for Celtic studies; much of his enthusiasm was caught from O'Curry's Lectures on the MSS Materials. Arnold's brother was Thomas Arnold, professor of English in the C.U.I. and in the Jesuit College, the teacher of several of the first professors of the present College.

Arnold's account of what he means by a Catholic and by a Protestant university is interesting in the light of later debates on the university question: "I call Strasburg a Protestant and Bonn a Catholic university in this sense: that religion and the matters mixed up with religion are taught in the one by Protestants and in the other by Catholics. This is the guarantee which ordinary parents desire, and this at Bonn and at Strasburg they get."

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government offered them a university without theology, philosophy, or history, and that they refused it. But the world in general does not desire universities with theology, philosophy, and history left out; no more did Ireland. They are told that Trinity College, Dublin, is now an unsectarian university no more Protestant than Catholic, and that they may use Trinity College. But the teaching in Trinity College is, and long will be (and very naturally), for the most part in the hands of Protestants; the whole character, tradition, and atmosphere of the place are Protestant. The Irish Catholics want to have on their side, too, a place where the university teaching is mainly in the hands of Catholics, and of which the character and atmosphere shall be Catholic. But then they are asked whether they propose to do away with all the manifold and deep-rooted results of Protestant ascendancy in Ireland, and they are warned that this would be a hard, nay, impossible matter. But they are not proposing anything so enormous and chimerical as to do away with all the results of Protestant ascendancy; they propose merely to put an end to one particular and very cruel result of it: - the result that they, the immense majority of the Irish people, have no university, while the Protestants in Ireland, the small minority, have one.

Arnold concludes that the Irish demand has not been met for the reason that British non-conformist sentiment would not allow any government to meet it. To the very end of the United Kingdom, this obstacle was never fully overcome.

Meanwhile, under the leardership of their Bishops, the Irish people attempted to provide themselves with what the State denied them. When the Bishops assembled at Thurles in 1850, they had before them more than one hopeful example. The Catholic University of Louvain, founded in 1835, was already an evident success; and the Catholic universities of America, to a great extent created by the emigrant Irish, had made a fair beginning. Ireland, indeed, was not prosperous Belguim or expanding America. And yet, in spite of the recent Famine and the draining of the country by emigration, and although there was no wealth in Catholic hands to endow a private university, and the Catholic middle class, from which students might be drawn, was barely struggling into existence, the Bishops and people nevertheless bravely trusted in the future.

It was both a bold and a brilliant decision on the part of the Bishops when they invited one of Oxford's greatest sons, lately converted to Catholicism, to be Rector of the new university. Not less remarkable

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were the courage and generosity with which John Henry Newman accepted his strange assignment. The Catholic University of Ireland, which opened its doors in 1854, has since then often been called Newman's University; and University College lately gave his name to the houses in St. Stephen's Green which were the main centre of the University's work.

The enterprise of the Catholic University would perhaps have been justified if it had borne no other fruit than those inaugural lectures which Newman wrote to expound his plan for the new institution; later enlarged into The Idea of a University, these lectures have influenced the philosophy of higher education throughout the world. Valuable too are his weekly essays in the University's Gazette, now known as the University Sketches.

The Catholic University is sometimes spoken of as though it had been a platform for Newman and nothing more. Certainly that University was a thing of strange contrasts. Its income was made up of the shillings and pence of the poor, collected annually at the church doors - a thing to which there cannot be many parallels in the history of universities. Thus there was on one side the eloquence of Oxford's finest culture, setting forth the perfect idea of a university; on the other, the devotion and self-sacrifice of a people struggling out of misery, and only knowing vaguely what a university was. But Newman himself saw the contrast; he was not daunted by it but set himself to the task of resolving it. He did not attempt an impossible Oxford on Irish soil, but a university to meet the Irish need. "The old names of the Irish race," he said, "are mounting up into status and power. . . We consider the Catholic University to be the event of the day in this gradual majestic resurrection of the nation and its religion." When students came only in small numbers, he was not dismayed - "the supply must come before the demand, though not before the need." Two things may be mentioned to show how Newman fitted the University to Irish reality. One is his creation of a Chair of Irish Antiquities, the first in any University, and his appointment thereto of the famous Eugene O'Curry. The other is his provision for scientific and professional studies - a remarkable step on the part of the great defender of liberal education. The University's lack of a charter and of

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the power to give degrees prevented most of the professional faculties from making any progress. But there was a quick and permanent success in Medicine, which indeed became the main strength of the University.

After Newman's departure the Catholic University continued, always looking to the day when the government might afford it, by means of a charter, the chance of real expansion. In 1861-2 the charter seemed not far off, and plans were made for a great university building on a site of Drumcondra.¹ In July 1862 the foundation-stone was solemnly laid, in the presence of thousands of people from all over Ireland and many from abroad; no less than ten American bishops were there. But the charter was withheld, and on that foundation-stone no second stone was ever laid. For twenty years more the University struggled on, its staff growing old, and annual collection declining, and students, except in the Medical School, becoming fewer.

II. ROYAL UNIVERSITY AND JESUIT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, 1883-1909

In 1879 the British Government, still curbed by non-conformist opinion, found a means of conceding something to the teachers and students of the Catholic University, without going so far as to recognise the University. The Royal University was founded, an undenominational body which did not teach but held examinations for degrees, and which maintained fellowships. To make use of these great practical benefits, the Arts section of the Catholic University was in 1883 turned into a College and given the now-familiar name of University College, Dublin; and its administration, together with the University houses and those who remained of Newman's staff, was put in the charge of the Jesuit Fathers. The situation for the next twenty-five years was that University College was a private institution, of which however the staff could hold Royal University fellowships and the students gain Royal University degrees. The Jesuit University College was not large (it never went beyond 200 students), but it was compact and well managed; its students in competition witih those of the fully established

¹ It is interesting to note that the 1861 site was just exactly as far from St. Stephen's Green as Belfield is. As transport then was, Drumcondra was much more remote, even from the city centre, than Belfield is under modern conditions.

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Queen's Colleges of Belfast, Cork and Galway, carried off the great majority of the Royal University prizes. This part of our College history is known to the world at large by the name of one of the professors, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and of one of the students, James Joyce. Meanwhile the Medical School, keeping up the name of the Catholic University, continued on its own, and flourished; its numbers were greater than those of University College. Perhaps the most famous name of the Medical School is that of Ambrose Birmingham, Professor of Anatomy from 1886 to 1904. The solid success of these two institutions, limited though each was in its scope, greatly reinforced the plea of the Bishops and of the Irish Party that there should be a new institution in Dublin, properly recognised and endowed, capable of fulfilling the larger plan which the Catholic University, under impossible conditions, had at least gallantly attempted.

III. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN, 1909-59

At the opening of the new century ceaseless Irish pressure, in and out of Parliament, compelled another attempt to settle the university question. The Bishops still wished for a state-endowed Catholic University in Dublin; but it was certain that a large section of British opinion, which had long resisted this, would not now permit it. The Bishops' second choice had a better chance of realisation - a new College, Catholic in general atmosphere as Trinity was Protestant, in an enlarged and reformed University of Dublin. Such a scheme was recommended in 1907 by the majority of the Fry Commission (Baron Palles, D.J. Coffey, Dougals Hyde, Raleigh of Oxford, Jackson of Cambridge). But when Mr. Bryce prepared legislation to give effect to this majority report, Trinity College, though some of its members held more liberal views, reacted very strongly and appealed to British opinion in a "Hands off Trinity" campaign. Mr. Bryce gave place to Mr. Birrell, who adopted a line of less resistance, and created a federal National University with its headquarters in Dublin and constituent teaching Colleges in Dublin, Cork and Galway (these later were the old Queen's Colleges). The identity of place, and the fact that the Dublin College is numerically two-thirds of the University, have been ever since a source of confusion;