College launches 2014 fundraiser
Staff Reporter
St Patrick’s College Maynooth is calling on friends and supporters to be part of a fundraising drive to complete the renewal of its Pugin-designed buildings.
Launched on St Patrick’s Day, the college’s Raise the Roof drive has been described as “the last piece of the jig-saw” in a 15-year project to preserve the glory of the campus buildings and aims to see €500,000 raised towards renewing the lead canopies overlaying the buildings’ roof tiles as time and wear make their effects felt.
Management
Speaking to The Irish Catholic this week, St Patrick’s President Msgr Hugh Connolly said work undertaken as a result of donations would be “prudent management of very beautiful buildings”.
Msgr Connolly pointed out that such is the architectural value of St Patrick’s buildings, designed by Augustus Welby Pugin, that a symposium on their design and history in 2013 attracted triple the number of scholars anticipated by the college.
“These buildings are national treasures,” he said.
In addition to this, of course, St Patrick’s continues to be a seminary accommodation upwards of 100 seminarians and over 400 lay students engaged in theology and philosophy studies at undergraduate and postgraduate level.
A newly revamped St Patrick’s website – maynoothcollege.ie – will offer details of the fundraising drive