SECOND BLOCK OPENED

 

The second block of graves, in the area on the left hand side nearest the entrance, was opened up about 1880; Patrick Murray, a Clogher priest who had professed English and Theology and was Prefect of the Dunboyne Establishment, was the first to be buried there on his death at the age of 71.

 

The first burial of the twentieth century was of Monsignor Denis Gargan, who was also the first college president to be made a domestic prelate. He died in 1903 after a long career of almost sixty years on the college staff as professor of humanities and later ecclesiastical history. 

At about the same time, work began on the mausoleum to accept the remains of An t-Athair Eoghan Ó Gramhnaigh, the Meath priest and Maynooth professor who had helped pioneer the revival of Irish before his enforced exile because of ill-health in 1894 and his death in the US in 1899 (see panel).

 

One interesting grave in this section is that of John Myers CM, the first of over thirty Vincentians to serve as spiritual directors to the seminary students. The Irish branch of the Vincentians were in effect founded from Maynooth, when several students there came together in 1832 to propose the idea and were joined by their dean in establishing the first house of the order. Fr. Myers was appointed (with Fr. Patrick Boyle CM) as spiritual director in 1887 and died in 1896. He is the only one of his order or calling to be buried there (Edward Ferris, a Vincentian of the original French Lazarist foundation who served as an early dean and professor at Maynooth, has already been noted; the only other Vincentian recorded as serving at Maynooth in a capacity other than that of spiritual director is Philip Walshe, who was a temporary lecturer in Catechetics in the 1960s and later superior of a small Vincentian parish community in London).

 

Two other presidents from the early years of the century are also interred in this section: John Hogan of Clare (d. 1918) and James McCaffrey of Tyrone (d. 1935) served their terms between those of Daniel Mannix, the controversial prelate who was appointed Archbishop of Melbourne in 1912, and John D’Alton, who became the first college president to be appointed – after some years as Bishop of Meath – to the primatial see of Armagh (in total six former members of the Maynooth professorial staff have held that position, five of them as cardinals; apart from John D’Alton, the only other college president to be so honoured was Tomás Ó Fiaich).

 

OTHER OCCUPANTS OF THE SECOND SECTION

 

The rest of the thirty-odd souls interred in this section of the cemetery are largely unremarkable, though they represent the peak of the college’s influence in the newly-independent Ireland. German-born Heinrich Bewerunge (d. 1923) is worthy of note for his contribution to the development of church music during his thirty years on the college staff (see panel).

 

The most recent interments in this section are immediately presented in the front row: Edward Kissane, the Kerry-born prelate and internationally-recognised scripture scholar who died in 1959 having served as president for almost twenty years; John McMackin, familiar to many generations as Professor of English, who died in 1988, having retired in the college in 1976; and Thomas Marsh, a native of Ardfinnan, Co. Tipperary (diocese of Waterford) who died in 1994 having served as Professor of Dogmatic Theology from 1978.

 

THE ‘MODERN ERA’

 

The nine presidents who served after Edward Kissane were in charge of the historic institution during the most dramatic and indeed traumatic transition in its history, resulting in the huge expansion of the university and its emergence with a separate identity (though the physical campuses are still intertwined to an extraordinary degree). Two (Newman, O’Fiaich) became bishops; two (Mitchell, Farrell) were appointed to pastoral positions in their native dioceses; two (Corish, Ledwith) resigned, and one (O’Donnell) died in office. 

 

Patrick Corish became the most striking example of someone who reflected the changing scene: having already been Professor of Ecclesiastical History, and briefly President, he was sequentially professor of modern history in the National University of Ireland and again professor of Ecclesiastical History at the Pontifical University until his retirement. He continued to live in the college until 2010, when he moved to a nursing home in Naas (he died there in 2012 and is buried in the college cemetery). 

 

Monsignor Matt O’Donnell died suddenly in office in 1996 at the age of sixty-three having served just two years as president; he is buried, by a strange eventuality, in the historic Grangewilliam cemetery near Maynooth, where his father and mother (who died in 2005) are also buried – the family lived in the Maynooth area during the monsignor’s formative years.

 

MOST RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

 

In the second half of the century there was a wider range of options for college professors in their later years. Apart from the roughly 25% of staff who became bishops (an average over the approximately two hundred staff attached to the college in the first two hundred years of the college’s existence), some retired due to ill health, some went on to appointments in other institutions or in their native dioceses, and some left the priesthood.

 

The most recent section of the cemetery to be opened, a tract to the right of the entrance behind the student graves of the late 19th. and early twentieth centuries, reflects that situation. Only one priest professor in the conventional mode is buried there – Gerry Watson, a retired classics professor who died in 1998 (his brother Richard, a former Maynooth student and NUI graduate, professed Mathematics and acted as a director of research activities until his retirement in 2012). James (Des) Bastable, a philosophy professor at the college from 1944, joined the staff of UCD in 1968 and retired from there in 1986; when he died in 2000, he chose to be buried in the college cemetery at Maynooth.

 

Co-incidentally, his interment was followed eight years later by that of the first lay professor to be buried there, also a philosopher: Thomas A. F. Kelly, who was head of the NUIM Department of Philosophy when he died at the age of fifty-two in 2008.

 

SOME INTERESTING SIDELIGHTS

 

There are also other interesting categories of burials at Maynooth: eleven gravestones along the boundary to the left of the entrance mark the final resting place of individuals who served the college in various professional and service capacities. These include John Flood (d. 1933); Patrick Meade, college accountant for 34 years who died in 1939 aged 87 (he was born in 1852!); Thomas Farrell, gate porter (d. 1954); Liam Greene, Assistant Bursar of the College 1973-1992, who died in 2000; and Maurice Dunne, late of Tralee, 'Gardener and Gentleman' according to his gravestone's inscription, who died in 2009 aged 70.

 

There are also memorial stones for three students in the modern era, who were buried in their native parishes: James O’Rawe, Down and Connor, d. 1991; Kevin Bannon, Kilmore, d. 1992; and Ciaran Woods (Deacon), Clogher, d. 1993.

 

Four members of the Daughters of Charity, a Vincentian order who were charged with the care of the sick in the college from 1905, are also buried here: Srs. Teresa Coffey (d. 1916), Vincent Murphy (d. 1918), Patrick Griffin (d. 1951) and Joseph Hammill (d. 1981, aged 92).

 

For those with an interest in the history of the Irish church, of Irish education, and indeed of Irish society, the Maynooth college cemetery, in its tranquil setting away from the dynamic setting, is indeed a worthy place of reflection and research.