The Archive contains the Maynooth College Archives, the Salamanca Archive, and the All Hallows College Archive.

Maynooth College Archives

For centuries before the establishment of Maynooth, Irish priests had been educated in Irish colleges on the continent, mainly in France. The French Revolution in 1789 led to the seizure and suppression of all Church properties. The British Government saw the advantage of an accommodation with the Catholic Church in Ireland. This led to the passing of the 1795 ‘Act for the better education of persons professing the popish or Roman Catholic religion,’ which led to the establishment of a seminary with state funding at Maynooth. St Patrick’s College, Maynooth is now comprised of the National Seminary for the education of priests, and a Pontifical University educating both religious and lay students.

The Maynooth College Archives are essentially administrative rather than personal. They are maintained by the College Archivist and can be consulted by researchers in the Russell Library.

They include many bound volumes of minute books, account books, cash books, student fees, wage books, letter books, and various other notebooks. There are over 170 boxes of unbound archive material. For the most part, the unbound material is arranged chronologically under presidencies, beginning with Laurence Renehan from 1845, and going up to Edward Kissane, who died in 1959. Material relating to topics spanning more than one presidency is arranged separately, such as the building of the College Chapel, wills and bequests, bicentennial material, and photographs.

The original student matriculation register was destroyed in a fire in 1940. From the extant information, Msgr Patrick Hamell compiled a comprehensive list of all students, including diocese, date and class of matriculation, and date of ordination. This information has been published in two volumes:

• Hamell, Patrick: Maynooth students and ordinations index, 1795-1895 (Maynooth, 1982)
• Hamell, Patrick: Maynooth students and ordinations index, 1895-1984 (Maynooth, 1984). This volume reproduces class photographs 1882-1984.

All of the existing historical information on Maynooth students and ordinations is now available online on the Clericus website. All class portraits and individual biographical entries up to and including 1945 are available to view and search on Clericus: https://clericus.maynoothuniversity.ie/

Class lists, prize lists, ordinations, courses, college staff present and previous, are to be found in the College Kalendarium, which began in 1863, and appears annually.

The subsequent careers and dates of death of Maynooth priests may be traced using the Irish Catholic Directory (Dublin), which has appeared annually since 1836. A chronological check in the annual list of parish priests and curates will chart movement from parish to parish and also any promotion.

Salamanca Archive

The first Irish College in Spain was founded in Salamanca in 1592. On its closure in 1952, the archive of the Irish College in Salamanca was deposited in Maynooth. In total, the collection contains the archives of the Irish Colleges in Salamanca, Santiago de Compostela, Seville, Madrid, Alcalá de Henares and Lisbon, and also contains some material from the English College in Valladolid. The archive spans from the late sixteenth to the mid-twentieth century.

The collection contains over 50,000 individual items, including loose material, bound and unbound volumes, all contained in 101 archival boxes. The archive contains the formal records regarding the administration and finances of the Irish College, along with the personal records of the Rectors who passed through the College over its lifetime. The collection is made up of a wide variety of records, both personal and administrative, including: student oaths, rectors’ private papers, accounts, leases of properties, mortgages, title deeds, receipts, books of income and daily expenses, correspondence, petitions, royal bulls and briefs, proclamations and decrees, executions of wills, annuities, and photographs.

The catalogue for the Salamanca Archive can be viewed and searched online: https://www2.calmview.co.uk/StPatricksCollege/CalmView/

All Hallows College Archive

All Hallows College, Dublin, was founded by Rev John Hand in 1842 to train priests for the foreign missions. The seminary grew with the increased demand for priests to minister to the Irish diaspora, which was burgeoning due to the Great Famine. Priests from All Hallows were sought by dioceses throughout the English-speaking world, particularly in America and Australia. In 1860, there were over 200 students in the College, and it supplied priests to over 50 Dioceses worldwide. All Hallows College closed in 2016, and its archives were transferred to St Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

The All Hallows College Archive consists of over 300 boxes of material, plus bound volumes of account books, minute books, and other ledgers. There is a huge variety of records in the archive, including photographs, architectural plans and drawings, posters, videos and audio recordings, and published books. As well as the administrative records of the College, there are student records, and a collection of over 6,000 letters dating from the foundation of the College.

The All Hallows College Annuals were produced by the College from 1848 up to 2004. These, and other publications, are available online on the All Hallows Trust website: https://allhallows.ie/missionary-college/publications/

Contact details

For all queries regarding the archive please contact the College Archivist: archives@spcm.ie

The archives are consulted in the Russell library. For information on opening hours, conditions of access, and reading room procedures, please consult the Russell Library webpage: https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/library/russell-library