Maynooth

Maynooth, a small town of county Kildare, Ireland, on the Midland Great Western railway and the Royal Canal, 15 m. W. by N. of Dublin. Pop. (1901), 948. The Royal Catholic College of Maynooth, founded by an Act of the Irish parliament in 1795, is the chief seminary for the education of the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland. The building is a fine Gothic structure by A. W. Pugin, erected by a parliamentary grant obtained in 1846. The chapel, with fine oak choir-stalls, mosaic pavements, marble altars and stained glass, and with adjoining cloisters, was dedicated in 1890. The average number of students is about boo - the number specified under the act of 1845 - and the full course of instruction is eight years. Near the college stand the ruins of Maynooth Castle, probably built in 1176, but subsequently extended, and formerly the residence of the Fitzgerald family. It was besieged in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., and during the Cromwellian Wars, when it was demolished. The beautiful mansion of Carton is about a mile from the town.