Library and Archives Update
Stuart Kinsella (4 April 2002)

Oops, yes it has indeed been over two years since an update has been written. Naturally enough, just to annoy future historians, more activity has taken place during this period (as yet undocumented in the Newslettter) than has occurred in a number of years. So the remainder of this article is a brief attempt to get readers up to speed on what has been going on in the cathedral's archival bowels.

Firstly, I must amend the only article I've contributed since Spring 2000, whose subtitle should of course have read 'Regensburg' rather than 'Reisburg', the city visited by the cathedral choir for their summer tour that year. Secondly, it might be of interest to note the various changes of personnel which the rather extended period of March 2000 to August 2001 has seen. The cathedral music librarian, Sue Hemmens was welcomed to the committee in July 2000, and has since provided expertise for the establishment of a cathedral computer network, attended a meeting of the Cathedral Libraries and Archives Association conference in Exeter last year and, more notably in November last, was appointed assistant librarian in Marsh's library. We have lost only one member of the 'Archives, Information Technology and Education committee' as we seem still to insist on calling ourselves(!): the last dean's vicar, the Revd Dermot Dunne. Happily, the current occupant, the Revd Mark Gardner, was already a member. In addition, since January this year, secretarial duties have been undertaken by the cathedral office, as the current honorary secretary and present writer has been ensconsed in Oxford since then and will continue to be until September.

Archives
Undoubtedly the most significant milestone in the work of the committee has been the establishment of a permanent area in the south aisle of the crypt for the storage of the cathedral archives and development of its library. At the time of writing the last update, the archives had been removed from the old coal hole / bunker in the crypt to a temporary area in the music room, prior to work beginning on the crypt. Unfortunately, this was only the first of several moves, beginning in May 2000 before the Ceiliúradh conference which was to require the space in the music room. The archives were dispersed to at least four winds including: St Werburgh's church, a Tallaght warehouse provided by former administrator, Christopher Shiell, a lorry container deposited in the grounds and the cathedral manager's spare bedroom! A fifth breeze consisted of a computer and a number of essential reference books and was moved into the, then recently established, cathedral office in the old north yard, with its barrelled roof surmounting at either end, an airy diocletian window and conserved Romanesque doorway. With space-juggling capabilities in the cathedral reaching levels of necromancy, the archives-area-to-be was cleared out before 6 November 2000 when work began on laying a concrete floor for the area. It was not until May however that the area was nearing readiness and it was June before the committee had its first meeting in the new area. Still, it was well worth the wait. Extremely compact and capacious rolling shelving was installed thanks to Christopher Shiell, who also provided funding for the establishment of the crypt treasury just across from the archives. The new area is equipped not only with the usual office accoutrements, but with a connection to the cathedral network, a photocopier and an air handling unit to allow some control over the environmental conditions.

As regards the 'archival' work of the committee itself, this has taken a number of forms. In early 2000, it formulated an archives policy that was adopted by the cathedral board, whereas more recently it was concerned with the future and safety of the medieval eagle lectern. Monuments have also been a priority, and the committee has been active in scheduling their conservation or restoration. Clearly this is an enormous job, but already the Royal Dublin Society has funded the restoration of the Thomas Prior monument, which involved a general cleaning, re-lettering and repair work by Ken Thompson of Cork, and the re-carving of a missing scallop by Eoghan Daltun ... done in his back garden in Kilmainham, much to the amusement of his neighbours. The Bowes monument in the crypt is next in line for treatment. A memorial to a former lord chancellor of Ireland, it is now in three sections having originally been erected in one of the blank bays of the 1560s-rebuilt south wall in the nave prior to George Edmund Street's restoration when it was banished to the darkness of the crypt. It is hoped that this will be ready for the visit of President McAleese in the Autumn when, amongst her other engagements, she will be finally able to see the presidential crest on the state pew, in addition to the Stuart arms which currently adorn it.

Computers
Over the last two years, a number of small changes have been introduced to improve the cathedral's presence on the Internet. On 30 June 2000, the domain name www.cccdub.ie (or cccdub.ie for short) came into use, and with it, a plethora of new email addresses. The main cathedral email address today is welcome@cccdub.ie which replaces both email@cccdub.ie and its predecessor cccdub@indigo.ie. The information on the website is constantly being updated, but at the beginning of the year, the site was in addition given a slight redesign to enable access to the most often used sections of the site to be reached from the main cathedral page, e.g. the cathedral diary, suggested intercessions, the dean's monthly review, lecture details, etc. In terms of statistics, the website has had over 105,000 visitors since it was established, 65,000 of whom have visited in the last two years. The majority of visitors come from Ireland (37%), the USA (28%) and the UK (14%). The website has also been maintained on a professional basis since 2001, this writer having voluntarily developed and maintained the site since 1996. Thankfully the comments of the Church of Ireland host master, the Revd Michael Graham that the website was 'One of, if not the, best Church of Ireland sites on the web.' (Search: a Church of Ireland journal, xxiii, 2 (Winter, 2000) pp 123-4.) guaranteed the work to date as value for money! Internally, the cathedral has established a network throughout the offices serving the building. This was undertaken by Sue Hemmens in her position as network supervisor which she held for about a year and has revolutionised the way the cathedral works, all employees theoretically having 24hr online access thanks to an ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) connection from Eircom. These changes have been supplemented by the appointment to the cathedral staff of a new public relations officer, Sheila Kulkarni, who has been of great benefit to the cathedral office, and certainly eased the burden in the production of the regular email bulletin, now sent to over 700 people. Free subscription to the bulletin can be found online at http://cccdub.ie.

Education
It is probably in the role of education that most administrative work has been carried out however. This has primarily involved lectures such as the Joe Coady memorial lecture, now integrated into the cathedral Friends' patronal festivities on Trinity Sunday, of which the last of the independent versions took place in February 2000 entitled 'Music from the monasteries and cathedrals of medieval Ireland' and was given by Dr Ann Buckley. Dr Buckley was profiled in the Spring 2000 Newsletter and for those interested in following up her work, much of it is to be published in 'Music in Ireland to c. 1500' in Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (ed), A new history of Ireland, i (Oxford, forthcoming). Rather than an independent series of lunchtime lectures in the summer of that year, we instead integrated into the Ceiliúradh conference, providing a series of five talks on 1000 years of worship at Christ Church, in addition to four walking tours and a visit to the Chester Beatty Library, all of which were reported in this journal in depth by the Revd Tom Gordon (Summer 2000). Since then we have organised two further lecture series. The tenth lunchtime lecture series was in October 2000 entitled Episcopal Episodes: some archbishops of Dublin & Glendalough in which Niav Gallagher spoke on Alexander Bicknor (1317-1349), Dr James Murray examined George Browne (1536-1554), Dr A.P.W. Malcomson expounded upon Charles Agar (1801-1809) and Dr Muriel McCarthy introduced the founder of her library, Narcissus Marsh (1694-1703). After a short pause, in Autumn 2001, the committee embarked on the largest scale lecture series we have yet contemplated: a series of 12 lectures spaced over the entire liturgical / academic year entitled 2000 Years of Christianity. The first two series were run in conjunction with Dublin Corporation (as it was known for the first series) and latterly Dublin City Council (as it has been recently renamed) in which a September series on The Architecture and Conservation of Dublin's City Hall preceded the first series of cathedral talks in October, and a March 2002 series entitled The splendour of silver, the glory of gold: the Dublin City Treasures followed the February series. Although elsewhere Sheila Kulkarni will have given details of the forthcoming series, and the recent February series was listed in the last issue, it is probably useful to tabularise the series so far to give some sort of overview. These we hope will be published within the next year or so under the editorship of former precentor, Canon Dr John Bartlett.

Another aspect of the cathedral's historical life for which the archives committee are taking responsibility is that of guided tours. While still at a fairly preliminary stage at present, we are currently liasing with the head verger, Kieran O'Reilly, with a view to establishing a guild of tour guides, and establishing school tours to the cathedral on a more formal basis. Very often specialised groups ask for tours of the cathedral, and one such occasion was in December last year, when course members from Dr Nicola Gordon-Bowe's M.A. in the History of Design and Applied Arts at the National College of Art and Design were given a tour of the cathedral by the writer, examining George Edmund Street and his philosophy of restoration.

More permanent contributions to the study of the cathedral have been focussed on the cathedral's ambitious history project, which in the last two years culminated in the appearance of the much publicised history volume itself: Kenneth Milne (ed.), Christ Church cathedral, Dublin: a history (Dublin, 2000) on Trinity Sunday 2000 and the publication that Autumn of Roger Stalley (ed.), George Edmund Street and the restoration of Christ Church cathedral, Dublin (Dublin, 2000), both of which were reported on in previous issues. However, the conclusion of the series in May 2001 with the issue of the Christ Church deeds, ed. M.J. McEnery and Raymond Refaussé (Dublin, 2001) also marked the beginning of a new venture by the cathedral. All of the cathedral project volumes had been published by Four Courts Press, and the launch of the Christ Church deeds also enabled the cathedral to produce the first of its own publications from a newly established company, Christ Church Cathedral Publications Ltd. This was Augustinians at Christ Church edited by present writer, and marked the publication of a series of the aforementioned lunchtime lectures entitled Christ Church Studies (see Summer 2001 edition) the last function to use the eastern section of the crypt prior to the installation of the new treasury. More publications are still to come: the company is currently looking at the production of a book on the cathedral tiles and at the writing and designing of a completely new expanded and revised cathedral guide . The committee already revised the more ephemeral leaftlet guide provided to all visitors in December last. Those interested in the various cathedral publications can visit the history section of the cathedral website where they are listed along with reviews of each, which are being assembled gradually. These include for example a review by the above mentioned Ann Buckley of Barra Boydell's book Music at Christ Church before 1800 in the journal Peritia, not perhaps the first place that one might look for such a review. So if anyone knows of a review of any of the cathedral publications which cannot be found on the cathedral website, do please email details to archives@cccdub.ie.

Often at the end of an archives meeting it is interesting to mull over recent acquisitions, and perhaps it might serve as a similar digestif to this article to browse our way through two years of accumulations, highlighting the main items of interest. There have been numerous kind donations of magazines, journals, reference books, but perhaps three might be of particular interest. The first is a video of 'Christ Church through the ages' presented by Louis Marcus Productions which is an archive copy of the same production which runs in the treasury, which is well worth a viewing for anyone who has not already seen it. Secondly, was the very generous donation by the dean of St Patrick's, the Very Revd Dr Robert MacCarthy, of the picture used for the front cover of the cathedral history, a watercolour which, perhaps surprisingly, was owned by St Patrick's cathedral. The third is an interesting biography of the Revd Robert Shenton, dean's vicar at Christ Church and St Patrick's in the 18th century taken from a manuscript at Hereford cathedral, which describes how, during the 1798 rebellion, a mob threw him into the grand canal! It would of course be impossible to list everything, but items of interest in the main pertain to recent publications relating to the cathedral. These include Bernard Guinan, A short history of medieval Dublin (Dublin, 1997) and Ruth Johnson (ed.), Dvblinia: educational resource pack (Dublin, 1999), both former curators of Dublinia (Dr Ruth Johnson is now the city archaeologist); Rachel Moss, 'A medieval jigsaw puzzle: the ancient stones of Christ Church' in Archaeology Ireland, xiv, 2 (Summer 2000); Garland Pass, 'A significant pair of candlesticks with possible connections to James II' in Journal of the Antique Metalware Society, viii (June, 2000), pp 12-17; Michael O'Neill, 'Design sources for St Patrick's cathedral, Dublin, and its relationship to Christ Church cathedral' in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, c, C, no. 6 (2000), pp 6-256; Ciaran Diamond, 'The Reformation charter of Christ Church cathedral, Dublin' in Archivium Hibernicum, liii (1999), pp 20-25 and most recently (which we still have to purchase!) is Raymond Gillespie, The vestry records of the parish of St John the Evangelist, Dublin 1595-1658 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002), and is one of the first glimpses we have had of St John's, one of the cathedral's long demolished prebendal churches, since James Mills, The registers of St John the Evangelist, Dublin, 1619-1699 (Dublin: Parish Register Society of Dublin, 1906). The two Rays, both lately of the cathedral history project: Gillespie, the editor, and Refaussé, the archivist, are behind the publication, which begins a series by the Representative Church Body Library entitled 'Texts and Calendars'. With such a team, I wonder if Four Courts Press realises what it has unleashed!