This is a public appeal to help locate missing books and thus fill in some outstanding gaps that have been identified during the painstaking cataloguing work undertaken by the Glucksman since 2016.
The Representative Church Body owns the collection (formerly the diocesan library of Cashel) which comprised over 12,000 early printed books, manuscripts and incunabula accumulated by Archbishop William King and Bishop Theophilus Bolton in the early 18th century.
The collection was originally in the Bishop’s Palace in Cashel where they once lived and then from 1835 moved to a purpose–built chapter house on the grounds of the Cashel Cathedral.
Between 1910 to the early 1960s part of the collection was moved to Dublin initially to Marsh’s Library for cataloguing and assessment by the librarian, Newport B. White. Following the foundation of the RCB Library in 1931 arrangements were made for the collection to be moved again to 52 St Stephen’s Green, the headquarters of the RCB, where a fireproof strong–room had been installed specifically for hosing it.
There the books would remain until the valuable strong–room space ran out when the decision was taken to reunite the entire collection in Cashel during the 1960s.
In the six decades since the 1960s heroic local efforts to maintain the collection in Cashel could not be sustained and successions of local clergy and parishioners struggled to maintain the collection in unsuitable environmental conditions. As the years passed, the books deteriorated with moisture and mould.
In 2016 following lengthy negotiations involving all the stakeholders the entire Bolton Library was transferred to the long–term custody of the Glucksman Library at the University of Limerick where the content was first expertly conserved, and then, book by book, and true to the original shelving arrangement that had existed in the first library in Cashel catalogued and accessioned into a dedicated space.
The recovery work took almost ten years, much of it was carried out by the rare books cataloguer Olivia Lardner, whose dedication and expertise reflects the overall commitment of the university to ensure worldwide access and knowledge to the collection as a whole and every book within in. The bibliographical records of some 9502 books are now accessible online via the UL Library website with a dedicated search engine on this link: Bolton Library collection
The Library reflects the wide–ranging bibliographical interests of its episcopal collectors who put the collection together in the early eighteenth century. Books spanning the subjects of science, technology, medicine, and Irish history from the 1640–1660 period, reflect the bishops’ ambition to gather as much of humanity’s knowledge as possible.
Included are medieval encyclopaedia from 1168–1220, imprints that predate the year 1500, including a missal which is one of only three examples of hand written missals in Ireland for that era.
Even more significantly, the cataloguing has also established that there are 180 books not available in any other library in the world. Dr Ken Bergin, head of the Glucksman Library comments:
Olivia Larder made so many discoveries in cataloguing the library but the most significant must be the discovery of some 800 pieces of fragments of print and manuscript waste in the bindings of the books. The Glucksman Library plans to conserve and digitise these unique documents and share them with the wider public
Given its longevity and the fact that the collection was moved more than once, it has been inevitable that books would have gone astray during the three centuries of its existence. Now that the expert cataloguing work is complete, it is estimated that around 800 volumes of the original remain unaccounted for.
In 1967 we know that the then dean and chapter in Cashel gave permission for some 270 volumes to be sold to the Folger Library in Washington, the proceeds of which were used to improve conditions in the purpose–built chapter house. There is other evidence of loans of specific items for exhibitions in Dublin (Trinity College and the College of Surgeons) in the 1940s, a rare booking exhibition in London in 1954 as well as smaller events in Wales and Wexford in the later 1950s.
Recent acquisitions and donations to the RCB Library from the families of deceased clergy have recovered some 14 stray volumes that were likely borrowed by diocesan clergy or other personnel over the years and simply never went back. We feel sure there must be more.
Bearing the distinctive library stamp of a bishop’s mitre within a circle of the words “Cashel Library” and always with additional handwritten catalogue and shelf markings (sometimes crossed out to denote a new shelf location) on the inside title page, they are very easy to spot.
We are appealing to libraries, private collectors and others – especially in the vicinity of Cashel – to check their shelves and catalogues to see if have any matches, and would consider letting us know so that the continuing and evolving story of the Cashel Collection/Bolton Library may be updated again and stray items possibly reintegrated where they rightfully belong.
We look forward to hearing from you and will treat all communications with discretion and in confidence. You can contact me directly on email susan.hood@rcbcoi.org