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Tag Archives: St. Mary’s Cathedral Tuam


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Birth of Edel Quinn, Roman Catholic Lay Missionary

Edel Mary Quinn, Roman Catholic lay missionary and Envoy of the Legion of Mary to East Africa, is born in Castlemagner, County Cork, on September 14, 1907.

Quinn is the eldest child of bank official Charles Quinn and Louisa Burke Browne of County Clare. She is a great-granddaughter of William Quinn, a native of County Tyrone who settled in Tuam to build St. Mary’s Cathedral.

During Quinn’s childhood, her father’s career brought the family to various towns in Ireland, including Tralee, County Kerry, where a plaque is unveiled in May 2009 at Bank of Ireland House in Denny Street commemorating her residence there between 1921 and 1924. She attends the Presentation Convent in the town between 1921-1925.

Quinn feels a call to religious life at a young age. She wishes to join the Poor Clares but is prevented by advanced tuberculosis. After spending eighteen months in a sanatorium, her condition unchanged, she decides to become active in the Legion of Mary, which she joins in Dublin at the age of 20. She gives herself completely to its work in the form of helping the poor in the slums of Dublin.

In 1936, at the age of 29 and dying of tuberculosis, Quinn becomes a Legion of Mary Envoy, a very active missionary to East and Central Africa, departing in December 1936 for Mombasa. She settles in Nairobi having been told by Bishop Heffernan that this is the most convenient base for her work. By the outbreak of World War II, she is working as far off as Dar es Salaam and Mauritius. In 1941, she is admitted to a sanatorium near Johannesburg. Fighting her illness, in seven and a half years she establishes hundreds of Legion branches and councils in today’s Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, and Mauritius. John Joseph “J.J.” McCarthy, later Bishop of Zanzibar and Archbishop of Nairobi, writes of her:

“Miss Quinn is an extraordinary individual; courageous, zealous and optimistic. She wanders around in a dilapidated Ford, having for sole companion an African driver. When she returns home, she will be qualified to speak about the Missions and Missionaries, having really more experience than any single Missionary I know.”

All this time Quinn’s health is never good, and in 1943 she takes a turn for the worse, dying in Nairobi, Kenya of tuberculosis on May 12, 1944. She is buried there in the Missionaries’ Cemetery.

The cause for her beatification is introduced in 1956. She is declared venerable by Pope John Paul II on December 15, 1994, since when the campaign for her beatification has continued.


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Birth of Architect Sir Thomas Newenham Deane

Sir Thomas Newenham Deane, Irish architect, is born in Dundanion, County Cork on June 15, 1828. He is the son of Sir Thomas Deane and Eliza Newenham, and the father of Sir Thomas Manly Deane. His father and son are also architects.

Deane is educated at Trinity College, Dublin, from 1845 to 1849. On January 29, 1850, he marries Henrietta Manly, daughter of Joseph H. Manly of Ferney, County Cork. He and his wife have several children.

Deane joins his father’s architecture practice in 1850, and in 1851, he becomes a partner along with Benjamin Woodward. Their work is primarily a Gothic style influenced by the principles of John Ruskin, and include the museum at Trinity College, Dublin, the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, the Pitt Rivers Museum, the Kildare Street Club in Dublin, and Queen’s College Cork, now University College Cork. He is known as a conservation architect, involved in the restoration, including the incorporation of the original twelfth-century Romanesque chancel, of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Tuam.

Deane’s work on the conservation of St. Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny, is less successful and brings him into conflict with the dean and chapter, and in particular with the treasurer James Graves. It is possibly his interest in the restoration of medieval buildings which leads to his appointment as the first Inspector of National Monuments under the Irish Board of Works after the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland brought ruined buildings under their care. His work includes St. Cronan’s Church, Roscrea, County Tipperary.

In contemporary circles, Deane’s partner Woodward is seen as the creative influence behind the business, and their practice suffers after his early death on May 15, 1861. Nevertheless, Deane continues to work with his son, Thomas Manly Deane, designing the National Museum of Ireland and National Library of Ireland in Kildare Street, Dublin. He is knighted in 1890.

On November 8, 1899, Deane dies suddenly in his office on St. Stephen’s Green, into which he had only just moved. He is buried in Deans Grange Cemetery, where his son Thomas designs and erects a cross in his memory.