September  2005 Edition

RCB Library Acquisitions

The RCB Library has recently acquired two important items by purchase. The Friends of Christ Church Cathedral funded the purchase, at Mealy's auction, of an important volume of the noted Victorian architect, George Edmund Street, who was responsible for the restoration of the cathedral in the late nineteenth century. The volume contains drawings of the medieval tiles which were found during the restoration. As well as being of historical significance the volume will be a useful source for future restoration work on the tiled floor of Christ Church which is one of its great glories.

With the assistance of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, an unpublished sermon delivered by Thomas Lindsay, Dean of St Patrick’s, on Ash Wednesday 1695 was purchased from De Burca Rare books. A note on the flyleaf, in Lindsay’s hand, reveals that the sermon was preached before the Lords Justices of Ireland and that it was ‘the first sermon preached there after hanging that church with black for the death of the Queen’.