The Museum

The Classical Museum was founded in 1910 as a teaching museum for Classics at University College. The original collection was largely assembled by the Rev. Henry Browne in the course of ten years through gifts from or exchanges with larger museums (particularly the Ashmolean and the British Museum). The collections include Minoan, Mycenaean and Cypriot artefacts, Greek vases, Greek and Roman coins, terracottas, Roman pottery and glass, bronze and bone objects of daily life, Egyptian antiquities and some papyri. The most significant later acquisitions consist of a marble sarcophagus and a collection of Roman and Greek funerary marble stelai with inscriptions, once owned by Sir George Cockburn. The collection was bought by the Department of Classics in 1936 at the sale of the contents of Cockburn’s former residence: Shanganagh Castle, Bray, Co. Dublin.

The museum was originally housed in the College’s premises in Earlsfort Terrace. It was transferred to the Arts Block (now John Henry Newman Building) of the new campus in Belfield in 1971.

Rev. Henry Browne (1853-1941), the Museum’s founder

Originally from Birmingham and partly of Scottish decent, Henry Browne was educated at Oxford. While there he converted to Catholicism. After obtaining a degree in theology from Milltown College (Dublin), he was ordained (1887), and in 1909 joined the staff of University College, where he taught classics until his retirement in 1921.

Further information on the Museum’s founder and his work can be found in the Dictionary of Irish Biography: From the Earliest Times to the Year 2002 (CUP, 2009): Browne, Henry Martyn.