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Catholic Power and the Irish City: Modernity, Religion, and Planning in Galway, 1944–1949

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2020

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Abstract

A major town planning dispute between church and state in Galway in the 1940s over the location for a new school provides a lens for rethinking Ireland's distinctive engagement with modernity. Using town planning and urban governance lenses, this article argues that existing scholarship on the postwar Irish Catholic Church overstates its hegemonic power. In analyzing the dispute, it critiques the undue focus within European town-planning studies on the state and on the supposedly “rational” agendas of mid-century planners, showing instead how religious entities forged parallel paths of urban modernity and urban governance. It thus adds an Irish and an urban-planning dimension to existing debates within religious history about urbanization and secularization, showing how adaptive the Irish Catholic Church was to high modernity. Finally, with its focus on a school building, it brings a built environment angle into studies of education policy in Ireland. In seeking to revisit major historiographical debates within town planning, religious history, and studies of urban modernity, the article makes extensive use of the recently opened papers of Bishop Michael Browne of Galway, a noted public intellectual within the Irish Catholic Church and a European expert on canon law.

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Journal of British Studies , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 521 - 554
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Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies, 2020

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References

1 O'Casey, Seán, Autobiographies II (London, 1963), 639Google Scholar.

2 Belfast Newsletter, 2 September 1949.

3 Galway Observer, 20 August 1949; Connacht Sentinel, 23 August 1949.

4 Seán O'Casey, Autobiographies II, 639.

5 Janssen, Joks, “Religiously Inspired Urbanism: Catholicism and the Planning of the Southern Dutch Provincial Cities Eindhoven and Roermond, c. 1900 to 1960,” Urban History 43, no. 1 (2016): 135–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 135, 137, 140.

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8 Erika Hanna, Modern Dublin: Urban Change and the Irish Past, 1957–1973 (Oxford, 2013), 1–21; Erika Hanna and Richard Butler, “Irish Urban History: An Agenda,” Urban History 46, no. 1 (2019): 2–9.

9 Louise Fuller, “Catholicism in Twentieth-Century Ireland: From ‘an Atmosphere Steeped in the Faith’ to à la Carte Catholicism,” Journal of Religion in Europe 5, no. 4 (2012): 484–513.

10 John Henry Whyte, Church and State in Modern Ireland, 1923–1979, 2nd ed. (Dublin, 1980); Tom Inglis, Moral Monopoly: The Catholic Church in Modern Irish Society (Dublin, 1987); Louise Fuller, Irish Catholicism since 1950: The Undoing of a Culture (Dublin, 2002); James S. Donnelly Jr., “A Church in Crisis: The Irish Catholic Church Today,” History Ireland 8, no. 3 (2000): 12–17; Daithí Ó Corráin, “Catholicism in Ireland, 1880–2015: Rise, Ascendancy and Retreat,” in The Cambridge History of Ireland, vol. 4, 1880 to the Present, ed. Thomas Bartlett (Cambridge, 2018), 726–64, at 726.

11 Peadar O Comhraidhe to Michael Browne (hereafter Browne), 13 February 1939, GDA, B/8/1.

12 Robert Proctor, Building the Modern Church: Roman Catholic Church Architecture in Britain, 1955 to 1975 (Farnham, 2014), 277–95. However, see also Wildman, Urban Redevelopment and Modernity, 143–89.

13 Ellen Rowley, “The Architect, the Planner and the Bishop: The Shapers of ‘Ordinary’ Dublin, 1940–60,” Footprint 9, no. 2 (2015): 69–88, at 82.

14 John Cooney, John Charles McQuaid: Ruler of Catholic Ireland (Syracuse, 1999), 265. See also Clara Cullen and Margaret Ó hÓgartaigh, eds., His Grace Is Displeased: Selected Correspondence of John Charles McQuaid (Dublin, 2012). For a more nuanced perspective, see Lindsey Earner-Byrne, Letters of the Catholic Poor: Poverty in Independent Ireland, 1920–1940 (Cambridge, 2017).

15 James S. Donnelly Jr., “Bishop Michael Browne of Galway (1937–76) and the Regulation of Public Morality,” New Hibernia Review 17, no. 1 (2013): 16–39. See also Gerard Madden, “Bishop Michael Browne of Galway and Anti-Communism,” Saothar, no. 39 (2014): 21–31. For a study of urban Limerick, see Síle de Cléir, Popular Catholicism in 20th-Century Ireland: Locality, Identity and Culture (London, 2017).

16 Janssen, “Religiously Inspired Urbanism,” 147. See also Sven Sterken, “A House for God or a Home for His People? The Church-Building Activity of Domus Dei in the Belgian Archbishopric (1952–82),” Architectural History, no. 56 (2013): 387–425; and Sven Sterken and Eva Weyns, “Urban Planning and Christian Revival: The Institut Supérieur d'Urbanisme Appliqué in Brussels under Gaston Bardet, 1947–1973,” in Re-humanizing Architecture: New Forms of Community, 1950–1970, ed. Ákos Moravánsky and Judith Hopfengärtner (Berlin, 2016), 89–100.

17 J. J. Lee, Ireland, 1912–1985: Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1989), 588–636; John M. Regan, “Southern Irish Nationalism as a Historical Problem,” Historical Journal 50, no. 1 (2007): 197–223, at 216–17; Stefan Berger, Mark Donovan, and Kevin Passmore, “Apologias for the Nation-State in Western Europe since 1800,” in Writing National Histories: Western Europe since 1800, ed. Stefan Berger, Mark Donovan, and Kevin Passmore (London, 1999), 3–14; Thomas Cauvin and Ciaran O'Neill, “Negotiating Public History in the Republic of Ireland: Collaborative, Applied and Usable Practices for the Profession,” Historical Research 90, no. 250 (2017): 810–28, at 815–19.

18 R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (London, 1988), 567; see also the contributions in Pancratius Cornelis Beentjes, ed., The Catholic Church and Modernity in Europe (Vienna, 2009).

19 Ronan Fanning, Independent Ireland (Dublin, 1983), 181; Lindsey Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child: Maternity and Child Welfare in Dublin, 1922–60 (Manchester, 2007), 120–51; Eamonn McKee, “Church-State Relations and the Development of Irish Health Policy: The Mother-and-Child Scheme, 1944–53,” Irish Historical Studies 25, no. 98 (1986): 159–94, at 194.

20 Janssen, “Religiously Inspired Urbanism,” 155–57. Religious groups feature rarely in much of the existing historiography; see, for example, Peter Larkham, “The Place of Urban Conservation in the UK Reconstruction Plans of 1942–1952,” Planning Perspectives 18, no. 3 (2003): 295–324; Erika Hanna, “‘Don't Make Dublin a Museum’: Urban Heritage and Modern Architecture in Dublin, 1957–71,” Past and Present, no. 226 (2015): 349–67; Andrew G. McClelland, “A ‘Ghastly Interregnum’: The Struggle for Architectural Heritage Conservation in Belfast before 1972,” Urban History 45, no. 1 (2018): 150–72; Mark S. Webb, “Local Responses to the Protection of Medieval Buildings and Archaeology in British Post-War Town Reconstruction: Southampton and Coventry,” Urban History 45, no. 4 (2018): 635–59. However, see also Bettina Hitzer and Joachim Schlor, eds., “God in the City: Religious Topographies in the Age of Urbanisation,” special issue, Journal of Urban History 37, no. 6 (2011); Peter J. Larkham and Joe L. Nasr, “Decision-Making under Duress: The Treatment of Churches in the City of London during and after World War II,” Urban History 39, no. 2 (2012): 285–309.

21 The Irish educational history sources drawn on here include D. H. Akenson, A Mirror to Kathleen's Face: Education in Independent Ireland, 1922–1960 (Montreal, 1975), 101–7; Seán Farren, The Politics of Irish Education, 1920–65 (Belfast, 1995), 187–207; John Walsh, The Politics of Expansion: The Transformation of Educational Policy in the Republic of Ireland, 1957–72 (Manchester, 2009); Tom Garvin, News from a New Republic: Ireland in the 1950s (Dublin, 2010), 155–97; John Walsh, “Ministers, Bishops and the Changing Balance of Power in Irish Education, 1950–70,” Irish Historical Studies 38, no. 149 (2012): 108–27.

22 Ellen Rowley, “Hidden Histories: Galway Cathedral: The Bishop as Architect,” Architecture Ireland, no. 298 (2018): 37–39.

23 Memo, “The New Cathedral Fund Galway: Its Foundation & Development,” ca. 1938, GDA, B/6/22; Memo, “Shambles Barracks,” ca. 1950, GDA, B/11/109.

24 Connacht Sentinel, 23 March 1971. The Dublin Catholic archdiocese has used St. Mary's Church in the center of that city as a “Pro-Cathedral” since 1825.

25 See GDA, B/6/3, B/6/4, and B/6/10. See also Minutes, Galway County Council, 13 April 1940, Galway County Archives, Galway, GC1–05(d); Connacht Sentinel, 16 April 1940. For Maamtrasna, see Patrick Joyce, The State of Freedom: A Social History of the British State since 1800 (Cambridge, 2013), 303–7; Richard J. Butler, “The Afterlives of Galway Jail, ‘Difficult’ Heritage, and the Maamtrasna Murders: Representations of an Irish Urban Space, 1882–2018,” Irish Historical Studies 44, no. 166 (2020) forthcoming.

26 O'Flynn to Secretary, Department of Local Government and Public Health, Dublin, 31 May 1940, Galway County Library, Galway, file 109/38/72; Connacht Sentinel, 16 April 1940. For Browne's later comments, see Browne, “Address to the Mayor […] of the Galway Borough Council,” 18 February 1946, GDA, B/6/12.

27 Edward Joyce to Browne, 4 November 1939, GDA, B/6/3.

28 Browne to MacDermot & Allen Solicitors, 1 December 1939; Browne to Edward Joyce, 1 December 1939, GDA, B/6/3.

29 See Register of Parochial Property folder, 1945, GDA, P/18/3; Thomas F. Burke to Browne, 2 May 1943, GDA, B/6/11.

30 John Miley and Frederick Charles King, Town and Regional Planning Law in Ireland (Dublin, 1951), viii–x, 16–17, 24–25, 31–164; Town and Regional Planning Act, 1934 (no. 22 of 1934), later amended by the Town and Regional Planning (Amendment) Act, 1939 (no. 11 of 1939). See also Manning Robertson, “The Town and Regional Planning Act, 1934,” Irish Builder and Engineer 78, no. 5 (1936): 197–98; Irish Builder and Engineer 78, no. 6 (1936): 237–38. See also Seán O'Leary, Sense of Place: A History of Irish Planning (Dublin, 2014), 38–77; Fergal MacCabe, Ambition and Achievement: The Civic Visions of Frank Gibney (Dublin, 2018), 15–25, 30–34, 51–57.

31 Sean McDermott and Richard Woulfe, Compulsory Purchase and Compensation: Law and Practice in Ireland (Dublin, 1992), 1–14, 49–51. See also Peter Connell, “From Hovels to Homes: The Provision of Public Housing in Irish Provincial Towns, 1890–1945” (PhD diss., Trinity College Dublin, 2017), chaps. 3–4.

32 Patrick Abercrombie, Sydney A. Kelly, and Manning Robertson, County Borough of Dublin and Neighbourhood: Town Planning Report: Sketch Development Plan (Dublin, 1941), 7, 14–22. See also Liam Lanigan, James Joyce, Urban Planning and Irish Modernism: Dublins of the Future (London, 2014), 27–30.

33 Manning Robertson, County Borough of Cork and Neighbourhood: Town Planning Report, Sketch Development Plan (Cork, 1941), 6, 8, 13, 22; Frank Gibney, County Borough of Waterford: Town Planning Scheme: Preliminary Report (Waterford, 1943), 14, 15, 20.

34 Diarmaid Ferriter, Lovers of Liberty? Local Government in 20th Century Ireland (Dublin, 2001), 178–83, quoting Memo, Department of the Taoiseach, 26 August 1942, D/Taoiseach S13469, National Archives of Ireland.

35 Terence O'Neill, The Autobiography of Terence O'Neill (London, 1972), 47.

36 Irish Times, 26 April 1944. See also “A Nomad's Notebook: Mr. Seán Lemass at National Planning Minister,” Irish Builder and Engineer 87, no. 22 (1945): 570.

37 Seán MacEntee, Speech at the Architectural Society Inaugural Meeting, University College Dublin, “Planning and a National Policy,” 7 May 1946, Seán MacEntee Papers, University College Dublin, P/67/574(1).

38 Michael Bannon, “The Changing Context of Developmental Planning,” Administration: Journal of the Institute of Public Administration of Ireland 31, no. 2 (1983): 112–46, at 113–14; Kevin L. Nowlan, “The Evolution of Irish Planning, 1934–1964,” in Planning: The Irish Experience, 1920–1988, ed. Michael Bannon (Dublin, 1989), 41–85, at 49–51; Mary E. Daly, The Buffer State: The Historical Roots of the Department of the Environment (Dublin, 1997), 285; Ferriter, Lovers of Liberty?, 178–83; Berna Grist, “Local Authorities and the Planning Process,” in County and Town: One Hundred Years of Local Government in Ireland, ed. Mary E. Daly (Dublin, 2001), 130–40, at 130; Joseph Brady, Dublin 1930–1950: The Emergence of the Modern City (Dublin, 2014), 91–6; Frank Mort, “Fantasies of Metropolitan Life: Planning London in the 1940s,” Journal of British Studies 43, no. 1 (2004): 120–51, at 122–23, 150.

39 J. J. Lee, “Centralisation and Community,” in Ireland: Towards a Sense of Place, ed. J. J. Lee (Cork, 1985), 84–101, at 84; Eunan O'Halpin, “The Origins of City and County Management,” in City and County Management, 1929–1990: A Retrospective, ed. Joseph Boland et al. (Dublin, 1991), 1–20, at 5–13; Ferriter, Lovers of Liberty?, 15–17, 64–65; Eunan O'Halpin, “Politics and the State, 1922–32,” in A New History of Ireland, vol. 7, Ireland, 1921–1984, ed. J. R. Hill (Oxford, 2003), 86–126, at 111–12; Diarmaid Ferriter, “De Valera's Ireland, 1932–58,” in The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History, ed. Alvin Jackson (Oxford, 2014), 670–86, at 674. Fianna Fáil initially supported but later opposed the Cork Act; see Aodh Quinlivan, Philip Monahan: A Man Apart: The Life and Times of Ireland's First Local Authority Manager (Dublin, 2006), 98, 173.

40 John J. Horgan, “City Management in America,” Studies, no. 9 (1920): 41–56; quotation from John J. Horgan, “Local Government Developments at Home and Abroad,” Studies, no. 15 (1926): 529–41, at 540.

41 Mark Osborne, “Those County Managers,” Bell 9, no. 4 (1945): 304–14.

42 Connell, “From Hovels to Homes,” 175–77.

43 Rates of Interest Charged by Local Loans Fund, 1934, National Archives of Ireland, Department of Finance papers, FIN/F60/10/33. See also Daly, Buffer State, 298–300. I am grateful to Dr. Peter Connell for this reference.

44 County Management System file, 1943–44, National Archives of Ireland, Department of the Taoiseach papers, T6, 97/9/511; Ronan Keane, The Law of Local Government in the Republic of Ireland (Dublin, 1982), 18–36; Desmond Roche, Local Government in Ireland (Dublin, 1982), 55, 106–9; Daly, Buffer State, 297–305; Quinlivan, Philip Monahan, 93–94, 173–77; Matthew Potter, The Municipal Revolution in Ireland: A Handbook of Urban Government in Ireland since 1800 (Dublin, 2011), 289–336.

45 O'Halpin, “The Origins of City and County Management,” 13–17, 102; Gabriel O'Connor, A History of Galway County Council (Galway, 1999), 154–55, 162–72; Minutes, Galway County Council, 18 July, 8 August, 10 October, 24 October 1931, Galway County Archives, Galway, GC1–04(d). See also Mary E. Daly, “Local Appointments,” in Daly, County and Town, 45–55.

46 Browne, “County Management System: Ideas and Reality,” undated [ca. 1945], GDA, B/12/300.

47 James Chappel, “The Catholic Origins of Totalitarianism Theory in Interwar Europe,” Modern Intellectual History 8, no. 3 (2011): 561–90, at 565, 573–74, 584.

48 Browne to Hugo V. Flinn, 15 November 1940, GDA, B/12/20.

49 John Swift, “Report of Commission on Vocational Organisation,” Saothar, no. 1 (1975): 54–63, at 59. See also J. J. Lee, “Aspects of Corporatist Thought in Ireland: The Commission on Vocational Organisation, 1939–43,” in Studies in Irish History: Presented to R. Dudley Edwards, ed. Art Cosgrove and Donal McCartney (Dublin, 1979), 324–46; J. J. Lee, “On the Birth of the Modern Irish State: The Larkin Thesis,” in Piety and Power in Ireland, 1760–1960: Essays in Honour of Emmet Larkin, ed. Stewart J. Brown and David W. Miller (Belfast, 2000), 130–57, at 145; Don O'Leary, Vocationalism and Social Catholicism in Twentieth-Century Ireland: The Search for a Christian Social Order (Dublin, 2000), 85–148, 155, 183; Bryce Evans, Seán Lemass: Democratic Dictator (Cork, 2011), 148–49; and Eunan O'Halpin, “The Second World War and Ireland,” in Jackson, Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History, 711–24, at 719. See also Whyte, Church and State in Modern Ireland, 96–119; Fanning, Independent Ireland, 181; Fuller, Irish Catholicism since 1950, 76–77, 148. For corporatist thought beyond Ireland, see L. P. Carpenter, “Corporatism in Britain, 1930–1945,” Contemporary History 11 (1976): 3–25; Pedro Ramos Pinto, “Housing and Citizenship: Building Social Rights in Twentieth-Century Portugal,” Contemporary European History 18, no. 2 (2009): 199–215.

50 Lee, “Centralisation and Community,” 96. See also Ferriter, “De Valera's Ireland,” 674.

51 See, for example, “Aims and Purposes,” Muintir na Tíre Official Handbook 1941 (Dublin, 1941), 37–40; and J. McLaughlin, “The Managerial Revolution,” Muintir na Tíre Official Handbook 1947 (Dublin, 1947), 55–60.

52 Michael Browne et al., Commission on Vocational Organisation: Report (Dublin, 1944), 381–83. See also Michael Browne, Bulwark of Freedom: Vocational Organisation, Democracy in Action (Dublin, 1945); and “Commission on Vocational Organisation. Draft Report (Second Reading): Part IV: Recommendations,” n.d. [c. 1943], GDA, B/8/33, 77–82.

53 Manning Robertson, Town Planning in Ireland (Dundalk, 1944), 3–19, at 3, 10; Michael Scott, “The Village Planned,” Bell 3, no. 3 (1941): 232–39. See also the influential Bournville Village Trust's When We Build Again (London, 1941).

54 Patrick J. Tuite, “Planning and a National Policy,” Speech at the Architectural Society Inaugural Meeting, University College Dublin, 7 May 1946, University College Dublin, P/67/574(4); Irish Press, 8 May 1946. Tuite (b. 1923) later worked with the architectural firms Cullen & Co and Vincent Kelly, and for Dublin Corporation; see Who's Who, What's What and Where in Ireland (London and Dublin, 1973), 342. A similar viewpoint existed among British planners: see Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century, 3rd ed. (London, 2002), 355.

55 Connacht Tribune, 16 October 1942. Browne kept a copy in his records; see GDA, B/12/299. See also Mort, “Fantasies of Metropolitan Life,” 124–25, 143–44; James Greenhalgh, Reconstructing Modernity: Space, Power and Governance in Mid-Twentieth Century British Cities (Manchester, 2017), 29–76.

56 Secretary, Department of Local Government and Public Health, Dublin, to Dermot O'Toole (hereafter O'Toole), 14 March 1944, O'Toole Family Collection, Dublin; Irish Times, 5 February 1944.

57 Irish Architectural Archive, Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720–1940, s.v., “O'Toole, Christopher Joseph Dermot,” https://www.dia.ie/architects/view/6523/o%27toole-christopherjosephdermot, accessed 29 March 2020; Gerald McNicholl, “Obituary: C. D. O'Toole,” in The Green Book, Published 1972: The Journal of the Architectural Association of Ireland (Wicklow, 1972), 40.

58 Dermot O'Toole, “Inaugural Address, 1943,” in The Green Book, 1943–1944: The Journal of the Architectural Association of Ireland (Dublin, 1944), 24–29.

59 Richard J. Butler, “Building and Rebuilding Galway since 1820,” in Galway: Hardiman and Beyond: Arts and Culture in Galway, 1820–2020, ed. John Cunningham and Ciaran McDonough (Melbourne, 2020).

60 George Lee to Browne, 23 March 1944, GDA, B/6/9.

61 Dermot O'Toole, Borough of Galway Planning Scheme: Report on Sketch Development Plan Prepared for the Corporation of Galway (Galway, 1944), 6–7, 10. The density of the Galway borough was 341 persons per 100 acres in 1936; see Ireland: Census of Population, 1936, vol. 1, Population, Area and Valuation of Each District Electoral Division and of Each Larger Unit of Area (Dublin, 1938), 27.

62 O'Toole, Galway Planning Scheme, 9.

63 Ireland: Census of Population, 1936, vol. 4, Housing (Dublin, 1940), 114. The category “families” here excludes “one-person” families as set out in the census. In Dublin, for comparison, the number stood at over twenty thousand.

64 Saorstát Éireann: Census of Population, 1926, vol. 1, Population, Area and Valuation of Each District Electoral Division and of Each Larger Unit of Area (Dublin, 1928), 18; Ireland: Census of Population, 1946, vol. 1, Population of District Electoral Division, Towns and Larger Units of Area (Dublin, 1949), 17; John Cunningham, “A Town Tormented by the Sea”: Galway, 1790–1914 (Dublin, 2004).

65 Saorstát Éireann: Census of Population, 1926, vol. 3, Religions; Birthplaces (Dublin, 1929), 176–77; Ireland: Census of Population, 1946, vol. 3, Religions; Birthplaces (Dublin, 1952), 82.

66 O'Toole, Galway Planning Scheme, 12.

67 O'Toole would have been familiar with the Dublin's slums inquiry of these years. See Report of Inquiry into the Housing of the Working Classes of the City of Dublin, 1939–43 (Dublin, 1944); T. W. T. Dillon, “Slum Clearance: Past and Future,” Studies 34, no. 133 (1945): 13–20.

68 O'Toole, Galway Planning Scheme, 12. Here O'Toole borrows from Manning Robertson, Reconstruction Pamphlet, No. 1: Town Planning … Published in Connection with the National Town Planning Exhibition Held in Dublin, April 25th to May 5th, 1944 (Dublin, 1944), 2. See Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization (London, 1994), chap. 8.

69 O'Toole, Galway Planning Scheme, 14.

70 Dermot O'Toole, “Borough of Galway planning scheme, sheet no. 5,” undated [1944], Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin, Dermot O'Toole Collection, acc. 90/30, bin 67, roll 21.

71 O'Toole, Galway Planning Scheme, 14, 15, 18; see also MacCabe, Ambition and Achievement, 56–57.

72 Janssen, “Religiously Inspired Urbanism,” 137.

73 Patrick Davis et al., “Report of Committee Appointed by […] the Bishop to Examine the Question of the Most Suitable Site for the New Cathedral,” 1 December 1938, GDA, B/6/3.

74 Browne, Memo on Galway Sketch Development Plan, ca. 1945, GDA, B/12/31.

75 “Minor public buildings,” O'Toole stated, were deliberately left out at the sketch report stage. O'Toole, Galway Planning Scheme, 18. There is also a fleeting mention of school provision in proposed new satellite suburbs (9).

76 Connacht Tribune, 31 May 1944.

77 O'Flynn to Browne, 31 May 1944, GDA, B/6/12.

78 Browne to O'Flynn, 8 June 1944, GDA, B/6/9.

79 O'Flynn to Browne, 9 June and 7 July 1944, GDA, B/6/12. O'Flynn to O'Toole, 9 June 1944, O'Toole Family Collection, Dublin. O'Toole to Browne, 21 August and 4 September 1944, GDA, B/12/31. O'Toole, Plan drawing showing proposed school site, 5 September 1944, GDA, B/12/31.

80 Browne to Gerard Naughton, 29 June 1944; Naughton to Browne, 30 June 1944, GDA, B/6/9.

81 Browne to Michael O'Flaherty, 30 June 1944, GDA, B/6/9.

82 Memo, “Record of Churches, Presbyteries, Convents, Schools Built 1937–1962,” undated [ca. 1962], GDA, B/4/2.

83 Ireland: Census of Population, 1936, vol. 2, Occupations of Males and Females (Dublin, 1940), 125; Ireland: Census of Population, 1946, vol. 2, Occupations of Males and Females in Each Province, County, County Borough, Urban and Rural District (Dublin, 1953), 145.

84 See reports on the condition of schools in each parish, ca. 1939–1953, GDA, B/2/41 and B/2/42; Browne to P. Ó Muircheartaigh (hereafter Ó Muircheartaigh), 10 August 1944, GDA, B/2/42. The city schools were numbers 12 (Nuns’ Island) and 20 (Monastery Schools, Lombard Street) on his 1944 priority list. See also Ellen Rowley, “Schools in the Twentieth Century,” in Art and Architecture of Ireland, vol. 4, Architecture 1600–2000, ed. Andrew Carpenter et al. (Dublin, 2014), 217–21.

85 Patrick Flynn to Browne, 12 October 1944, GDA, B/6/12; Memo, “Report from Committee [on] Future Primary School Accommodation in Galway City,” 12 July 1945, GDA, B/2/10.

86 Evening Herald (Dublin), 9 February 1945; Galway Observer, 19 May 1945; Connacht Tribune, 14 July 1945.

87 The Catholic Truth Society of Ireland had published Browne's Elementary Points of Canon Law for Laymen as early as 1929. See also correspondence involving the society in GDA, B/1/47–50, and Browne's correspondence with Hugh P. Allen (hereafter Allen) in particular, 1938–1951, in GDA, B/1/47.

88 See, for example, Allen to Browne, 27 November 1940, including Allen's memo, “‘Who's Who’ in Left Movement,” n.d., GDA, B/1/47. See also Madden, “Bishop Michael Browne of Galway and Anti-Communism,” 24–25; Enda Delaney, “Anti-Communism in Mid-Twentieth-Century Ireland,” English Historical Review 126, no. 521 (2011): 878–903, at 884–85.

89 Irish Independent, 23 October 1957.

90 Browne to Francis O'Reilly (hereafter O'Reilly), 14 June 1943, GDA, B/8/1.

91 O'Reilly to Browne, 26 April 1945, GDA, B/12/31.

92 O'Reilly to Browne, 2 May 1945, GDA, B/12/32.

93 O'Reilly to Browne, 7 May 1945, GDA, B/12/32.

94 O'Reilly to Browne, 12 May 1945, GDA, B/12/32.

95 O'Reilly to Browne, 16 May 1945, GDA, B/12/32; Stephanie Rains, “City Streets and the City Edition: Newsboys and Newspapers in Early Twentieth-Century Ireland,” Irish Studies Review 24, no. 2 (2016): 142–58, at 146.

96 O'Reilly to Browne, 22 May 1945, GDA, B/12/32.

97 O'Reilly to Browne, 22 May 1945, GDA, B/12/32.

98 O'Reilly to Browne, 14 August 1945; Browne to O'Reilly, 13 September 1945; O'Reilly to Browne, 15 September 1945; and O'Reilly to Browne, 25 September 1945, all GDA, B/12/32.

99 Galway Observer, 2 June 1945.

100 [Michael Browne], “The Proposed Town Plan for Galway: By A Citizen,” [May 1945,] GDA, B/12/32, 1.

101 [Browne], “Proposed Town Plan,” 2.

102 [Browne], “Proposed Town Plan,” 2, 4, 5, 8. For an alternative view, where planning is seen as a protector of private property rights, see Robertson, Reconstruction Pamphlet, No. 1: Town Planning, 9–10.

103 Connacht Tribune, 14 July 1945; Galway Observer, 14 July 1945.

104 James Slattery to Browne, 11 October 1945, GDA, B/12/31.

105 Browne to Slattery, 30 October 1945, GDA, B/12/31.

106 Galway Chamber of Commerce, “Recommendations on the Galway Town Planning Scheme,” 18 December 1945, GDA, B/12/31, 8–9.

107 Connacht Tribune, 14 July 1945; Connacht Sentinel, 22 May 1945; Galway Observer, 14 July 1945.

108 Connacht Sentinel, 4 September 1945; Connacht Tribune, 19 January 1946; Galway Observer, 2 February 1946; C. Clerkin (hereafter Clerkin) to Browne, 21 January 1946; O'Flynn to Clerkin, 2 February 1946, GDA, B/6/12. O'Flynn issued Prohibition Orders on building in Galway before the draft plan was formally adopted; see, for example, Galway Observer, 8 September 1945.

109 Browne to Clerkin, 26 January 1946, GDA, B/6/12.

110 O'Flynn to Clerkin, 2 February 1946, GDA, B/6/12; Minutes of Galway Borough Council, 4 February 1946, Galway County Library, file 109/38/72; Ireland: Census of Population, 1936, vol. 3, Religions; Birthplaces (Dublin, 1939), 10.

111 John Davis, “‘Simple Solutions to Complex Problems’: The Greater London Council and the Greater London Development Plan, 1965–1973,” in Civil Society in British History: Ideas, Identities, Institutions, ed. Jose Harris (Oxford, 2003), 249–74; Hanna, Modern Dublin, 67–82. For a rare exception to this, see Connacht Sentinel, 15 May 1945.

112 Browne, “Address to the Mayor […] of the Galway Borough Council,” 18 February 1946, GDA, B/6/12. The number of Protestants in the city in 1946 was just 264, down from 312 a decade earlier. Census of Population, 1936, 3:10; Census of Population, 1946, 3:8.

113 O'Toole to Browne, 6 March 1946, GDA, B/12/31; Browne to Thomas Derrig, 29 January 1947, GDA, B/6/12.

114 O'Toole to Browne, 6 March 1946, GDA, B/12/31; Galway Town Improvement Act, 1853 (16 & 17 Vict., c. cc), ss. 27, 33. O'Flynn's powers as planning officer were also undermined in 1946 by a court case concerning an “illegal”’ house extension, which he lost on appeal. Connacht Tribune, 10 August 1946.

115 Browne to O'Toole, 20 March 1946, GDA, B/12/31.

116 Browne to Ó Muircheartaigh, 22 January 1946, GDA, B/2/10; Ó Muircheartaigh to John J. Hyland, 14 October 1946, GDA, B/6/12.

117 John Davis, “Central Government and the Towns,” in The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. 3, 1840–1950, ed. Martin Daunton (Cambridge, 2001), 259–86.

118 C. A. Ruiséal to Ó Muircheartaigh, 28 November 1946; Clerkin to Ó Muircheartaigh, 20 December 1946, GDA, B/6/12.

119 Browne to Thomas Derrig, 21 February 1947; Ó Muircheartaigh to Browne, 1 March 1947, GDA, B/6/12.

120 Pauric J. Dempsey, “Thomas Derrig (1897–1956),” in Dictionary of Irish Biography, vol. 3, ed. James McGuire and James Quinn (Cambridge, 2009), 185–86. Browne was close to many leading Fianna Fáil politicians of his time, especially Seán T. O'Kelly (president of Ireland, 1945–1959). See GDA, B/6/55, B/11/187, and B/11/222.

121 Browne to Derrig, 29 January 1947, GDA, B/6/12.

122 Browne to Seán MacEntee (hereafter MacEntee), 5 February 1947, GDA, B/6/12. For MacEntee, see Seán MacEntee, Speech at the Architectural Society Inaugural Meeting, University College Dublin, “Planning and a National Policy,” 7 May 1946, University College Dublin, P/67/574(1); Seán MacEntee, Speech at the Town Planning Institute Dinner, Dublin, 11 March 1947, University College Dublin, P/67/580(2); “A Nomad's Notebook: Minister Is ‘A Firm Believer in Long-Term Planning,’” Irish Builder and Engineer 89, no. 6 (1947): 194; Lee, Ireland, 1912–1985, 275, 284–86.

123 S. A. de Smith, “Town and Country Planning Act, 1947,” Modern Law Review 11, no. 1 (1948): 72–81, at 72, 77. For an alternative view, see John Stevenson, “The Countryside, Planning, and Civil Society in Britain, 1926–1947,” in Harris, Civil Society in British History, 191–212, at 210. See also “A Nomad's Notebook: The British Planning Bill: £300,000,000 for ‘Development Rights,’” Irish Builder and Engineer 89, no. 3 (1947): 88.

124 Keane, Law of Local Government, 220–27; McDermott and Woulfe, Compulsory Purchase and Compensation, 1–9. Despite these constitutional protections, compulsory purchase and clearance orders on sanitation grounds were relatively common in 1930s Ireland. See Connell, “From Hovels to Homes,” 150, 154, 223–26.

125 Browne, “Address to the Mayor […] of the Galway Borough Council,” 27 February 1947, GDA, B/6/12.

126 Minutes of the Galway Borough Council, 20 March 1947, GDA, B/6/12; Connacht Sentinel, 25 March 1947.

127 Clerkin to Browne, 31 March 1947, and MacEntee to Browne, 16 April 1947, GDA, B/6/12.

128 Browne, “Points for discussion with the Minister for Education, 30 July 1948,” undated [July 1948]; Browne to John J. Robinson (hereafter Robinson), 30 November 1948, GDA, P/18/30.

129 Rowley, “Schools in the Twentieth Century,” 218–19.

130 Education Act, 1944 (7 & 8 Geo. VI, c. 31); “Education and Its Environment,” Irish Builder and Engineer 91, no. 13 (1949): 586.

131 Irish Builder and Engineer 91, no. 15 (1949): 684.

132 See Galway School Medical Service files, M11/3, and Reports on Galway School Premises, 1943–55, M11/5, National Archives of Ireland, Department of Health files. See also Andrew McCarthy, “Aspects of Local Health in Ireland in the 1950s,” in The Lost Decade: Ireland in the 1950s, ed. Dermot Keogh, Finbarr O'Shea, and Carmel Quinlan (Cork, 2004), 118–34, at 124; O'Connor, History of Galway County Council, 138–40. McConn had been the acting county medical officer for Galway since the late 1930s and was formally appointed in August 1944; see Connacht Tribune, 19 August 1944. The role was created in 1878; see Public Health (Ireland) Act, 1878 (41 & 42 Vict., c. 52), s. 11. See also Helen Meller, Towns, Plans, and Society in Modern Britain (Cambridge, 1997), 21.

133 Connacht Tribune, 6 August 1949.

134 Breandán Ó hEithir, Lead Us into Temptation (Inverin, 2009), 121–27.

135 Browne, Text of Sermon given at the Pro-Cathedral, 7 August 1949, GDA, B/6/12.

136 Browne, Text of Sermon given at the Pro-Cathedral, 7 August 1949, GDA, B/6/12.

137 Browne refers here to Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty, leader of Catholic Church in Hungary, tortured and imprisoned by Soviet authorities in 1949, commenting, furthermore, “it was on the pretext of public health and traffic that they prohibited gatherings of Catholics to listen to Cardinal Mindszenty.” Browne, Text of Sermon given at the Pro-Cathedral, 7 August 1949, GDA, B/6/12. Browne also devoted a sermon to speaking about Mindszenty on 31 December 1948. Connacht Sentinel, 4 January 1949.

138 Browne went to St. Jarlath's College, Tuam, Co. Galway, ca. 1905–1913, a school that also charged fees, though they were lower than those of many other schools in Ireland. Anne Dolan, “Michael John Browne (1895–1980),” in McGuire and Quinn, Dictionary of Irish Biography, vol. 1, 919–20; John Cunningham, St. Jarlath's College, Tuam, 1800–2000 (Tuam, 1999), 156–58.

139 Browne, Text of Sermon given at the Pro-Cathedral, 7 August 1949, GDA, B/6/12. An earlier draft text, undated, containing the omitted phrase “it reeks more of Communist Russia,” also survives in the same folder. See also Irish Press, 9, 10, 11 August 1949; Irish Independent, 19 August 1949; and Standard (Dublin), 12, 26 August 1949. See also J. Collins, “The Genesis of City and County Management,” Administration: Journal of the Institute of Public Administration of Ireland 2, no. 2 (1954): 27–38, at 36, 38.

140 John Fitzgerald to Browne, 9 August and 11 August 1949, GDA, B/6/12; Connacht Tribune, 13 August 1949.

141 O'Flynn to Browne, 18 August 1949, GDA, B/6/12.

142 O'Flynn to Browne, 18 August 1949, GDA, B/6/12.

143 O'Flynn to Browne, 18 August and 23 August 1949, GDA, B/6/12.

144 Joseph F. Costello to Browne, 11 August and 18 August 1949, GDA, B/6/12; Galway Observer, 20 August 1949.

145 Letters of support from various religious institutions and societies to Browne, 12–20 August 1949, GDA, B/6/12.

146 John O'Hanrahan to Browne, 10 August 1949, GDA, B/6/12.

147 Robinson to the Editor, Irish Press, 18 August 1949; Robinson to Browne, 18 August, 25 August 1949, GDA, B/6/12; Irish Press, 17 August 1949, and an unidentified newspaper clipping, ca. August 1949, “Proposed New School for Galway,” including elevation sketches, GDA, B/6/12; Madden, “Bishop Michael Browne of Galway and Anti-Communism,” 27–28.

148 Private correspondence with Tom Kilgariff, Galway, 22 June 2017. See also Lucy Delap and Sue Morgan, eds., Men, Masculinities and Religious Change in Twentieth-Century Britain (London, 2013).

149 Donnelly, “Bishop Michael Browne of Galway,” 16–39.

150 Browne, handwritten memo, undated but August–September 1949, GDA, B/6/12.

151 See correspondence concerning Canon Law, 1935–1966, GDA, B/11/156 and B/11/158; Michael Browne, Elementary Points of Canon Law for Laymen (Dublin, 1929).

152 Browne, handwritten memo, undated [August–September 1949], GDA, B/6/12. For Browne's references to the 1917 Code of Canon Law, see T. Lincoln Bouscaren and Adam C. Ellis, Canon Law: A Text and Commentary (Milwaukee, 1951), 924.

153 John Dignan to Browne, 23 August 1949, GDA, B/6/12.

154 See, for example, Irish Times, 24, 29, 31 August, 3, 7 September 1949; Belfast Telegraph, 31 August 1949; Belfast Newsletter, 2 September 1949.

155 Irish Builder and Engineer 91, no. 17 (1949): 760.

156 Charles F. McConn (hereafter McConn) to O'Flynn, 24 January, 7 February 1950, GDA, P/18/11; Irish Independent, 3 February 1950; and Education Act, 1944 (7 & 8 Geo. VI, c. 31), §§ 53–55.

157 Galway Observer, 18 November 1949 and 7 January 1950. McConn to O'Flynn, 24 January 1950, GDA, P/18/11.

158 O'Flynn to John J. Hyland, 28 January 1950, GDA, P/18/11.

159 McConn lists these regulations in McConn to the Town Clerk, Galway Corporation, 16 February 1950, GDA, P/18/11. See also C. G. Stillman's (untitled) paper on postwar British schools read to the Architectural Association of Ireland, in Irish Builder and Engineer 92, no. 6 (1950): 255–56.

160 Browne, memo, undated [February 1950], GDA, P/18/11. McConn had long caused extra work for Browne by exposing deficient schools under the diocese's management. See correspondence between McConn and Browne, GDA, B/2/41.

161 Browne to Robinson, 13 February 1950, GDA, P/18/11.

162 Browne to Michael Donnellan, Richard Mulcahy, and Noël Browne, 17 April 1950, GDA, P/18/11. See also Browne, memo, undated [March–April 1950], GDA, P/18/11; Connacht Tribune, 15 April 1950.

163 Correspondence relating to the Galway Workers’ Strike of 1950, GDA, B/12/145; Correspondence relating to Galway trade union disputes, 1939–51, GDA, B/1/20–21; Galway Observer, 8 July 1950; Connacht Tribune, 15 April 1950, 15 July 1950. See also Madden, “Bishop Michael Browne of Galway and Anti-Communism,” 24–28.

164 Connacht Sentinel, 9 January 1954; Niall T. Coll, The History of St. Patrick's School, 1954–2004 (Galway, 2006), 15–18. The school features prominently in a 1957 Bord Fáilte [Irish Tourism Board] film. See Colm Ó Laoghaire, “Glamour of Galway” (1957), at 1:37–1:42, 3:15–3:27, 9:23–9:57, 10:05–10:08, Bord Fáilte Film Collection, Irish Film Institute, Dublin, https://ifiplayer.ie/glamour-of-galway, accessed 15 May 2020.

165 Irish Press, 24 October 1950.

166 See Dermot O'Toole, Drawings for Garryglass Fire Station, Galway, 1948–54, Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin, Dermot O'Toole Collection, acc. 90/30, bin 67, roll 5.The same collection has O'Toole's proposal for the redevelopment of Eyre Square, Galway, August 1959; see bin 67, roll 21.

167 Robert A. Dahl, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven, 1961).

168 David Seth Jones, “Divisions within the Irish Government over Land-Distribution Policy, 1940–70,” Éire-Ireland 36, nos. 3–4 (2001): 83–109, at 105–6; Terence Dooley, “The Land for the People”: The Land Question in Independent Ireland (Dublin, 2004), 226.

169 J. B. Collins to Robinson, 5 March 1957; O'Flynn to Browne, 15 April 1957, GDA, B/6/61.

170 Garvin, News from a New Republic, 155–97; Akenson, Mirror to Kathleen's Face, 103; Farren, Politics of Irish Education, 196–99.

171 Hulme, Tom, “‘A Nation Depends on Its Children’: School Buildings and Citizenship in England and Wales, 1900–1939,” Journal of British Studies 54, no. 2 (2015): 406–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

172 Janssen, “Religiously Inspired Urbanism,” 155.

173 Schaefer, Richard, “Program for a New Catholic Wissenschaft: Devotional Activism and Catholic Modernity in the Nineteenth Century,” Modern Intellectual History 4, no. 3 (2007), 433–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wildman, Urban Redevelopment and Modernity, 143–89.

174 Lanigan, James Joyce, Urban Planning and Irish Modernism, 9; Meller, Towns, Plans, and Society, 87.

175 Rose, Gillian, Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge (Cambridge, 1993), 137Google Scholar.

176 Hanna, “‘Don't Make Dublin a Museum,’” 360–65.