The Printing House, which has been closed for over a year due to a restoration period, has finally reopened.The third oldest building on campus, located right by New Square, will now be open to tourists and visitors. A red entrance arch has been installed, matching the bright colour of the temporary Book of Kells Experience, which is located in New Square.
The Printing House was built in the 1730s and designed by Richard Cassels, who is famous for designing buildings like the Leinster House and Rotunda Hospital. As the third oldest campus building, ranking just behind the Rubrics and the Old Library, Printing House is “both a ‘Protected Structure’ and ‘Recorded Monument’”.
The Printing House restoration is part of the wider “Old Library Redevelopment Plan”, which seeks to “conserve and safeguard the Old Library and its world-class collections”. After the opening of the temporary Book of Kells Experience in early 2024, the restoration of Printing House marks another major step in the plan to restore the Old Library.
During the works, the building was prepared to house temporary exhibitions before the eventual relocation of the Book of Kells there, which is planned for late 2027.
The first of the temporary exhibitions is entitled The Yeats Sisters and Irish Design, and delves into the history of the Cuala Press, an independent and female-run publishing house. The Cuala Press was housed in the Printing House for a period, along with the Dublin University Press. The latter was “Ireland’s oldest printing and publishing house” and was located in the building for nearly 250 years.
The Book of Kells is intended to stay in the Printing House during the entire period of restoration works in the Old Library. These are expected to be finished by 2030. According to a College spokesperson, “During the construction and conservation period there will be no public access to the Old Library and Long Room”. Instead, “visitors will have the digital, interactive ‘Book of Kells Experience’ which captures the history of the Book of Kells, the Long Room and highlights of the outstanding collections in the Library of Trinity College Dublin”, along with the ability to view the Book of Kells in the Printing House.
The conservation works in the Old Library are primarily intended to improve fire safety. According to the College website, “there is a need to modernise environmental control and fire measures” in light of “catastrophic fires in other heritage sites”. Moreover, “external pollutions and dust accumulation are taking their toll on the collections and the fabric of the building itself”. The plan is currently in stage 2a, with planning permission to be submitted this summer. In earlier stages, a large number of books were moved from the Long Room to storage for conservation purposes. During the process, workers had found a witch’s mark carved into one of the bookshelves. These marks were “typically placed at vulnerable parts of a building to ward off evil spirits”, which, according to the College, is particularly significant given that it appears to have been placed there “to protect the books”.
According to a College spokesperson, the returning of the books to the Old Library is in its “early planning stages” and will include the creation of individual, discrete slip cases for each of the circa 200,000 volumes, to both protect the volumes and (from a sustainability perspective) help minimise the amount of environmental plant and particulate pollution filtration necessary”.
