Royal Cork Institution
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since July 2006. |
Royal Cork Institution, Irish Cultural Institution 1803-1885
Contents |
[edit] Origins
It was founded by Rev. Thomas Dix Hincks a minister of the Old Presbyterian Church In Princes street, Cork and was modelled on institutions such as the Royal Dublin Society and the Royal Society of London. It was incorporated in 1807 and renamed the Royal Cork Institution (RCI). It operated from premises on the South Mall opposite the current Imperial hotel and was a British Government supported educational centre for 70 years. Its early patrons included business and landed people and included William Beamish (1760-1828), William Crawford, Cooper Penrose (1736-1815) and James Roche (1770-1853). It offered courses, public lectures on science and scientific principles in agricullture and industry. The RCI had a collection of scientific instruments and library of over 5,000 volumes with a private and public patents collection - a copy of this is in the Boole Library of University College Cork.
[edit] Activities
The RCI had established the Cork Botanic Gardens in 1806 but a shortage of funds in 1828 forced the withdrawal of the RCI and the property was later to become a cemetery. The RCI was influential in the Government decision to establish the Queens College in Cork. It published the first volume of the Munster Farmer's Magazine in 1812. It also established the Crawford College of Art and Design now part of the Cork Institute of Technology (CIT). It was connected with medical schools and gave lectures on anatomy. Lack of funds necessitated the RCI becoming a private society in 1850 and its closure c.1885. Among those associated with the RCI were Richard Caulfield at one time its secretary and librarian, Robert Day, Abraham Abell. The RCI had an influential role in the intellectual life of Cork until the Cork Cuvierian Society and this in turn was supplanted with the establishment of Queen's College, Cork, in 1849.
[edit] Canova casts
The RCI acquired these from the Society of Fine Arts in Cork who were given them by the Prince Regent later George IV. He in turn had received them from Pope Pius VII who had commissioned Antonio Canova to make a set of plasters from statues in the Vatican. The statues are currently in the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Kieran McCarthy, Discover Cork, O'Brien Pres Limited 2003 ISBN 0-86278-817-X
- Tim Cadogan and Jeremiah Falvey, A Biographical Dictionart of Cork, 2006, Four Courts Press ISBN 1-84682-030-8
