Church of Ireland's architectural drawings database expands

The RCBLibrary's 'Archive of the Month' for March explores the Church of Ireland's newly online 'Pain and Welland albums' collection of 1,500 architectural drawings of 591 church buildings.

South-west elevation of Innishannon parish church
(Cork), mid-19th century, by Joseph Welland,
RCB Library Ms 139/4.1

The recent upload of the 10 albums in this collection is the latest significant landmark in a huge digitisation and cataloguing project that started in 2011.

Many thousand drawings were already held in the Church's Architectural Drawings database, and the latest tranche of uploads means there are now a total of 8,615 digital drawings available to search and view free of charge. They include churches, glebe houses and rectories.

Architectural historian Dr Michael O'Neill has been carrying out the project for the past eight years and also put together the specific online exhibition An Even Wider Window to an Ecclesiastical World (the March archive), which can be viewed here.