Brendan McNamara: Cork’s greatest philanthropist — Isabella Honan’s bequest

The Honan Chapel at UCC, Cork. Picture: Dan Linehan

ISABELLA Honan died in August, 110 years ago. Her family’s crypt in St Finbarre’s cemetery in Cork, where she was laid to rest, has recently undergone a splendid restoration.

Despite being recognised as the benefactor of the famous Honan Chapel at University College Cork, very little is known or has been written about her and her extraordinary benevolence.

In the history of the city of Cork, Isabella Honan is surely unrivalled as a philanthropist, disbursing through the provisions of her will the great fortune her family had accumulated to causes and charities.

On her death (according to probate records) she left just over £150,000, or €25m in today’s money. Isabella, or Belle to family and friends, was in her mid-to-late 70s at the time of her death.

An account of her funeral in The Cork Examiner, from August 1913, speaks of her long life and generosity, “the knowledge of much of her noble works… [was] denied to the public by her unostentatious methods”.

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Philanthropy was very much a family endeavour.

A highly successful merchant family dealing in butter and grain throughout the 1800s and early 1900s, the Honans were long-time supporters of charitable causes in Cork — they endowed churches, established charitable institutions, and funded schools and religious orders. Isabella will forever be associated with the Honan bequest which, on her death, provided for the building of the Chapel associated with her family name and other facilities in the Queen’s “Godless” College, now University College Cork. Already, around 1909, she had contributed £10,000 to endow a scholarship programme at the university.

National treasure

It is not clear to what extent Isabella was involved in realising the vision of Celtic excellence and orientation in the Chapel. Completed in 1916, the Collegiate Chapel draws together several important strands; historical, cultural, educational, and religious.

Its artistic masterpieces, whether the sublime Harry Clarke stained-glass windows or the tessellated Oppenheimer floor, are rightly internationally celebrated. Just last year the Honan Chapel reopened after a comprehensive refurbishment, bringing once more into focus this veritable national treasure.

The Honan Crypt in St Finbarre's in Cork.

The work has garnered a number of prestigious architectural awards, accentuating the importance of preserving this repository of all that is best of the Irish Arts and Crafts movement. Still, the Honan is “not just a museum” as the present Dean, Fr Ger Dunne OP, has often remarked. One-time Professor of Archaeology at University College Cork, Canon Patrick Power, once described the Chapel as a “soul-transporting temple” and many will agree.

Isabella’s executor and confidant John O’Connell, along with then-President of the College Bertram Windle, are chiefly responsible for the creation of this unique masterpiece.

O’Connell was given wide latitude to disburse the residue of Isabella’s fortune not specifically allocated in her last instructions. It is clear, however, that Isabella had particular projects in mind for her bequest. As stated in her will, she gave O’Connell a detailed list of causes she wished to benefit, though she did not bind him to its precise stipulations. In allocating up to £40,000 to various projects in the college, including the Chapel and the Honan Hostel (now no longer standing), O’Connell seems to have been true to her intentions.

In their excellent book on Windle, Ann Keogh and Dermot Keogh record that Isabella, O’Connell, and Windle developed a close friendship and shared ideas. O’Connell himself testifies to Isabella’s particular interest in the college and his insistence that all projects supported by her bequest should bear her family name.

Though the family’s wealth was generated over generations by her male forebears, and prominent men are credited with realising the “golden vision” that is the Honan Chapel, Isabella surely deserves just as much attention and recognition

Curiously, we know so little of this very private woman. Her date of birth is sometimes erroneously given as 1861, perhaps due to an error in the 1901 census return. In some accounts, she is a sister-in-law of the Honan brothers, rather than a sister. Other reliable records, though not always in agreement as to precise dates, tell us otherwise. It is perhaps only in her last will and testament that we can hear her voice and discern something of her motivation. In 18 tightly handwritten foolscap pages, her instructions dictate an astounding sharing of her wealth with people and institutions in Cork.

There were few immediate family members still living — Isabella, like her two brothers Robert and Mathew before her, was never married. A brother-in-law (her late sister’s husband) and her nephew’s widow receive modest inheritances. But a vast array of employees, friends, and charities, including religious orders and churches, are beneficiaries.

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In one interesting clause, Isabella leaves £2,000 to the now-closed North Infirmary Hospital in Cork. Half of the sum, she directs, should be used to increase the hospital’s “usefulness as a surgical hospital and to complete its equipment for performing necessary operations on the poor, and the free treatment of surgical cases”.

The Mercy Hospital and South Infirmary are also recipients. Isabella’s collection of oil paintings, some of which she indicates are quite valuable and which hung in her home at 26, Sydney Place on Wellington Road, are bequeathed to the Honan Summerhill Home, a nursing home the family had endowed.

All of this was outside the “residue” (unstated but obviously substantial) which her executor, O’Connell, could himself distribute, and which eventually led to the commissioning of the Honan Chapel. From her instructions that all monies left to friends and employees who were married women “should not come under the control of their husbands,” we get a glimpse of a fascinating and strong personality. The story of Cork’s greatest philanthropist has yet to be fully told.

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