Honan Chapel

The Honan Chapel (Irish: Séipéal Uí hEoghanáin), formally known as Saint Finbarr's Collegiate Chapel or the Honan Hostel Chapel is a small collegiate church located adjacent to the grounds of University College Cork in Cork city, Ireland.

The chapel, and its liturgical collection, was produced during the late phase of the Irish Arts and Crafts movement (1894–1925). Both the building and furnishings were designed and produced as a single commission. This accounts for an overall unity of style and design and the rich interplay of Celto-Byzantine motifs in the fabric of the building and the ornate furnishings, altar plate, hangings and vestments. The traditions of Celtic art and Hiberno-Romanesque architecture were blended with tastes for Symbolism (arts) and Art Nouveau popular in Europe before the outbreak of the First World War (1914–18). In Ireland this was known, artistically, as the Celtic Twilight: a time for rediscovering a lost national identity through Celtic art and myths. This is seen in the poetry of W. B. Yeats and the plays of J. M. Synge. Visually, the patrons of the Honan commission were searching for a new sense of Irish national identity on the threshold of political independence from Britain.

The chapel was consecrated on 5 November 1916. Although the chapel is dedicated to Cork's patron Finbarr, its name commemorates the chapel's benefactors, wealthy Cork merchants, the Honan family. When Isabella Honan died in 1913, the executor of her will, Rev. Sir John O´Connell, allocated £40,000 of the Honan estate to then Queen's College, now University College, Cork. Under the foundation charter of Queen's College Cork (1845) the college is non-denominational. As Catholic students had no place of worship, some of the money from the Honan estate was bequesthed to build a chapel and hostel (now demolished) to serve Roman Catholic students and staff of the University.

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