JOSEPH VINCENT DOWNES (1890-1967)

Distinguished Architect who combined an interest in the modern movement with a passion for church design 

Lecturer in Architecture c. 1933

 

Of all the subject areas that might have drawn expertise from outside Maynooth, church design is perhaps the one most obviously neglected. There is no evidence that, apart from the interest of individual professors and students, there was any real attempt to encourage learning on an organised basis in what would be for many priests a vital area of concern. By the second half of the twentieth century, influential practitioners such as Liam McCormick, Seamus Shesgreen, Daithi Hanley, Patrick Moloney and Richard Hurley had created relationships with individual bishops, and sometimes parish priests, that resulted in noteworthy buildings and interiors being created.

But a chance reference in an architectural database reveals that in or about 1933, one Joseph Vincent Downes was given a remit to lecture on architecture at Maynooth. Nothing is known of the extent of that remit, or the context in which it was arranged (the president at the time was James McCaffrey, an ecclesiastical historian; he died in 1935 and was succeeded by John Dalton, later Cardinal Archbishop of Armagh)