Rhetoric House, Maynooth

Kildare · Ireland · Historic building

Room number two in Rhetoric House took two seminarians nineteen years apart. It was made an oratory, and no mirror has hung there since.

In Rhetoric House at the seminary in Maynooth is a room no student has slept in since 1860. On 1 March 1841 a twenty-one-year-old seminarian died in room number two, and nineteen years later, on 20 April 1860, another died the same way in the same room. Tradition speaks of something present in the room that drove them to it. A priest who offered to spend a night there came out in the morning with white hair. The college gave up and consecrated the room as an oratory to St Joseph, patron of a peaceful death. The window was bricked up from the inside, and no mirror has been allowed to hang in the room since. The room remains in Rhetoric House and is a waiting area among offices today; it is open, but nobody sleeps there.

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Where is Rhetoric House, Maynooth located?

Rhetoric House, Maynooth is in Kildare, Ireland.