Maynooth', a village of County Kildare, Ireland, 15 miles NW. of Dublin by rail; pop. (1891) 948. It has the ruined castle of the Geraldines, and is the seat of the Roman Catholic college, established (1795) by the Irish parliament during Pitt's ministry, to meet a necessity created by the destruction, through the French Revolution, of the places of education in France, upon which the Irish Catholic clergy had been driven to rely. The original endowment, an annual vote of £8928, was continued, although not without controversy and keen opposition on the part of zealous Protestants, by the imperial parliament after the act of union. In 1846 Sir Robert Peel carried a bill for a permanent endowment of £26,000 a year, to which was added a grant of £30,000 for building purposes; in 1869 the endowment was withdrawn, a capital sum of £364,000 being granted in its stead. The building erected under the original endowment is a plain quadrangle. The new college is a very striking Gothic quadrangle by Pugin, containing professors' and students' apartments, lecture-halls, and a singularly line library and refectory. The chapel was (with the exception of a tower and spire 275 feet high) completed at a cost of £50,000, and dedicated in 1890. Designed by the late J. J. M'Carthy in the Decorated Gothic style, it consists of a great nave, choir, and sanctuary, ending in a five-sided apse, from which radiate five chapels. A great part of the college buildings was burned in November 1878, but has since been restored.