St Sepulchre’s Library Grant
Marsh was well placed to make such a project happen. A former provost of Trinity College Dublin and then Church of Ireland archbishop of Dublin, he was a scholar, collector and administrator who regarded books as a public resource rather than simply private property. The projected library stood beside St Patrick’s, near the archbishop’s residence, instead of within Trinity. This location made a point: Dublin learning need not be confined to the university. Its public was nevertheless socially limited. Marsh envisaged access for graduates and gentlemen, not a universal reading room in the modern sense; women and poorer townspeople were not the intended beneficiaries. Even so, the scheme enlarged the city’s intellectual infrastructure beyond the libraries of college, cathedral and great house.