The Commissioning of St. Colman's Cathedral

The Cathedral committee, composed of respectable local citizens, was the official decision-making body in the building of the cathedral. The bishop usually presided at meetings, the parish clergy attended, and the current administrator acted as secretary.

Cobh Cathedral

The committee decided in January 1867 to hold an architectural competition and George Goldie (1828-1887), J.J. McCarthy (1817-1882), and the architectural partnership of E.W. Pugin (1834-1875) and G.C. Ashlin (1837-1921) were invited to submit plans.

This competition took place in 1859 and E.W. Pugin’s office was awarded the commission. E.W. Pugin eldest son of the famous Gothic Revival architect A.W. N. Pugin (1812-1852), had taken over his father’s practice after his death, but found Irish commissions difficult to organise from his base in England.

In 1859, therefore, he decided to take on his young Irish pupil G.C.Ashlin, as a partner, to run the Irish side of the business. The partnership lasted from 1859 until August 1868 dissolving ‘while the firm were at the height of their negotiations concerning St. Colman’s Cathedral’.

After the split, Ashlin took over their unfinished commissions. E.W. Pugin died suddenly in June 1875, aged only 42; Ashlin, however, lived to supervise the building to completion.