Honan Chapel, Religious building in Cork, Ireland

Honan Chapel is a small Catholic church on the grounds of University College Cork, built in the Hiberno-Romanesque revival style to designs drawn up in 1914 by architect James Finbarre McMullen and completed in 1916. Its grey ashlar facade rises to a gable topped by a small cross, with a narrow opening near the peak, three tall arched windows at the centre and square corner pillars capped by conical spires. A lower gabled section holds the arched doorway, flanked by four recessed arches, behind a low stone wall with metal railings.

Isabella Honan, heir to a Cork butter-merchant fortune, left £10,000 of a £40,000 bequest to fund a Catholic place of worship for students at Queen's College Cork, then barred from state funding for chapels by the Irish Universities Act 1908. Dublin solicitor John O'Connell directed the project with university president Sir Bertram Windle; architect James Finbarre McMullen drew the plans in 1914 and Cork builder John Sisk erected the chapel for £8,000. Bishop Thomas A. O'Callaghan laid the foundation stone on 18 May 1915, and the chapel was consecrated on 5 November 1916, dedicated to Saint Finbarr.

Fifteen of the nineteen stained glass windows show Irish saints; eleven were made by Harry Clarke, the rest by A. E. Child, Catherine O'Brien and Ethel Rhind of the An Túr Gloine studio. The mosaic floor, by Oppenheimer of Manchester, depicts the River of Life. John O'Connell insisted the work be done in Cork, by Cork labour, with materials from the city or county.

The chapel stands on the UCC campus, entered through a gate in the low stone wall and iron railings in front of the facade. It is an active Catholic chapel, so visits are best timed outside Mass; the interior is where the nineteen stained glass windows and mosaic floor are seen.

John O'Connell required the chapel to be built "in Cork, by Cork labour and with materials obtained from the City or County of Cork". The contractor was the Cork firm John Sisk, and the architects were James Finbarre McMullen and Associates. The foundation stone, laid on 18 May 1915 by Bishop Thomas A. O'Callaghan, records that the chapel was built "by the charity of Isabella Honan for the scholars and students of Munster".