Town Council pays €3,000 for Book of Kells reproduction to display in council buildings

A copy of the Book of Kells is back home in the local civic offices following the purchase of one of the 500 copies of the famed 1951 reproductions of the illuminated manuscript by Graf-verlag of Bern, Switzerland. The town council paid €3,000 for the work, which is in two volumes with vellum binding, at a sale conducted by local auctioneer, Oliver Usher, last week. Just one other serious bidder featured for the lot and Kells Town Clerk Jarlath Flanagan expressed his delight to have such a high-quality reproduction in the council"s secure possession. It is planned that it will go on display in a prominent site in the building. Town councillors continue their campaign to convince Trinity College, Dublin, to loan the original book for display in Kells, despite the college"s rejection of the Kells Heritage Centre as a suitable site some years ago. Some 550,00 visitors paid to see the Book of Kells in the college"s Long Hall last year, retaining its status as the biggest tourist draw in the capital city. The Book of Kells was brought to the town by monks from Iona in Scotland in 800AD, after it suffered Viking raids. It was to be secure there until its theft in the 1020s, but the manuscript was subseqeuntly recovered, without its embroidered metallic case. It was eventually sent to Trinity College in 1653 by Church of Ireland Bishop Hugh Brady, who feared for its fate from the Cromwellian garrison in the town at the time.