In 1817 the Royal College of St. Patrick at Maynooth was just over twenty years old. Its founding staff, both Irish and French natives, had come mainly from France, fleeing the persecution of the Revolution, to begin the instruction of young Irishmen towards ordination as Catholic priests. The Royal College, funded by the British colonial government to counter the risk of future French revolutionary influence on Irish clerics by educating them at home, was located in two Georgian buildings at the bottom of the main street in the Kildare village of Maynooth.

The death of Fr. Francis Power, one of the most prominent of the founding generation, prompted the college authorities to consider establishing a formal cemetery as a fitting resting place for academic staff and students who were lost to the growing community. Members of religious orders, male and female, associated with the college would also be buried there, as would some of the dedicated lay staff who served in domestic and administrative roles.

Over the next two hundred years more than 140 burials would take place there. These have now been documented in a media-friendly format, with graphic representation of the cemetery layout and individual gravesite locations presented on site through heritage markers, and also carried on this website.

The Historic Maynooth College Cemetery represents the history of the Irish Catholic church in a meaningful way over through the life-stories of academic staff, lay staff and students, in an institution that for in its first century offered the only opportunity for an advanced education to a people emerging from religious oppression (though the 16th century Trinity College declared itself open to Catholics in the mid-18th century, but, the church forbade its members to enrol there until the 1970s).

Today the cemetery is a peaceful oasis in a busy campus, and a location where the rich academic and religious heritage of the Historic'Maynooth College can be contemplated while also recognising the almost miraculous development of these traditions to form the vibrant community that exists today across the three major institutions occupying the historic site - National Seminary, Pontifical University, and Maynooth University.