Edmund Townsend was born in the barony of Duhallow, County Cork, in 1798. He may have been a convert from Protestantism. He received an education equal to that afforded by present-day universities and could speak Irish, English, French and German and won fame as a mathematician. He became an architect but turned his back on a lucrative profession to join the Presentation Brothers.
Edmund may have known Br. Michael Augustine Riordan , who was also an architect, in the early 1820s, and may have been influenced by him in joining the Presentation Brothers. He was one of Br. Augustine's assistants in the school in Cat Lane off Barrack Street, Cork, in 1827, and had by then become a Brother himself, taking Paul as his name in religion. By 1829 Br. Augustine had built the new school premises at the South Monastery, Douglas Street.

In 1838 Br. Paul was acting head of the Lancasterian School in Cork, but at the request of Bishop Egan of Kerry he went with three other Brothers to open a school in Killarney. Despite extreme poverty, hardship, unsuitable accommodation and illness in the community, the school in Killarney prospered and in 1842 Br. Paul was asked to open another school in Miltown, ten miles away.

Br. Paul designed the new school and monastery in Miltown and laboured at quarrying the stone and at the building. He returned to Killarney in 1845 and began preparations for a new school and monastery there. Severe legal and financial difficulties, as well as the Great Famine of 1847, delayed the construction and it was 1861, almost twenty-four years after the Brothers arrived in Killarney, before the building was completed by Br. Ligouri Gaynor.

In 1848 Br. Paul returned to Cork, despite Bishop Egan's intense initial opposition to the move, to succeed Br. Augustine, whose health had declined, as superior of the South Monastery and also as superintendent and manager of both the South Monastery school and the larger Lancasterian School in Great George Street (now Washington Street). In 1854 he began building Greenmount National School which was completed in 1856. He only retired from these responsibilities in 1871 when age and infirmity forced him to do so. He was succeeded by Brother Austin Shanahan.

It is as a teacher Br. Paul is best remembered. A pupil wrote :

"I can never forget the angelic, kindly man. His childish simpliciy, his humility and deep piety drew children towards him with feelings of confidence. I can never forget the kindly interest he took in my welfare, and there must be a great many, who, like myself, owe their success in life to him."

Br. Paul died after a short illness on 8 October 1881. His resting place is in the vault in the grounds of the South Presentation Convent of the Sacred Heart, formerly the South Monastery.

Reference:
Gentlemen of the Presentation (Feheney, Veritas, 1999)
Annals, South Monastery
Presentation Brothers Allen, 1993

 

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