obby Robert Bourke Connemara’s  dream public library took shape on March 22, 1890 with the laying of a foundation stone. Architect Henry Irwin offered his services.  The library building was inaugurated six years  later. Feeling a need to bookmark this important part of history, in 1896, the library was officially inaugurated as “Connemara”, a tribute to the man who envisioned the library. The years took its toll on the intricate paintings on the ceilings and the exquisite glass paintings.  Even the brilliance of the Indo-Saracenic architecture dulled with time.

Notice the famous colonial revival or Brewster chairs stylized very closely to Victorian Savonarola chairs of late 1800s. The Connemara library got filled with these chairs. Hundreds in numbers. In early 1900, they were gifts from the benevolent hands of Her Majesty, the Queen herself. Discarded to accommodate the renaissance revival cushion chairs in the palace and the royal institutions, four hundred of these chairs sailed to the then Madras Presidency and got housed in the Connemara Public Library. Notice the CPL. 141 inscribed on the chair. The then Arch Bishop of Madras took away a few of these chairs to his official residence. 

The chairs have stood the test of time and were auctioned as damaged furniture around the year 2000. This English turned rosewood resembles the iron wood of Asia. The damaged furniture have been acquired and carefully restored and placed here as a part of The STEVE BORGIA INDIAN HERITAGE MUSEUM. This piece of royal history is now exhibited at INDeco’s Lake Forest Hotel, Yercaud.