The Cathedral Church of St. Brigid, Kildare, in

Kildare Kildare () is a town in County Kildare, Ireland. , its population was 8,634 making it the 7th largest town in County Kildare. The town lies on the R445, some west of Dublin – near enough for it to have become, despite being a regional ce ...

County Kildare County Kildare ( ga, Contae Chill Dara) is a county in Ireland. It is in the province of Leinster and is part of the Eastern and Midland Region. It is named after the town of Kildare. Kildare County Council is the local authority for the county, ...

, is one of two cathedrals in the United Dioceses of Meath and Kildare of the

Church of Ireland The Church of Ireland ( ga, Eaglais na hÉireann, ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Kirk o Airlann, ) is a Christian church in Ireland and an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. It is organised on an all-Ireland basis and is the second ...

in Ireland. It is in the

ecclesiastical province An ecclesiastical province is one of the basic forms of jurisdiction Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' + 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United State ...

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

History

Early history

It is said that in the year 480 (35 years after

Saint Patrick Saint Patrick ( la, Patricius; ga, Pádraig ; cy, Padrig) was a fifth-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland. Known as the "Apostle of Ireland", he is the primary patron saint of Ireland, the other patron saints be ...

settled in

Armagh Armagh ( ; ga, Ard Mhacha, , "Macha's height") is the county town of County Armagh and a city in Northern Ireland, as well as a civil parish. It is the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland – the seat of the Archbishops of Armagh, the Pri ...

)

Saint Brigid Saint Brigid of Kildare or Brigid of Ireland ( ga, Naomh Bríd; la, Brigida; 525) is the patroness saint (or 'mother saint') of Ireland, and one of its three national saints along with Patrick and Columba. According to medieval Irish hagiogra ...

arrived in Kildare with her nuns. Her original abbey church may have been a simple wooden building. Soon after her death in 523 A.D., a costly shrine was erected in her honour in a new and larger building. For many centuries Kildare maintained a unique Irish experiment; the Abbess ruled over a double community of women and men, and the Bishop was subordinate in jurisdiction to the abbess. Between the years 835 and 998 the cathedral was devastated approximately 16 times, so that when the Norman, Ralph of Bristol, became bishop in 1223 it was virtually in ruins. Between then and 1230 it was largely rebuilt, likely in the years following 1223, and probably by Ralph of Bristol who was made Bishop of the see in 1222 and died in 1232. Still semi-ruinous by 1500, it was derelict by 1649. In 1686 it was partially rebuilt.

Demise and resurrection

The cathedral fell into disrepair following the 16th century

English Reformation The English Reformation took place in 16th-century England when the Church of England broke away from the authority of the pope and the Catholic Church. These events were part of the wider European Protestant Reformation, a religious and poli ...

, and was ruined during the 17th century

Irish Confederate Wars The Irish Confederate Wars, also called the Eleven Years' War (from ga, Cogadh na hAon-déag mBliana), took place in Ireland between 1641 and 1653. It was the Irish theatre of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, a series of civil wars in the kin ...

. A near complete restoration of the building was undertaken during the 19th century by

George Edmund Street George Edmund Street (20 June 1824 – 18 December 1881), also known as G. E. Street, was an English architect, born at Woodford in Essex. Stylistically, Street was a leading practitioner of the Victorian Gothic Revival. Though mainly an eccl ...

He started restoration work on the cathedral in 1875, and work continued after his death in 1881 until it was complete in 1896. These works included a new north transept, new chancel, and new west wall as well as rebuilding three sides of the square tower. A new oak roof (which is supported on stone corbels) was built into the wall buttresses. As part of the cathedral's centenary, the building underwent further restoration including new internal porches, repairs to internal and external stonework and rebuilding of the organ.

Current status and layout

Previously the cathedral of the Diocese of Kildare, it is now one of two cathedrals in the United Dioceses of Meath and Kildare. The present building is a restored

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

cathedral dating from 1223. The site occupied by the cathedral is likely the site of a pagan shrine to the goddess Brigid and the later of the church of

. A perpetual flame was kept here from pre-Christian times possibly until the time of Henry VIII, who destroyed many monasteries. Beside the cathedral stands one of County Kildare's five round towers which is high, and which can be climbed at certain times. The cathedral is cruciform in plan without aisles in the early gothic style with a massive square central tower. All the windows are lancet windows, singles or doubles, but triple lancets in the four gables. Design features include arches which span between buttress to buttress in advance of the side walls. The parapets are of the stepped Irish type (now much restored) but probably datable to c. 1395, the year in which a Papal relaxation was given to those who visited Kildare and gave alms for the conservation of the church. The interior treatment is plain, the window splays are not moulded, but the rear-arches, which are, spring from shafts with moulded capitals. These shafts are short and terminate in small curved tails.Irish Churches and Monastic Buildings – Volume II – by Harold G. Leask MArch, Litt.D., M.R.I.A., F.S.A., F.R.S.A.I., F.R.I.A.I..

Features

Features of the cathedral include: * An altar-tomb effigy of Bishop

Walter Wellesley Walter Wellesley (c.1470-1539) was a sixteenth-century Irish cleric and judge. He was Prior of Great Connell Priory, Bishop of Kildare 1529-39, and Master of the Rolls in Ireland 1531-2. Background and early career He was born about 1470, the se ...

(died 1539) which is an example of 16th century sculpture * A Sheelagh-na-gig (nude carving), which is unusual to find in cathedrals * Solid oak stalls for the choir and chapter with acorn and oak leaf carvings. * The Bishops throne. * A high-altar area with reproductions of the medieval originals. * Carved Caen Stone pulpit with carvings of the four evangelists and Irish marble columns. * The Lady Chapel. * The organ which was built by Conacher in 1898 * St. Luke stained glass window by Gerda Schurmann (from Czech Republic) dated 1974. * A stone baptismal font which is not original to the cathedral but is dated from Medieval period. * The west window, dedicated to St. Patrick, St. Brigid and St. Columba.

Gallery

File:Kildare Cathedral Choir Eagle Lectern 2013 09 04.jpg, Eagle Lectern File:Kildare Cathedral Nave and Choir 2013 09 04.jpg, Nave File:Kildare Cathedral Tomb of Walter Wellesley 2013 09 04.jpg, Tomb of Walter Wellesley

References

{{Cathedrals of the Church of Ireland Kildare (town) Diocese of Meath and Kildare

Anglican cathedrals in the Republic of Ireland