Church of Our Lady & St David

The Church of Our Lady & St David in the early 20th Century with its majestic tower and spire built between 1851 and 1858 to the design of J.J. McCarthy.

Church of Our Lady & St David

By Paddy Behan

The Roman Catholic Parish Church is also dedicated to Our Lady and St David. The main body of the church dates from 1827. The 60 metre spire was added in 1858. Most recent renovations, carried out in 1985, incorporated the directives of the 2nd Vatican Council, by removing the high altar, side altars, altar rails, Pulpit, and beautiful Mosaic Floor. The new Blessed Sacrament Altar, is a circle, with the Tabernacle as its pivotal point, denoting Christ as the Centre of the Universe. A new church dedicated to the Irish Martyrs was blessed and opened in Ballycane, on the East side of the town in 1997. One of the martyrs to whom the church is dedicated is a seventeenth century Naas Dominican Friar Fr Peter Higgins, who was executed in Dublin on 23 March 1642.