The history of Cill Dara (Kildare) spans at least 1,500 years. It is known today as one of the oldest towns in Ireland, if not the oldest of all.

There were no actual "towns" in Ireland before the Vikings established coastal settlements such as Dublin and Wexford, in the ninth century. The large communities that sprang up around the monasteries at Armagh, Clonmnacmois and Cill Dara served the same purposes as towns, thriving as commercial, social and religious centers. Long before the Vikings came, a seventh century monk wrote of Cill Dara as a "vast metropolitan city". Monastic communities owned large tracts of land supported by rent paid by tenant farmers from the surrounding countryside, usually in the form of surplus food production. Trade flourished, as artisans, craftspeople and merchants were attracted to the community, along with Leinster's most powerful political figures who recognized its secular importance.

St Brigid's monastery was founded at Cill Dara in 484, built over the site of an older pagan shrine to the Irish goddess Brigid, whose perpetual sacred flame was tended by a dedicated group of young women. The exact location of this shrine is lost to memory, but it was probably near a large oak tree near where the cathedral stands today. It is from that sacred oak that Cill Dara ("church of the oak") that this place got its name.

The names and many of the attributes of pre-Christian Irish deities survived after the Christian faith arrived, even if many of the gods and goddesses were reduced to "fairies". The ones that could not be diminished were absorbed into the Christian tradition as local saints, with the older pagan rituals surviving as folk customs. This is clearly the case with Brigid, a goddess rooted too deeply in the hearts of the people to be driven underground like the rest of the Tuatha Da Danann. The goddess whose sacred flame is still the gem of Kildare has been converted into the beloved "Mary of the Gaels" while retaining most of her pre-Christian attributes.

St Brigid's monastery became a center of learning attended by students and teachers of the Gaelic nobility as well as learners from abroad. Unfortunately, the prosperity and treasures of the monastic centers not only attracted traders and craftspeople but also, beginning in the late eighth century, Viking raiders. The Annals of Ireland record continuous raids, by both Vikings and native Irish, on Cill Dara for the next 300 years. The Annals of the Four Masters tells how thirty Danish ships sailed up the Liffey in the year 835 and another fleet came from the sea by way of the Boyne. "They plundered every church and abbey within the territories of Magh Liffe and Magh Breagh. They destroyed the town (Kildare) with fire and sword and carried off the shrines of St Brigid and St Conleth."

Soon after the arrival of the Normans in 1169, "Strongbow" made Kildare his base as he fought to take over Leinster. Giraldus Cambrensis, a Welsh chronicler of the Norman Invasion, wrote of the round tower, the tallest in Ireland at 136 feet and seven inches. He also told of a falcon known to nest in the round tower all alone, never taking a mate, which was on very friendly terms with the locals, who called it St Brigid's bird. A restored Norman style round tower stands on the site today. It is also during this period that there is first mention of a castle in Cill Dara, probably built of motte and bailey. The first stone castle was built by the Earl Marshal in the early 13th century.

As a frontier town of the Pale, Cill Dara suffered continuous raids by the dispossessed native Irish. Earl Marshal's stone castle was besieged in the winter of 1315. Then the town was taken over by the Fitzgeralds, who ruled the land from Maynooth. In the Confederate Wars during the 1640's, Cill Dara was garrisoned and the cathedral was destroyed. After that, the town was described as nearly deserted.

Cill Dara became an important place again in the Rebellion of 1798 because it was the home of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, one of the leaders of the ill-fated uprising, and most of the fighting took place there. On a happier note, the Turf Club that was founded in the 1700's helped Cill Dara to flourish again as it became a horse-racing capital.

Today Cill Dara is a Heritage Town and its ancient history is protected.

CILL DARA AREA

Neighbourhood builders:

Article by Baine Baoisgne
Map & graphics by MacMorna Niafer
Brighid's Cross by Fedelm Cruithni
Special thanks to Kelly Taylor for
allowing us to us her photographs