Carlow Cathedral went up just as the penal laws were falling away: finished in 1833, it is usually called the first Catholic cathedral built in Ireland after Catholic Emancipation. It was the project of Bishop James Doyle, the reforming ‘JKL’ (James of Kildare and Leighlin) who campaigned hard for Catholic rights, and he hired Thomas Cobden, the architect of Duckett’s Grove, to build it. Cobden gave it a Gothic Revival lantern tower modelled on the medieval Belfry of Bruges, 46 metres of grey-blue stone that is still one of the tallest things in Carlow town.
What to look for inside
If you find one thing, make it John Hogan’s marble monument to Bishop Doyle, finished in Rome in 1839: the bishop stands over a kneeling, crowned woman taken to represent Ireland in an attitude of hope. Hogan’s hand is also in the Holy Family group by the Lady altar. The windows are by Franz Mayer of Munich, the great 19th-century glass house, and take in St Patrick preaching to kings, St Dominic receiving the rosary and St Alphonsus Liguori among them.
One thing you will not see here is the cathedral’s most famous fitting. The original hand-carved pulpit, once reckoned the largest of its kind in Europe, was taken out in the 1990s reordering and now stands in the Carlow County Museum, in the old Presentation Convent a couple of minutes’ walk away. If the cathedral interests you, do the two together; the museum is free.
The building and its history
Bishop Doyle laid the foundation stone in March 1828, and the cathedral rose over the next five years at a cost of £9,000, the old chapel demolished and part of its transept walls folded into the new work. The materials are local: grey-blue stone from a quarry on the Tullow Road, white granite from Colonel Henry Bruen’s quarry at Graiguenaspidogue, and oak roof timbers from his woods at Oak Park. Doyle dedicated the finished church on 1 December 1833. Bishop Comerford gave it its great bell in 1889, and a full century after the dedication, on 30 November 1933, Bishop Matthew Cullen consecrated it. The 1990s brought the major re-ordering, after which Bishop Laurence Ryan rededicated the cathedral on 22 June 1997.
The cathedral has had its turns in the spotlight: the 2013 Christmas Eve Mass went out on RTÉ and the Christmas Day Mass was broadcast across Europe through the Eurovision link, as the Easter ceremonies had been in 2003, and Cardinal Peter Turkson preached at the opening ceremony of the World Meeting of Families here in 2018. Its choir dates to the 1960s and the organist Dr Karl Seeldrayers, who went on to found the Carlow Choral Society in 1965.
Visiting
This is a working parish church in the centre of town, free to go into, with a box for the upkeep rather than a ticket desk. It keeps the rhythm of its services rather than set tourist hours, so the quietest time to look around is between Masses; expect the place busiest around the Sunday schedule (a 6.15pm vigil on Saturday, then 8.30am, 10.30am, 12.30pm and 7pm on Sunday) and the weekday 7.30am and 10am Masses. Check the cathedral website before a special trip, as times shift around holy days. Half an hour to an hour covers it.
There is no dedicated visitor car park; use the town-centre on-street and public car parks a short walk away. While you are in the cultural quarter, the County Museum is the natural companion, and the ruins of Carlow Castle and the grounds of Carlow College, the old seminary Cobden also worked on, are both close by.