The round tower
Kildare’s round tower is one of only three in Ireland you are actually allowed to climb, and at roughly 32m it is the second-tallest of them all. If you have an hour on the hill, that climb is the thing to prioritise. The steps are steep and uneven, and the doorway sits four metres up the wall – not decoration but defence, built to be reached by a ladder that could be pulled up when Viking raiders came inland. From the top the Curragh opens out flat in every direction. One catch: the climb only runs in the summer season and depends on a guide being on hand, so check with the parish before you build a day around it.
A small quirk waits at the base. There is a wishing stone in the tower wall with a hole worn through it – put your arm through and touch your own shoulder to make a wish. Whether that’s ancient tradition or a bit of harmless theatre, nobody at the door will tell you it isn’t real.
What Brigid started
The cathedral sits on the exact hilltop where Brigid founded her monastery around 480 AD. Cill Dara, the church of the oak, gave the town its name and grew into one of the great centres of early-Christian Ireland. A stone fire-house in the grounds marks where a perpetual flame was tended in her memory, a custom that long outlived her.
The building you see is much later. In 1223 the Norman bishop Ralph of Bristol began the stone cathedral, an early-Gothic structure of thick walls, a square central tower and stepped Irish battlements. It took a battering in the Confederate wars of the 1640s and stood as a ruin for the best part of two centuries before the architect George Edmund Street rebuilt it, finishing in 1896. Street kept the medieval fabric where he could, so what looks Victorian at a glance is really thirteenth-century work with a nineteenth-century repair.
Inside the cathedral
The interior rewards a slow look. Stained-glass windows carry Ireland’s three national saints – Patrick, Brigid and Colmcille – and the walls hold a scatter of medieval carving, including a weathered sheela-na-gig if you know where to look (ask; it is easy to miss). The finest single thing is the tomb of Bishop Walter Wellesley, who died in 1539: it was lost for generations and later found and restored, and its effigy is one of the better pieces of medieval carving in the county. A 16th-century vault survives alongside it.
Out in the churchyard stand the granite High Cross and the fire-house, both freely accessible and worth walking to. The cross is old and much eroded; you will see it dated confidently in some places, but the honest position is that no one is certain how old it is.
Visiting
The cathedral interior only opens from May to September (Monday to Saturday, 10am to 1pm and 2pm to 5pm, and Sunday afternoons from 2pm), and the tower climb runs across the same season. The grounds, cross and fire-house can usually be reached year-round – ask at the Heritage Centre outside the summer months. There is a small charge to go inside, around €2 for the cathedral and about €7 for the tower, though the parish doesn’t publish a fixed tariff, so bring a few coins rather than counting on a card reader.
Parking is near Market Square, a short walk downhill, and may carry a charge. The cathedral floor and main paths are wheelchair-friendly; the tower, being all steep stairs, is not. Dogs are welcome in the churchyard on a lead but not inside the cathedral or tower. There is no café on site, but Kildare town centre is two minutes away.
Times of year
The parish calendar turns on St Brigid’s Day around 1 February, when Féile Bríde brings services and a procession to the hill. The cathedral also opens for St Patrick’s weekend in mid-March, ahead of the main summer season, and holds a regular Sunday service at 11.30am through the year. Getting here from Dublin is straightforward: the M7 to Junction 13, then the N7 towards Kildare and the signs for Market Square.
Nearby
- The Curragh – open plains for walking and cycling, minutes away, and the heart of Irish horse country.
- Irish National Stud – thoroughbred stud and Japanese gardens, under fifteen minutes by car.
- St Laurence’s Abbey – ruins of a 13th-century Cistercian house within walking distance.
Time your visit for a summer morning when a guide is on the tower – the climb is what raises this above the many quiet churchyards in the east, and it is the one thing here you can’t do anywhere else in Kildare.