County Kildare · Leinster
Kildare
Cill Dara
'church of the oak' — St Brigid's foundation
The story
Brigid founded her double monastery of women and men here under an oak in the fifth century, and a perpetual fire burned in her honour until the Reformation; it was relit in 1993 and burns still. The Curragh, the great plain beside the town, has been common grazing and a horse-racing ground for centuries and holds the Irish Derby.
Worth seeing nearby
- Piper’s Stones, Athgreany · Sixteen granite boulders of a Bronze Age circle, with one stone standing apart to the north-east. Dance here on a Sunday, they said, and you join them: the outlier is the piper, the ring is his congregation, caught mid-reel.
- Dún Ailinne · The royal site of Leinster: a 13-hectare hilltop enclosure whose vast timber circles were built for ceremonies, then dismantled and burned.
- Rock of Dunamase · A fortress on a rock over the midland plain, sacked by Vikings out of Dublin in 845. Diarmait Mac Murchada is said to have given it with his daughter Aoife to Strongbow in 1170 — a dowry that helped bring the Normans in. Cromwell’s men blew it up in 1650.
- Hill of Allen — Fionn's fort · Almu, the white fortress of Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Fianna. A 19th-century folly now crowns the hill; the quarry has eaten half of it.
All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.
All towns and cities → · Know Kildare better? Add to the story.