Athy's Catholic Churches

Ten years ago I wrote the following opening paragraph for my article celebrating the 40th anniversary of the opening of St. Michael’s Parish Church. ‘The new Parish Church of St. Michaels at Athy was blessed and opened on Sunday by his Grace Most Rev. Dr. John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin.’ That was the opening line of the report in the Nationalist and Leinster Times of Friday, 24th April 1964, recorded the result of an eleven-year campaign by the people of Athy to replace the Church which has stood on the same site since 1808. The new Church, designed in the Lombardic Romanesque style with a seating capacity of 1,100, replaced an earlier Church which in the words of John Gartland, Consulting Engineer ‘suffered all the defects and all the disadvantages of a building erected a few years after the 1798 Rebellion.’ I am writing this week’s article on the morning of Friday, 19th April, exactly sixty years to the day when the late Archbishop of Dublin blessed and opened what was the latest in a series of parish churches serving the community of Athy. I believe that the first Parish Church in the medieval village of Athy was the ‘Crickeen’, located in St. Michael’s Cemetery. Partially restored recently the ‘Crickeen’ was built outside the Anglo-Norman medieval village to serve the needs of the Irish betagh or villeins. Inside the village the French speaking settlers who shared the same Catholic religion with the native Irish, had a monastery on the West bank of the River Barrow and a Dominican Friary on the opposite side of the river. The Reformation of the 1540s witnessed the closure of the Dominican Friary, the Monastery next to Woodstock Castle having been previously vacated, while the small Parish Church is believed to have been closed or appropriated for Protestant services. The medieval village centred around Woodstock Castle on the west bank of the River Barrow was in time relocated to the more easily defended east side of the river. It was there that in the mid-17th century a church was built in what we now know as the back square for the Anglican church community. It would be some time in the following century before a small church for the Catholic faithful was discreetly built off Chapel Lane. That church was burned down on the night of 7th March 1800 at a time when conflict during and following the 1798 Rebellion saw several Catholic churches destroyed. The then Parish Priest, Fr. Maurice Keegan, who served in Athy from 1789-1825, lodged a malicious damage claim with Dublin Castle and received compensation of three hundred pounds. For almost eight years the Catholic parishioners of Athy were without a church and Mass was celebrated for a time in the town centre square under a temporary canopy erected on the side of the Town Hall. A new church was finally built in 1808 on part of what was known as Clonmullin commonage. The site was formally granted by the Duke of Leinster to Thomas Fitzgerald of Geraldine Lodge, Thomas Dunne of Leinster Lodge and Michael Cahill of Athy as Trustees on behalf of St. Michael’s Parish. The sum of two thousand pounds was spent on building the church which continued to be used until its demolition in 1960. My readers of a certain age will remember that church which was built in the traditional cruciform style with three galleries. They will remember the silver collection at the door of the main gallery over the nave, while a copper collection was sufficient for entry to either of the two side galleries. I served Mass for several years in old St. Michael’s Church and well remember Fr. John McLoughlin who was the senior curate under Archdeacon Patrick McDonnell. It was Fr. McLoughlin who in 1952 announced the setting up of a fundraising committee comprised of local men and women who over the following ten years or more collected almost ninety-three thousand pounds for the building of the new church. The new St. Michael’s Parish Church was built at a cost of approximately two hundred thousand pounds and opened on the 19th of April 1964, long after Fr. McLoughlin and Archdeacon McDonnell had left us. An interesting feature of the old church, demolished in 1960, was the church organ donated while Monsignor Andrew Quinn was Parish Priest. He served in Athy from 1853-1879, while his two brothers served as Bishops in Australia. The church organ, donated by a Quinn family member, was not retained for the new church and I am not aware what happened to it. Retained and used in the new church was the marble pulpit gifted by local parishioners in 1904 to mark the Golden Jubilee of Canon James Germaine’s ordination. The Canon was Parish Priest in St. Michael’s from 1892-1905. Also retained and reused were the altar rails which were the gift of Count O’Loughlin, a Kilkenny man, who made his fortune in Australia. Following his death his estate presented the railings to his relation, Canon Edward Mackey, who was Parish Priest from 1909-1928. Various other items were donated for the new church by the men’s and women’s sodalities, as well as employees of the Wallboard factory and staff of Athy Railway Station. Mrs. John Owens of Nicholastown donated the windows in the church nave, while a shrine to St. Joseph was donated by Tony Byrne of London and formerly of St. Joseph’s Terrace. Can anyone give me any information on Tony Byrne? Fifty years after the opening of St. Michael’s Church, its Golden Jubilee was celebrated. This April marks the sixtieth anniversary of that happy and historic event. It is a happy coincidence that one of my secretaries who has been working with me since 1982 shares a birthday with our Parish Church. Wishing my secretary, who shall remain nameless, a Happy Birthday. The previously announced meeting of Athy History Society which was to be held in the Community Arts Centre will now take place in the Town Library on Thursday 9th May at 7pm.