Kildare

Kildare grew around a church associated with Saint Brigid, whose name and cult made the town one of Ireland's great religious centres. A round tower and cathedral marked the old ecclesiastical site, while a castle and market took shape nearby after the Anglo-Norman conquest. The Franciscan friary became a burial place of the FitzGerald earls of Kildare, whose power extended far beyond the town.

In the sixteenth century the Reformation changed the cathedral's life and the ownership of religious property. During the wars that followed the rising of 1641, the Catholic bishop Rosse MacGeoghegan reconsecrated the cathedral for Catholic worship in 1643. The buildings and institutions around Saint Brigid's foundation thus remained central to the town even as political and religious authority changed hands.