page_title: County Carlow
section_title: Religious Structures
hierarchical_section_title: County Carlow / Places of interest / Landmarks / Religious Structures
caption_attribution_description: English: St. Mullins Early Medieval Ecclesiastical Site
context_page_description: County Carlow is a county located in the South-East Region of Ireland, within the province of Leinster. Carlow is the second smallest and the third least populous of Ireland's 32 traditional counties. Carlow County Council is the governing local authority.
  The county is named after the town of Carlow, which lies on the River Barrow and is both the county town and largest settlement, with over 40% of the county's population. Much of the remainder of the population also reside within the Barrow valley, in towns such as Leighlinbridge, Muine Bheag, Tinnahinch, Borris and St Mullins. Carlow shares a border with Kildare and Laois to the north, Kilkenny to the west, Wicklow to the east and Wexford to the southeast.
  Carlow is known as "The Dolmen County", a nickname based on the Brownshill Dolmen, a 6,000 year old megalithic portal tomb which is reputed to have the heaviest capstone in Europe, weighing over 100 metric tonnes. The town of Carlow was founded by the Normans in 1207 and the county was shired shortly thereafter, making it one of the oldest counties in Ireland.
context_section_description: Early Christian settlements were founded throughout Carlow from the 5th to 7th century. An extensive monastic site is located at St Mullin's in the southern tip of the county. The village is named after Saint Moling, who founded a monastery there in the early 7th century. The monastery was said to have been built with the help of "Gobán Saor", the legendary Irish builder. An 8th-century manuscript, The Book of Mulling, contains a plan of the monastery - the earliest known plan of an Irish monastery - which shows four crosses inside and eight crosses outside the circular monastic wall. 
  Old Leighlin was the site of one of the largest monastic settlements in Ireland, founded by St Goban in the 6th century. In 630 AD a church synod was held at Old Leighlin which determined the date of Easter.  The main abbey of Old Leighlin was destroyed by fire in 1060 and replaced in the 12th century with St Laserian's Cathedral. The cathedral remains in use to this day and was modified over centuries, with each change adding unique elements to the building. Among the most recent additions are the stained glass windows created by Catherine Amelia O'Brien in 1934. Once the cathedral church of the former Diocese of Leighlin, it is now one of the six cathedrals in the Diocese of Cashel and Ossory of the Church of Ireland.
  The remote abbey of Clonmore was founded in the 6th century by Máedóc of Ferns. It flourished until the 11th century and taught Saint Finian Lobhar as well as Saint Oncho, who is buried at the site. While the monastery's buildings have long since been demolished, a substantial cemetery remains which includes high crosses, ogham stones, ballaun stones and numerous inscribed grave slabs from Early Christian Ireland.
  Another monastery was established by Saint Comhgall in 634 and is located in present-day Carlow town. The Normans built a stone wall around the town in the 13th century. The monastery, which was by that stage in ruins, lay just outside of it. The burial grounds survive today at Castle Hill and a new church was built at the site in 1727, known as St. Mary's Church. A 60 m (200 ft) spire was added in 1834, which remains the tallest building in the county.
  The Cathedral of the Assumption in Carlow town was built in a Gothic Revival style in the early 1800s and is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin. It once boasted a 6 m (20 ft)-tall ornately carved wooden pulpit, which is now on display in the Carlow County Museum and was featured in A History of Ireland in 100 Objects, a national project which identified one hundred archaeological or cultural objects that are important to Irish history.
caption: 7th-century Monastic Site at St. Mullin's
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