Church Of Saints Peter & Paul

History

The town takes its name from the monastery of St Evin, who the parish records came from Munster in the sixth century with a large number of monks and founded a monastery at a place known as Rosglas, meaning green wood. The monastery was attacked by raiders and lay in ruin until the twelfth century. The Cistercian Abbey of Rosglas was founded on 27 October 1189; nothing of it remains except some ornaments and parts of the old walls at the back of Moore Abbey House.

The present church was built in 1847, during the famine years, by local labour using local limestone. It was dedicated by Fr Michael Comerford, then parish priest, on 19 October 1879. A Bins organ was installed in May 1984, and new painted Stations of the Cross were installed during a restoration carried out between 1994 and 1996.

The building

The church is built of local limestone and consists of a wide nave without aisles or pillars. It has stained-glass windows. The architect Richard Dean Butler planned for the two towers to be surmounted with spires, but that work was not completed.

Notable people

Count John McCormack, the tenor, rented Moore Abbey House from Lord Drogheda, and the parish records him as a benefactor of the church. He sang Panis Angelicus at the Eucharistic Congress in 1932. Fr Michael Comerford, parish priest from 1878 to 1888, was the author of a three-volume history of the dioceses of Kildare and Leighlin.