St Alphonsus Liguori Church, Kilskyre

History

The earliest reference to Christianity at Kilskyre is in the Martyrology of Tallagh of 800, which records that a monastery was founded here in the sixth century under the name Cill Scire, the Church of St Schiria. Schiria was a daughter of Eugene, a great-grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages; her name is recorded among the abbesses who met St Colmcille at Eardia in Sligo in 580, and she died towards the end of the sixth century. The ruins of the monastery, a round tower and some ancient tombs are preserved opposite the present church.

Cill Scire was plundered and burned by the Danes in 949 and on two later occasions, and was plundered again in 1170 by Diarmuid McMurrough, King of Leinster, and the English. It became a parish church in the thirteenth century, was taken over by the Reformers at the close of the sixteenth century and went into decline. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were churches at the junction of the Crossakiel and Boltown roads and beside the present church.

The present church was built by Fr Kelly between 1845 and 1852 to a design by J.J. McCarthy, which the parish describes as a fine example of the early McCarthy style. Restoration work was carried out on the parish's two churches in 1999 and 2000 at a cost of €1.8 million, and the church at Kilskyre was reopened and rededicated on 8 August 1999.