St. Michael

History

The parish of Dún Laoghaire was constituted on 6 April 1829, a week before the passing of the Bill of Emancipation in the English Parliament on 13 April. It had previously formed part of a larger parish centred at Loughlinstown. The name of the parish refers to a fort in the area of the present Coastguard Station, said to have been the residence of Laoghaire, High King of Ireland, in the fifth century.

The church began as a small chapel in the early 1820s. It was enlarged and improved by Canon Bartholomew Sheridan, the first parish priest, and completed by him in 1835. Between 1865 and 1879 Monsignor Edward McCabe, later Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin, carried out a further enlargement and restructured the building in neo-Gothic style, adding aisles to the nave with clerestories and a façade. Between 1885 and 1902 Monsignor Nicholas Dean Walsh continued the renovation and interior decoration and completed the church with the addition of a tower and spire 200 feet high.

In July 1965 the church was destroyed by fire. Services continued in a temporary church built on the site of the parochial hall until the present church opened on the original site on 7 October 1973. The tower and spire survived the fire and stand alongside the newer building, which was built with granite from the old church to match them. Restoration work on the tower, spire and roof began in 2004.