I didn’t know that about Kildare

St. Bridget, Ireland’s first female saint, established a church in Kildare in 490 AD. Over the door of the cathedral is a cross, woven from rushes, which is replaced regularly – St. Bridget’s Cross. 

The cathedral had fallen into disrepair in the mid 19th century and the Duke of Leinster raised money for its renovation.

Arthur and Richard Guinness established a brewery in Leixlip in 1755. In order to expand their business, they moved to a premises at St. James’s Gate in 1759, having secured a 9,000-year lease. There, they began to brew Guinness, the now world-famous drink.

Arthur Guinness was born in Celbridge.

The World’s first hydraulic fish lift was built in Leixlip. A new hydroelectric generating plant on the river made it difficult for the fish to travel upstream to their spawning ground. A fish pass, that worked like a lock, was devised by Jim Dooge and Alexander Murphy.

Castletown is one of the largest houses in Ireland and was started in 1722 by William Connolly. It was eventually completed by his great nephew, Tom Connolly.

Kilkea Castle, built in 1180, is one of the oldest continuously occupied castles in Ireland. In the 13th century, the infant John Fitzgerald was saved, by a monkey, from a fire at the castle. Thus, the monkey on the crest of the Fitzgerald family.

The museum at Straffen houses one of the first ‘automobiles’ in the World. It is a small working model of a steam of a steam engine that was built in 1797.

In 1726, Abraham Shackleton established a school in Ballitore. One of Abraham’s descendants, Ernest Shackleton, is known for his (failed) efforts to be the first person to reach the South Pole, in 1901. Later, in 1914, he led another failed expedition, with his ship Endurance, to attempt to cross the Antartica. Two years after the ship set sail, and many epic survival stories later, his crew were rescued from the uninhabited Elephant Island. Earnest’s brother, Frank, was implicated in stealing the Irish Crown Jewels in 1907. The jewels, which were given by King George III in 1783, consisted of a star and a badge encrusted with rubies, diamonds and emeralds which were kept at Dublin Castle.

St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth was founded in 1795. It was built so that Irish priests would not need to go to France, where they might get revolutionary ideas in post-Revolution France.

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763 – 1798), the so-called father of Irish republicanism, is buried at Bodenstown. Tone, who was a founding member of the United Irishmen, was captured during the rebellion of 1798 and imprisoned at the Royal Barracks (now Collins Barracks), Dublin. He died of a supposedly self-inflicted wound before he could be executed.

Built in 1743, The Wonderful Barn is a 70-foot conical shaped structure near the Castletown Estate. It is thought that it was used as a grain store after the famine of 1741-1742.

The Japanese Gardens in Kildare were built between 1906 and 1910 and were designed by Japanese garden designers Tassa Eida and his son Minoru.

In 1815, Dan Donnelly, an Irish boxer, defeated the English champion George Cooper in a fight at Donnelly’s Hollow, a natural amphitheatre on the Curragh Plains.

The 1903 Gordon Bennett Cup motor race was held near Athy, County Kildare. It should have been held in England, but racing on public roads was illegal in England. A campaign to host the race was launched and Kildare was selected as the venue; the straightness of the roads was considered a safety aspect.

Kildare