What is recorded here

Oughterard in County Kildare may have begun as a sixth-century community of nuns under St. Bridget, though not the famous St. Bridget of Kildare. The Anglo-Norman borough likely grew around that forgotten monastic nucleus, leaving behind only a round tower, medieval parish church and graveyard. History records merely a raid in 1094, yet the place still carries the shape of that lost beginning.

Little is known about the original monastic site in the environs of which the Anglo-Norman borough of Oughterard may have been founded. Gwynn and Hadcock (1970, 400) suggest it may have belonged to a community of nuns founded in the 6th century by St. Bridget (although not the St. Bridget of Kildare). Apart from a reference to a raid in 1094 mentioned in the Annals of the Four Masters, nothing else known of it. (Bradley et al. 1986 vol. 4, 400) It was presumably in the vicinity of the later round tower (KD015-007003-), medieval parish church (KD015-007005-) and graveyard (KD015-007004-). Compiled by: Gearóid Conroy Date of upload: 10 June 2011

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