Parish of Kilbride

(i.e., the Church of St. Bridget).

This Parish is returned in the seventeenth century as consisting of the townlands of Baldonan and Kilbride.

It now contains the townlands of Baldonnell *(i.e., *Donnell’s or Donnan’s town) Little, Lower and Upper, Kilbride, and Kilcarbery.

The only object of antiquarian interest is the ruined church. **

Baldonnell House and the surrounding lands.**

Baldonnell House is now the principal residence in the small parish of Kilbride, which lies to the east of the parish of Kilmactalway. Of a castle which formerly stood in the parish there are little, if any, remains.

After the Anglo-Norman Conquest the lands of Kilbride were held under the Crown, for the service of a foot sergeant or payment of five shillings, by the Comyns of Balgriffln, and formed part of the manor of that somewhat distant place. About the year 1270 the Comyns’ property was temporarily in the hands of the King, and the escheator accounted for rents received from the betaghs of Kilbride.

The castle was built before the sixteenth century, and was leased in 1537 to John Gibbons, with a reversion to Chief Justice Aylmer, and in 1570 to Thomas Bathe, whose family about that time acquired the manor of Balgriffin. The castle appears to have been occupied by Thomas Bath, and in 1570 George Bassenet was pardoned for the robbery of cows from Thomas Bathe, of Kilbride, and for burglary at Baldonan.

In the early part of the seventeenth century the Bathes were still in possession of the Kilbride lands, but at the time of the Restoration they had been succeeded by the family of Carberry, from whom one of the townlands takes its name, and the Luttrells appear as owners of Baldonan.

The castle was then in occupation of Francis Carberry, who was succeeded by his widow, and later on by Alderman John Carberry, whose country residence was at Grace Dieu. **

Ecclesiastical History**

The ruined church of Kilbride, which lies between Castle Bagot and the Naas road, as seen from a distance, gives little promise of interest, but a closer examination of its overgrown walls shows it to have been of unusual structure. It was possibly built in an earth fort about one hundred and twenty feet in diameter, for the form and height of the graveyard even to the north, where burial was infrequent, are unusual, and other traces of earth works are visible in the surrounding field.

The oratory, which is built of very small stones, was a tiny one, about nineteen feet by twelve feet, and is not truly rectangular. There was an eastern window, and at least one light in the south wall, which probably had a second window where a gap now occurs. A recess remains to the north, and the walls, which are at present six feet high, are pierced by several small square holes like “putlog holes” for scaffolding.

There was a tower at the west end, which contained on the ground floor to the north a little cell, four and a half feet long by thirty inches wide, lit by a slit. Next this was an arched porch, from which a doorway opened into a curved recess for a spiral stair now all removed, only the recess and one side of a window marking its position. There was evidently a priest’s residence above those, but the upper part has been quite thrown down.

Of the history of the church nothing is known beyond the fact that it formed portion of the corps of the Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. So far back as the year 1547, when the dissolution of the Cathedral took place, it is styled an old chapel, and was valued with a cottage near it at twelve pence a year, and in 1660 it is again mentioned as an old building in connection with an acre of land which the proprietor of Kilbride was alleged to have taken from the Cathedral.

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