Saint Marys Cathedral

The story of Saint Marys Cathedral

Three cathedrals have stood on this ground. The first was begun in the twelfth century, while Turlough O'Connor was High King, and it marked the moment Tuam became the seat of an archbishop after the Synod of Kells in 1152. It did not last: in 1184 fire brought down the nave, roof and stone in a single day, as the Annals of Lough Cé put it, and with the Norman invasion leaving the town in ruins nothing much was rebuilt for a century beyond a small parish church on the site of an old monastery.

What survived the fire was the chancel arch, and it is still here. Built of red sandstone in the Hiberno-Romanesque style, it is a perfect circle of six nested arches on carved columns, 6.85 metres across at the base and 4.88 metres high, with no keystone; the columns lean slightly inward to carry the weight. When the de Burgo family raised a second cathedral in the fourteenth century they built it to the east of the ruin and turned the old arch into their front door, then walled it up with a wooden screen and a doorway in the middle. It stood like that, exposed to the weather, for more than five hundred years, which makes its condition today remarkable. It has been called the finest Hiberno-Romanesque work left in the country.

The church you see now is the third. The railway reached Tuam in 1861 and the garrison grew, and with them the town's Anglican congregation; Sir Thomas Newenham Deane was engaged to design a new cathedral on the footprint of the first, incorporating the arch, with Charles James Seymour as dean. Work ran from about 1861 to 1878 and the building was consecrated on 9 October 1878. It is in the Irish pointed style, 46 metres long with transepts 23 metres wide. The de Burgo cathedral beside it became the Synod Hall, library and registry.

Much of the interior came from elsewhere: the oak reredos from St Columb's in Derry, chancel chairs given by the fifth Marquess of Sligo, a sanctuary floor cut at the Merlin quarries outside Galway, and an organ first given by Archbishop Josiah Hort in 1742 and since rebuilt. The communion silver includes a chalice and paten from Archbishop Samuel Pullen's time in the 1660s, unhallmarked, and pieces from Archbishop John Vesey dated 1678. Since 1992 the High Cross of Tuam, a national monument, has stood inside, and in the south aisle is the shaft of a second twelfth-century cross.

The cathedral belongs to the united Diocese of Tuam, Limerick and Killaloe; from the twelfth century until 1839 it was the seat of the Archdiocese of Tuam, before and after the Reformation. Renovations ran from 1985 to 1993 and central heating went in during 2000. It is open to visitors on Fridays in the summer months, mornings and afternoons.

Written from Wikipedia, "St Mary's Cathedral, Tuam" and Wikipedia, "Tuam" (CC BY-SA 4.0, read 2026-09-18). Facts only from those sources; the words are ours.

Questions people ask