St Mary's Church Gowran

This collegiate church, was built in the late 13th century on the site of an earlier monastery. It was served by a college - clerics who lived in a community but who did not submit to the rule of a monastery.

They lived in a house, now destroyed, beside the church. The church was a large and elaborate structure, with an aisled nave (the main part of the the church where the congregation sat) and a long chancel (the section of church where the altar was placed) and has high quality architectural sculptureused throughout. In the late middle ages a massive tower was inserted between the nave and chancel, and in the 19th century this tower was incorporated into the parish church which was built in place of the chancel.