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Loughrea

Towns and villages in County GalwayUse Hiberno-English from April 2020
Loughrea Town Sign Discover Ireland
Loughrea Town Sign Discover Ireland

Loughrea ( lokh-RAY; Irish: Baile Locha Riach, meaning 'town of the grey/ speckled lake') is a town in County Galway, Ireland. The town lies to the north of a range of wooded hills, the Slieve Aughty Mountains, and the lake from which it takes its name. The town's cathedral, St Brendan's, dominates the town's skyline. The town has increased in population in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Although the town also serves as a commuter town for the city of Galway, it also remains an independent market town. Loughrea is the fourth most populous settlement in County Galway, with a population of 6,322 as of 2022.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Loughrea (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 53.197 ° E -8.567 °
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Address

St. Brendan's Cathedral (Loughrea Cathedral)

Barrack Street
H62 EH63
Ireland
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Phone number
Diocese of Clonfert

call+35391841212

Website
loughreacathedral.ie

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Loughrea Town Sign Discover Ireland
Loughrea Town Sign Discover Ireland
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St Brendan's Cathedral, Loughrea
St Brendan's Cathedral, Loughrea

The Cathedral of St. Brendan, Loughrea, is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Clonfert. Though designed in neo-gothic style, it arguably houses the most extensive collection of arts and crafts and Celtic Revival artifacts of any single building in Ireland. Its most noteworthy feature is the extensive collection of stained glass windows by the Dublin-based An Túr Gloine studio. There are also twenty-four embroidered banners, mostly depicting Irish saints as well as vestments by the Dun Emer Guild. Sculptors represented are John Hughes (sculptor) and Michael Shortall, and the architect William Alphonsus Scott also contributed designs for metalwork and woodwork. The foundation stone was laid on 10 October 1897 and the structure was completed in 1902; most of the interior features date from the first decade on the twentieth century with the exception of the stained glass windows which continued to be commissioned up until the 1950s. The origins of An Túr Gloine and that of the cathedral's decorative scheme are inextricably connected. Among the studio's first orders were three apse windows, in 1903, for the new cathedral and virtually all of the studio's artists such as Michael Healy (artist), Alfred E. Child, Sarah Purser, Beatrice Elvery, Ethel Rhind, Hubert McGoldrick, Catherine Amelia O'Brien and Evie Hone are represented. There are ten windows by Michael Healy, including the first one he both designed and executed, St Simeon, and also one of his undisputed finest, The Last Judgement completed in 1940, a year before he died.