Church of the Sacred Heart - Carndonagh

Church of the Sacred Heart

In Carndonagh, Inishowen’s second largest town and dominating the skyline on the top of Barrack hill sits impressive Church of the Sacred Heart.

In the 1780s, Dean O’Donnell erected a place of worship and in 1826 a chapel was built, it served the community for over a century. Only the name, Chapel Street, which runs along the graveyard survives.

The church was opened in 1945 at a cost of £60,000, it was built in a Romanesque style. It has four life-sized statues around the copula from the renowned sculpture from Dunlin, Albert Power.

It houses a small museum open to the public and in the graveyard below there are headstones in memory of Maghtochair who wrote “Inishowen”, John Doherty the philanthropist and William O’Doherty an Irish politician who was elected to parliament in the early 1900s.

A relic of St. Oliver Plunkett lies beneath the altar who was canonised in 1975, thus becoming the first new Irish saint for almost seven hundred years. Read about him by clicking here