St. Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh (Roman Catholic)

Saint Patrick's Cathedral
Catholic Cathedral of St Patrick in Armagh
Main façade of the Cathedral
Saint Patrick's Cathedral Shown within Northern Ireland
Coordinates: 54°21′08″N 6°39′37″W / 54.352255°N 6.660376°W / 54.352255; -6.660376
Location	Armagh, County Armagh
Country	Northern Ireland
Denomination	Roman Catholic
Website	armagharchdiocese.org
History
Consecrated	1904
Architecture
Architect(s)	Thomas Duff - 1838 JJ McCarthy - 1853 William Hague - 1899 George Ashlin - 1904
Style	Gothic Revival
Years built	1840-1904
Groundbreaking	1838
Completed	1904
Specifications
Length	63.3 metres (208 ft)
Width across transepts	36 metres (118 ft)
Number of spires	2
Spire height	63m(210ft)
Administration
Archdiocese	Armagh
Province	Armagh
Clergy
Archbishop	Archbishop Eamon Martin
Dean	John Connolly

St. Patrick's Cathedral in Armagh, Northern Ireland is the seat of the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland. It was built in various phases between 1840 and 1904 to serve as the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Armagh, the original Medieval Cathedral of St. Patrick having been transferred to the Protestant Church of Ireland at the time of the Irish Reformation.

The Cathedral stands on a hill, as does its Anglican counterpart.

The building of a Catholic Cathedral at Armagh was a task imbued with great historic and political symbolism. Armagh was the Primatial seat of Ireland and its ancient ecclesiastical capital where St Patrick had established his Great Church. Yet, since the Irish Reformation under Henry VIII, no Catholic Archbishop had resided there. Since the seventeenth century, the majority Catholic population of Ireland had lived under the rigours of the Penal Laws, a series of enactments which were designed, in the words of the Anglo-Irish historian Lecky, "to deprive Catholics of all civil life; to reduce them to a condition of extreme, brutal ignorance; and, to disassociate them from the soil". As a result, whilst to some extent tolerated, the public practice of Catholicism was almost completely extinguished and all Churches existent at the time of the enactment of the laws were ceded to the Established Church. Thus, by the end of the Eighteenth Century, there were few Catholic Churches and no Cathedrals in existence in Ireland for a large Catholic population. Following Catholic emancipation in 1829, the need to construct churches and cathedrals to serve this population became critically apparent. The lack of a Catholic presence in the Primatial City of Armagh in particular became a popular cause of discontent among the emerging Catholic episcopacy, clergy and congregation.