Newry Cathedral

The Cathedral of Saint Patrick and Saint Colman or Newry Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral located in Newry, Northern Ireland. It acts as the seat of the Bishop of Dromore, and the Mother church of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dromore. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, over 200,000 people visited the cathedral each year. The cathedral sits on Newry's Main Street and is a Grade A listed building. The cathedral replaced St Mary's Church (the Old Chapel), which had been constructed by Bishop Lennan in 1789 and which, for forty years, doubled as both a parish church and quasi-cathedral, two bishops having received episcopal consecration there. Newry Cathedral, dedicated under the joint patronage of St Patrick & St Colman, was designed by the city's greatest native architect Thomas Duff; work began in 1825, with the basic building completed in 1829. Built of local granite, it was the first Catholic cathedral in Ireland opened after Catholic Emancipation. Work continued to enlarge and beautify the cathedral at various stages in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the tower and transept were added in 1888 and the nave was extended in 1904 under the supervision of Bishop Henry O'Neill.