Churches

St. Patrick's Catholic Church

The site for St. Patricks Catholic Church , together with a donation towards its building, was the gift of Earl Conyngham to Fr. Michael O'Hanlon.

Some years earler the then Colonel Conyngham's life had been spared by the intervention of Fr. O'Hanlon who happened to be in Paris when the Colonel was being tried there by a military tribunal.

When Fr. O'Hanlon returned to Slane as parish priest, the Earl asked him what particular wish he had and he replied that his people had only a barn to worship in.

He was given the site, some money and the belfry, an unusual one standing separatly from the church.

This was to circumvent the rule prohibiting the building of a belfry on a church

Over the west door is inscribed Mount Charles Chapel 1802.

Inside, the octagonal font is from the medieval friary church and a fragment of a celtic cross from Fennor Church is imaginatively displayed near the alter.

St. Patrick's Church of Ireland

St. Patrick’s Church of Ireland was built in 1712 on a corner of Slane Castle demesne,donated by Sir Henry Conyngham, ‘the site of the old being of difficult ascent’.

The tower, designed by Francis Johnston,was added in 1797.

A doorway and some stones salvaged from a medieval church at Stackallan are mounted on the outside of the west wall of St. Patrick’s.

Sir Barnaby Barnewall, whose arms are depicted on the Barnewall Tablet over the door, married Margaret Plunkett and died in 1493.

One of the carved stone coffin-lids beside the door, dating from about 1300, commemorates Sir Richard Dexter of Castle Dexter, whose ruined castle stands on the Boyne above Slane.

On the south wall is a late 12th century effigy from Painstown (Beauparc) church, demolished in 1958.