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Naas

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For other uses, see Naas (disambiguation).

Template:Infobox Irish Place Naas (Template:PronEng; Irish: Nás na Ríogh IPA: [nɑːs nə riː] or An Nás [ən nɑːs]) is the county town of County Kildare, Ireland. It is a major commuter belt town, with many people living in Naas and working in Dublin. The nearby M7 motorway, which bypasses Naas and connects Dublin to the South and Southwest, is one of the busiest routes in the country.

'Perpetual Motion'- Located at Northern End of Naas By-Pass; by Rachel Joynt and Remco de Fouw (1995)
Naas General Hospital

Introduction

Nás na Ríogh as it was called in Irish means the "Meeting Place of Kings" because of its ancient location as a cross-roads to and from Dublin, and its traditional location as the principal governmental administrative centre in the county.[citation needed] In 1975 the Irish version of the town's name was simplified to An Nás.[1] Naas is located 32 kilometres (20 miles) south-west of Ireland's capital. According to the preliminary census reports the town's 2006 population was 21,715 (including rural area). The urban population of 20,044 (2006 Census) makes it the largest town in Kildare and the 15th largest in the Republic of Ireland. The Kildare County Council offices and the general hospital for the Kildare area are based in Naas.

St. David's Church of Ireland

History

The Irish language name for Naas, Nás na Ríogh, literally means Meeting Place of the Kings. The town historically hosted meetings of pre-Norman Irish kings and after the Norman invasion, English parliament meetings were held in the town.

One of the first battles of the rebellion of 1798 took place in Naas on 24 May 1798 when a force of about 1,000 rebels was defeated in an unsuccessful attack on the town. A leader of the United Irishmen, Theobald Wolfe Tone, is buried just outside Naas at Bodenstown.

In World War II, during which Ireland was neutral, an internment camp was established at the Curragh Prison near Naas in which military personnel from the belligerent states who found themselves on Irish territory were detained for the duration of the conflict. This facility eventually came to house US, British, and German servicemen, all living together in the same camp. A motion picture depicting life at the camp, The Brylcreem Boys, was produced in the 1990s.

Industry and business

The town's 4,000 new arrivals in the last five years are generally well educated and upwardly mobile home buyers, who share a technical culture as local hi-tech employees of Intel, Xilinx, Hewlett Packard, and many others. At one point in 2004, Naas was one of the fastest growing towns in western Europe. It is in fact the 16th largest town in the Republic of Ireland. The town is planning new housing developments in the next five years for a larger capacity of 30,000, with a ring road under construction. Over the last year there has been a large influx of people from Eastern European countries like Latvia, Estonia and particularly Poland giving the town a large sense of cultural diversity. The other activities include local government, supermarket distribution outlets, a pizza factory, law offices, hotels and a livestock mart.

Amenities

Amenities in the town include: library, a new, full modernised Gaelic Athletic Association club, two Roman Catholic Churches, one Church of Ireland Church, one Presbyterian Church, three Secondary schools, four primary schools, tax office, Naas General Hospital, horse race course, soccer club, rugby club, two major nightclubs, several pubs, three supermarkets, county council offices, a number of hotels and the new state-of-the-art Moat Theatre. The Church of Our Lady & St. David is a Roman Catholic Parish Church dating from 1827. The original parish church, St. David's Church, is held by the Church of Ireland. In 1997, the second Catholic Church opened in Ballycane on the east side of town and was dedicated to the Irish Martyrs.

Places of interest

There are two racecourses near Naas. Punchestown Racecourse is just to the south east of the town, in the parish of Eadestown, and Naas Racecourse about 1 km from the town centre. The annual Punchestown Race Festival is a major event for a whole week in April. The Oxegen music festival is also held there in the second weekend of July.

File:Naas Sli Na Slainte.jpg
Sli Na Sliante - the Canal Walk

Sport

Transport

Twinning

Naas is twinned with the towns of

See also

References

  1. ^ Place-Names (Irish Forms) (No. 1) (Postal Towns) Order, 1975 (retrieved November 7 2007
  2. ^ "Naas station" (PDF). Railscot - Irish Railways. Retrieved 2007-11-19.
  • Nolan W. & McGrath T. (eds.) Kildare History and Society (Geography, Dublin 2006) ISBN 978-0-906602-57-7

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