Church of Our Lady and St Joseph

About

The Church of Our Lady and Saint Joseph is a 19th-century Catholic church in Prosperous, County Kildare, Ireland.

Prosperous Church is located in the east of Prosperous village, on the crossroads on the R403 road to Clane.

The first church in the Prosperous area was at Downings North. A crozier was deposited or hidden in a bog near Prosperous c. AD 1000 and was found by turf-cutters around 1831; it is now in the National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology. There is a ruined church at Killybegs, associated with the Knights Hospitaller — the current Church of Our Lady and Saint Joseph contains a baptismal font from the Killybegs church. In the Penal era, there was a Mass-house in the townland of Goatstown. When the modern village was erected by Robert Brooke in the late 18th/early 19th centuries, a Catholic chapel was located at the site of the Prosperous Dramatic Society. Ballynafagh Church, 3 km to the north, was the Church of Ireland site of worship until 1959.

The Church of Our Lady and Saint Joseph was built in 1866–69 in a Gothic Revival style and dedicated to Mary and Joseph. It has a four- bay double-height nave with four-bay single- storey lean-to side aisles to the north-west and to south-east, and a single-bay double-height lower chancel to the north-east.

The bell was added in 1927. The church building was extended in 1985, adding a sacristy.