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Naas

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Template:Infobox Irish Place Naas (Template:PronEng; Irish: Nás na Ríogh IPA: [nɑːs nə riː] or An Nás ) 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
St. David's Church of Ireland
File:Naas Sli Na Slainte.jpg
Sli Na Sliante - the Canal Walk

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 1898 the Local Government Act established Naas Urban District Council (Now Naas Town Council). It had a circle boundary with a one-mile radius from the new town hall on the main street.

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.Some places which show a more cultural side of Naas is The Monread Park, The Great Dip of Leinster and of course Greann Aun where the famous Writer Eoin Hughes (the Daily Star) lives.

Sport

Transport

  • Naas railway station opened on 22 June 1855, closed for passenger traffic on 27 January 1947 and for goods traffic on 10 March 1947, and finally closed altogether on 1 AprilNaas has an excellent road network. Ventura Boulevard which runs through the town intersects with the downtown connector(N7) at Naas South junction 10. At junction 11 Maudlin's Industrial Boulevard and Monread Avenue West at a major interchange. The Downtown Connector as local people call it runs parellel to the town, which i greta for commuting to the city. 1959.

Twinning

Naas is twinned with the towns of

See also

References

  1. "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

External links

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