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Church of the
Sacred Heart & Colgan Hall Carndonagh, in Gaelic Carn Domhnaigh or ‘Cairn of Donagh’, is a thriving market town situated in the center of the Inishowen Peninsula and has a long tradition of agricultures and Fairs and is also the site of the famous 8th century Donagh Cross.
The annual Inishowen Agricultural Society’s Show is held in Carndonagh and is where farmers and exhibitors show their animals and livestock. Standing in the heart of Carn (as the town is locally known) is the Church of the Sacred Heart, built between 1942 and 1945 at the cost of ₤100,000. This church is the largest ecclesiastical building in the peninsula seating up to 1500 people. On the dome stands four statues designed by Albert Power R.H.A. and carved from Dublin granite. The Church of the Sacred Heart sits on a commanding site and can be seen for some miles beyond Carndonagh. Near Carndonagh Community School (one of the largest Secondary schools in Ireland) is the Protestant Church whose belfry is said to house a bell taken from the ‘Trinidad Valencera’ one of the ships of the Spanish Armada which sank off the Inishowen coast at Kinnagoe Bay in 1588. On the main road to Quigley’s Point at the bottom of Chapel street is the Golgan Hall, a local parish Temperance Hall named after John Colgan a renowned scholar and member of one of the chief families of Inishowen. He was born in 1592 at Priestown near Carndonagh and studied in Glasgow before being ordained into the priesthood 1618. He later joined the Franciscan Order at Louvain in 1620. Colgan was indeed a scholar of note and between 1645 and his death in 1658 he published a series of works on the lives of the Irish Saints including ‘Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae’ in 1645, ‘Trias Thaumaturgia’ a work on the lives of Patrick, Colmcille and Brigid in 1647 and a volume on ‘John Dun Soctus’ in 1655. Up until his retirement due to ill health in 1651 he held the influential position of Commissary of the Franciscan Colleges of Louvain, Vielum and Prague.
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