St Finian’s is just one of three extant medieval churches in the Lucan area, each the focus of a parish, in the barony of Newcastle. It is 1km from Lucan village and is said to have been built in the twelfth century. It is a ruined medieval parish church and graveyard, constructed of rough limestone masonry, within a roughly trapezoidal nineteenth-century stone enclosure.  

 

In medieval times St Finian’s held a strategic location on the Slíghe Mhór (the Great Way), the medieval road that crossed the country from Tara to Dublin, and thence to Clonard (of St Finian) and on to Galway. The Slíghe Mhór took advantage here of the stony, elevated esker from which the area derives its name.  

 

St Finian’s church appears to date mainly from the Anglo-Norman period (from the thirteenth century on), with additions or revisions in the sixteenth century.

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