St Peter's Church

Gothic church on West Street that holds the preserved head of Saint Oliver Plunkett

St Peter's is the Catholic church on West Street, Drogheda's main street. It was completed in 1793, when Catholic worship was only just tolerated, and was greatly extended in the 1880s with a striking tower. Most visitors come for the shrine of Saint Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, who was condemned in a rigged trial and hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn in 1681. His preserved head has been on display here since 1921.

It is an odd and slightly macabre sight, but a moving one for many Irish Catholics. Don't confuse this church with St Peter's Church of Ireland a block north on Peter Street, where in 1649 Cromwell's soldiers set fire to the steeple with Royalist soldiers sheltering inside.

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A story
When the church was founded in the 1790s, the town corporation turned up in full ceremonial dress to warn that a "Popish chapel" would not be tolerated inside the walls. A century later it was enlarged in French Gothic style, and since 1921 it has displayed the head of the archbishop executed for treason in London in 1681.