Nurney
An Urnaí

A crossroads village on the south Kildare plain that has been here since the oratory.

Nurney sits on the R415 between Kildare town and Athy, eight kilometres from one and twelve from the other. The name comes from the Irish An Urnaí — the oratory — which tells you this place was a prayer site before it was ever a village. The plains stretch out flat and wide in every direction, which is how south Kildare works: the sky is large, the land is even, and you notice every tree.

The old graveyard holds the ruins of the early church — a 42-by-20-foot stone foundation with windows barely eight inches wide. A circular granite baptismal font was excavated here. Nearby, the site of Nurney Castle marks where the Normans made this crossroads theirs in the medieval period; by the Georgian era it had been converted into a country house, which is a common enough arc in Kildare. Three hedge schools operated in the surrounding townlands during the Penal Laws — at Walterstown and Mylerstown Cross — which gives you some measure of how determined the community was to preserve learning.

Today the village runs to a church, a pub, a school, a shop, a petrol station, and a takeaway — the standard kit for a small Irish rural settlement. The GAA club, playing out of Blackditch in white and green, has been going since 1964 and won the Kildare Junior Championship twice. Kildare Village outlet is three kilometres up the road on the Nurney Road, which means the village's name appears on a lot of luxury retail bags without the village itself being involved in any of it.