Being situated at a River Liffey fording point, Clane was a focus of settlement from the earliest times.

• In 432 St. Patrick arrived in Ireland with a message of Christianity,
• Patrick established a church at Dunmurraghill, north of Staplestown, formerly part of this parish.
• St. Ailbe, who was the first bishop of Emly, is reputed to have brought Christianity to Clane itself and to have founded Clane Abbey. Some say this was even before St. Patrick, others settle for a later date.
• In 1035 the Danes plundered Clane, twenty-one years after the battle of Clontarf.
• A general Synod of the Irish Church was held in Clane in 1162. There were twenty-six bishops present and many abbots. They re-acclaimed the Primacy of Armagh, finally settling the issue. The newly consecrated St. Laurence O'Toole represented Dublin and Armagh was represented by Archbishop Gelassius.
• 1169 saw the Normans arrive. The Barony of Clane was established. It was originally known as the Barony of Otomy or Uí Tuamaí. The moat this side of the Liffey Bridge was its seat.
• In 1258 Gerald Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald established the Franciscans in Clane. The ruins of their Friary remain in the graveyard on the Naas RD.
• A stone bridge was built over the Liffey in 1392. By now Clane was a corporate town with the equivalent of its own Mayor and Corporation, or Porteve and Commons, as they were known.
• Clane became a town of the Pale, which was established in 1488 by an Act of the Parliament of Drogheda. Remnants of the Pale survive around Clongowes Wood.

Reproduced from "Le Chéile" by kind permission