He later that year commented to the Bishop that the reason for the state of the Parish on his arrival …

'The plan advocated in 1862 was fundamentally defective and the working out of it has been a miserable failure partly because perhaps of the original defect. Father FitzGerald worked hard and zealously, so much so that when he was unable to pay for a cab to Kilwinning he walked there on Sundays -three miles - returning here in time for Mass at 12 o'clock'.

His proposal to the bishop was… 'What should be done in my humble opinion is to retrace our steps to 1862' and…'Although I do not think that the condition of the mission is hopeless, yet I think it requires extraordinary efforts to save it'.

PROGRESS

Father Keane began those efforts immediately. He reckoned that in Irvine town there were three hundred and fifty Catholics, seventy in the village of Bartonholm, one hundred and twenty at Annicklodge, seventy at Overton, sixty at Doura, three hundred in Kilvnnning and eighty at Fergushill. He opened Sunday schools for the children in the different areas and started a number of sodalities, including a branch of the St. Vincent de Paul Society for the relief of the poor because, he said, the Catholic poor in Irvine were 'the poorest of the poor'. He aimed at having a church-school and manse on Kilwinning Road. Although he did not achieve this aim, he did succeed in buying St. Winin's Hall in Kilwinning in 1872. Kilwinning was detached from Irvine in 1878 at the restoration of the Scottish hierarchy but until then each Sunday Father Keane gave out Holy Communion in Irvine at 9 a.m., said Mass in Kilwinning at 10.15, gave a sermon after the Mass, returned to Irvine for Mass at 12 and again gave a sermon after Mass, and of course he was fasting.

ALBERT HALL

In January, 1873 he estimated that there were nine hundred Catholics in Irvine. A year later he still seems to have had no prospects of finding a new church and so he tried to make the saltstores look a bit more like a church by removing the offensive chimneys and erecting a stone cross. The sale of the Albert Hall in 1875 may therefore have come as a surprise. He collected as much as he could from his parishioners and raised £45-11-0. The cost was £481-9-10. The Albert Hall could seat only two hundred and eighty but it was better than the saltstores, and so Father Keane negotiated to buy it and the little house beside it. For this he borrowed £500 from his friend, Father Chisholm and he sold the saltstores for £455. On 26 September, 1875 he proudly opened the new St. Mary's and his own manse beside it. A new ciborium, still in use in 1975, commemorated the event.

On 26 September, 1875 the excited Catholics of Irvine bumped and jostled their way across the far-flung tracks from Perceton and Annicklodge, from Girdle Toll and Doura, from Overton and Bartonholm and through the cobbled streets of Fullarton and Irvine to crowd into their new church in West Road. It was a red-letter day in their lives and even more, perhaps, in the life of their parish priest, Father Thomas Keane, who in his five years in the parish had fought against almost overwhelming odds to bring spiritual vitality to his flock. The new church was not a new building, for his parishioners could not afford that. It was the Albert Hall, still in existence in 1975 and known in more recent years as the Tivoli, the Ritz Theatre and, at present, the Irvine Meadow Social Club.

As Father Keane led his guest-speaker, the famous Jesuit preacher, Father T. Williams, first Rector of St. Aloysius', Glasgow to deliver the opening sermon, he could feel justly proud that at last he was able to give to God, on behalf of the parishioners of Irvine, a place of adoration that, if certainly not a palace, was considerably better than the previous chapel in which the people's prayers and his own sermons had mingled with the cries of the next door neighbour's children and had been uplifted by the stench from a nearby dungheap. Perhaps, as he listened to Father Williams' words of congratulation, Father Keane's thoughts recalled his horror when he had first come to Irvine in February, 1870 and had seen where his parishioners had to worship. Perhaps too his mind reverted to the statement he had soon afterwards made to his archbishop.

As the 1876 Directory said, 'By the purchase of the Albert Hall and adjoining house, the Catholics of Irvine have secured a much larger and more convenient place of worship than they formerly possessed'. By 1879 the new church had been extended to seat three hundred and twenty. A man of culture - he owned a personal library of five hundred books - Father Keane also started a lending library and a reading room.

One cannot recall the celebrations of 1875 without also rejoicing over the progress of the parish since then. Father Henry Murphy succeeded Father Keane in 1879 and although he remained here only one year he immediately applied himself to trying to build a school, but in fact he did not succeed.

As Bernard Aspinall records in his contribution to "The See of Ninian" (ISBN 09522431 3 X), …

'Fr Keane had believed about a third of his Irvine flock were virtually lapsed Catholics, 80 out of 250. That appalling state of affairs he rectified. He visited every house even miles from his home, won the respect of all denominations and greatly improved the chapel: he redecorated and added stations of the cross. Two years later he opened a parish library and reading room. Confraternities of Christian Doctrine, Rosary Society, Our Lady of Mount Carmel and the St Vincent de Paul Society developed. Between 1866-67 and 1871-72, the number of Easter communicants increased from 250 to 592, conversions rose from three to twelve and the number of baptisms rose from 37 to 66. More revealingly the number of marriages of two Catholic partners rose from 1:7.4 to 1:1.2 weddings and the number of baptisms of children with both parents Catholics rose from 5 out of 37 to 54 of 66 couples. It may reflect Keane's outlook, a larger growing pool of potential Catholic partners and the aftermath of the First Vatican Council. Whatever the cause, the figures reflect changing Catholic attitudes and a general sharpening of religious sentiments.'