In the centre of Gowran village is the historic St Marys Collegiate Church which contains monuments from the 14th to 17th centuries. This collegiate church was built in 1225 on the site of an earlier monastery. Some fine effigies and tombs can be seen here, including what may be the tombs of the 1st and 3rd Earls of Ormonde. It was served by a college clerics who lived in a community but who did not submit to the rule of a monastery. They lived in a house, now destroyed, beside the church. The church was a large and elaborate structure, with an aisled nave the main part of the church where the congregation sat and a long chancel the section of the church where the altar was placed and has high quality architectural sculpture used throughout. A tower was added in the 14th or 15 century and it now incorporates the ruins of the 19th century church which was built in place of the chancel and which now takes up about half of the building.