Earls, rebellion, and a long retreat
The Fitzgeralds of Kilmead
The Fitzgeralds, Earls of Kildare, held land across this corner of the county for centuries, with their seat down the road at Kilkea Castle. The family's grip on the wider region was broken by the rebellion of Silken Thomas in 1534 and his execution at Tyburn with five of his uncles. What remains locally is the church and the ground: Kilmead sits inside what was Fitzgerald country, and Kilkea Castle, much rebuilt, still stands a short drive south.
"Remember Mullaghmast"
Mullaghmast
The rath of Mullaghmast, a few kilometres north of Kilmead near Ballitore, was the site of one of the most notorious killings of the Elizabethan conquest. In the winter of 1577 to 1578, Crown forces under Sir Francis Cosby invited the Gaelic gentry of Laois - the Seven Septs, the O'Moores, O'Lalors, McEvoys and others - to a meeting under safe conduct, then murdered them. The phrase Remember Mullaghmast became a watchword in later Irish resistance. Daniel O'Connell chose the hill for a Repeal monster meeting on the first of October 1843, drawing an enormous crowd, with the formal dinner served in a pavilion built on the site. It was among the last of his monster meetings before the banned gathering at Clontarf.
A pre-Emancipation church, still in use
Saint Ita's
Built around 1798, Saint Ita's predates Catholic Emancipation by three decades. The church is T-shaped in plan - a double-height nave with two transepts - with lancet-arch windows, a slate roof behind a parapet, and a cut-stone bellcote on the entrance gable. A separate freestanding belfry was added to the north around 1870. Inside are timber galleries, inscribed cut-stone wall monuments and Gothic-style marble altar furniture. It serves as a chapel of ease in the parish of Narraghmore and Moone, and is still in use. The graveyard around it was opened as the village cemetery only in the 1970s; before that, burials went to the older parish ground at Fontstown.