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ARLESS
CO. LAOIS · IE

Arless
Ard Lios, Co. Laois

The Ireland's Ancient East
STOP 06 / 06
Ard Lios · Co. Laois

A south Laois church village on the N80 with a Gothic mausoleum that ties a quiet parish to a mayor of New York.

Arless - more often written Arles on the local signs - is a small village in the south-east corner of Laois, on the N80 about 10 km north-west of Carlow town and 2 km north-west of Ballickmoyler. It lies in the old parish of Killeban, in the barony of Slievemargy, a corner of the county that has always faced toward Carlow more than toward the midlands behind it. The name is Ard Lios, the high ringfort, and the village grew up as a few houses gathered around a church.

Samuel Lewis, surveying the place in 1837, found about forty houses and 205 people, sitting on the old road from Carlow to Maryborough, of, in his words, neat and pleasing appearance. The local trade then was tile-making - roofing and flooring tiles shipped as far as Dublin - which the arrival of cheap slate had nearly killed off even as he wrote. A little yarn and linen was worked on the side. None of that survives. What you find now is a church, a graveyard with a remarkable monument in it, a school, a GAA pitch and the road going through.

The reason to stop is the Grace mausoleum and the church beside it. The Graces were the local gentry, descended from a knight who came over with Strongbow in 1170 and settled the estate they called Gracefield. From that flat south Laois ground they sent William Russell Grace to New York, where he became the city's first Catholic mayor and, in 1885, formally accepted the Statue of Liberty on the city's behalf. The family vault, a miniature Gothic chapel of 1818, stands in the village graveyard. It is a long reach from a quiet Killeban parish to City Hall on the East River, and this is where the line begins.

Do not come expecting a tourist village, because it is not one. Come because you are passing on the N80, or because you want to stand at the Grace vault and the 1868 church and feel the size of the story against the size of the place. For a pint, a bed or a proper dinner, Ballylinan is up the road and Carlow town is twenty minutes south. Arless itself is a church, a name with a saint's ringfort in it, and the road.

Population
Small village (205 in 1837; a few hundred today)
Founded
A few houses around the church; present church 1868, Grace mausoleum 1818
Coords
52.8928° N, 7.0208° W
01 / 06

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The name

Ard Lios - the high ringfort, also written Arles.

A village in the civil parish of Killeban, barony of Slievemargy, in the far south-east of Laois where the county runs down toward Carlow. It sits on the N80, about 2 km north-west of Ballickmoyler and roughly 10 km north-west of Carlow town. The church is the centre of it.

Stories & lore → 02 The reach

A small parish that produced a mayor of New York.

The Grace family of nearby Gracefield raised William Russell Grace, the first Catholic mayor of New York and the man who accepted the Statue of Liberty for the city in 1885. Their Gothic mausoleum, built in 1818, stands in Arles graveyard. It is the one thing here that reaches a long way out.

Stories & lore →
02 / 06

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

Gracefield to City Hall

The Grace mausoleum and the mayor of New York

The Graces traced their line to William Fitzgerald, called Raymond le Gros, who came to Ireland with Strongbow in 1170, and they settled the south Laois estate they renamed Gracefield, running a colliery and a mill on it. The family raised William Russell Grace, born in 1832, who left for the Americas, built a shipping and trading fortune as W. R. Grace and Company, and in 1880 was elected the first Roman Catholic mayor of New York City. In 1885 he formally accepted the Statue of Liberty from the French on behalf of the American people, and in 1897 he founded the Grace Institute. The family mausoleum stands in Arles graveyard - a miniature Gothic chapel built in 1818 on the instructions of Alicia Kavanagh, a daughter of the Graces, in place of an earlier vault of 1687. Samuel Lewis measured it at 21 feet long and 16 feet wide, the pinnacles rising 31 feet, a ground vault below and a chamber of monumental inscriptions above, in what he called the later English style. It is the single most surprising object in this corner of the county.

1680s, 1795, 1868

Three churches on one ground

There has been a church at Arles for longer than the present handsome one suggests. An inscribed stone in the wall records a church built here in the 1680s, originally under a thatched roof. That was replaced in 1795, and the 1795 church in turn gave way to the present Church of the Sacred Heart, built in 1868 and dedicated by Bishop Walshe on the 24th of May that year. It is a fine piece of work - cut limestone quarried locally and finished by local craftsmen - and it is the building the village is arranged around. Three churches on roughly the same patch of ground over not quite two centuries is a fair measure of how long this has been church land.

Gaelic football, founded 1961

Arles-Killeen and the local game

The parish fields a Gaelic football club, Arles-Killeen, formed in 1961 in the white and black, drawing players from Arless and the neighbouring townlands. It is not one of the county's giants, but it is a steady intermediate-grade club that took three Laois Intermediate Football Championships in 1997, 2001 and 2003 and reached the senior county final more than once in the 2000s and 2010s without quite landing it. As in most villages this size, the club is a large part of what gives the place a shared calendar, and a championship Sunday is the busiest the parish gets.

03 / 06

Things to do outside.

Wear waterproofs. Bring a sandwich. Tell someone where you're going if it's the mountain.

The church, the graveyard and the mausoleum There is no waymarked trail here. The walk is the village itself: the 1868 Sacred Heart church, the old graveyard beside it, and the Grace mausoleum standing in it - the Gothic vault that is the one thing in Arless worth crossing the country to see. A slow look at the monument and the headstones is the right use of half an hour.
Short, in the villagedistance
30-45 minutestime
Back roads toward Carlow and the Slievemargy ground The lanes off the N80 run out across quiet south-Laois farming country toward the Slievemargy hills and the Carlow border. Nothing dramatic - low rolling Leinster tillage and pasture that photographs as nothing in particular and is pleasant to walk on a dry day. Walk out one road and back; this is a stretch of the legs, not a destination hike.
As long as you make itdistance
1 hour or moretime
04 / 06

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring
Mar-May

Quiet, the roads are clear, the farmland greens up and the church limestone takes the light well. A good time for a passing look.

◉ Go
Summer
Jun-Aug

Long evenings and GAA championship football for the parish. The village is at its liveliest on a match day; otherwise still quiet.

◉ Go
Autumn
Sep-Oct

Harvest country, good light on the fields and the N80 an easy run. Football season pushing toward the county final stages.

◉ Go
Winter
Nov-Feb

Short, dark days and little open. The church keeps going; there is not much else to make a special trip for.

◐ Mind yourself
05 / 06

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

×
Expecting a tourist village

Arless is a small church and farming village, not a heritage town. The draw is the Grace mausoleum and the 1868 church, not a streetscape to photograph.

×
Looking for a pub, a restaurant or a bed in the village

There is no real tourist infrastructure here. Ballylinan up the road and Carlow town about 10 km south are where the pubs, food and hotels are.

×
Confusing it with the other Arles

Search engines will keep sending you to Arles in the south of France. The Laois one is a few hundred people on the N80 with a Gothic vault and a quiet church, and that is the whole of it.

+

Getting there.

By car

On the N80 in south-east Laois, about 2 km north-west of Ballickmoyler and roughly 10 km (a 20-minute drive) north-west of Carlow town. From Dublin it is about 1 hour 30 minutes via the M9 to Carlow and then the N80.

By bus

JJ Kavanagh and Sons runs a weekday service on the Abbeyleix/Portlaoise to Athy to Carlow route, with two journeys daily each way. Bus Eireann route 73 (Waterford to Athlone) passes through but does not stop. The nearest railway station is Carlow, on the Dublin Heuston to Waterford line.

Next on the tour

Co. Laois
Ballylinan
A short hop north, the bigger village in the same parish grouping, with the pub, the shops and the Grace connection to the National Ploughing family.
Co. Laois
Ballickmoyler
Two kilometres south-east on the N80, a crossroads village that lost half itself in 1798 and never got it back.
Co. Laois
Killeshin
South-east toward Carlow, worth it for the famous Romanesque doorway on the ruined church - the best piece of early heritage in this corner.
Co. Laois
Barrowhouse
A tiny settlement on the edge of the Barrow valley a short run off. Quiet, rural, little to it.
Co. Carlow
Carlow town
The county town about 10 km south, the nearest proper centre for hotels, restaurants, shops and the railway.
Co. Laois
Ballyhide
North-west towards the Barrow corner, a quiet townland three kilometres short of Carlow town.