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BALLYLINAN

CO. LAOIS · IE

Ballylinan
Baile Uí Laigheanáin, Co. Laois

The Ireland's Ancient East
STOP 07 / 07

Baile Uí Laigheanáin · Co. Laois

A south Laois village three kilometres off the Kildare line, home town of the National Ploughing and the Grace family that gave New York a mayor.

Ballylinan is a south Laois village near the bottom corner of the county, about three kilometres from the Kildare border and a short run from Athy, which is the nearest proper town. It sits on the N78, in the old parish of Killeban and the barony of Ballyadams, on flat good farming country that runs east toward the Barrow valley. The name is Baile Uí Laigheanáin, Lynan's town, and who Lynan was has been forgotten for centuries.

It is an old village that has become a new one. Samuel Lewis counted 94 houses and 533 people here in 1837, with the ruins of an old church and ancient coins turned up in the ground nearby. For most of the twentieth century it shrank or stood still - 430 people by 2002. Then the Dublin and Kildare commuter belt reached down into south Laois and the place nearly tripled inside fifteen years, to over eleven hundred by 2016. What you find now is a working village with shops, a school, a Garda station, a pharmacy, an estate or two of newer houses, and the GAA pitch.

Two things give Ballylinan more weight than its size suggests. The first is the National Ploughing Association, whose headquarters is at Fallaghmore just outside the village - the home of Anna May McHugh, the Queen of the Ploughing, who has run the championships for over half a century and turned them into the largest outdoor event in Europe. The second is the Grace family, the local gentry of Gracefield, who produced William Russell Grace, the first Catholic mayor of New York and founder of W. R. Grace and Company. The Grace mausoleum is over the road at Arles.

Do not come for a tourist village, because it is not one. Come because you are running between Athy and Carlow, or because the Ploughing is on, or to stand at the ruined church and the Grace vault and work out how a flat south Laois village threw a shadow as far as New York. There is a good pub for a pint and the GAA decides the calendar. That is honestly most of it.

Population

~1,167 (2022)

Founded

Old church village; modern commuter growth post-2000

Coords

52.9436° N, 7.0422° W

01 / 07

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

Baile Uí Laigheanáin - Lynan's town, and nobody now remembers who Lynan was.

A village in the old parish of Killeban, barony of Ballyadams, in the south-east corner of Laois three kilometres from the Kildare border. Athy is the nearest town. The N78 runs the length of it.

Stories & lore → 02 The growth

A small old village that nearly tripled in fifteen years.

In 1837 it had 94 houses and 533 people. By 2002 it was down to 430. Then the commuter belt reached it: 1,101 by 2016, 1,167 by 2022. Shops, a school, a Garda station, a pharmacy and a pub strung along the road.

Stories & lore → 03 The ploughing

The headquarters of the biggest outdoor event in Europe is a house in this village.

The National Ploughing Association runs from Fallaghmore, outside Ballylinan, where Anna May McHugh has steered the Ploughing for over fifty years. The championships move around the country, but the engine room is here.

Stories & lore →

02 / 07

The pubs.

None of these are themed Irish pubs, because they don't need to be. A few that earn the trip:

Flemings Bar

Locals, functions, GAA

Village pub & function venue, Main Street

The pub of the village, on Main Street. A long-standing local with a lounge big enough for functions and a bar split into sections - the kind of place that does a quiet pint midweek and the after-match crowd and the family do at the weekend. If you want a drink in Ballylinan, this is where you have it. Local-pub hours, so do not count on a weekday afternoon.

03 / 07

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 family and the mayor of New York

The Graces were the local gentry, descended from a Norman line that came over with Strongbow and settled the district they called Gracefield, where they ran a colliery and a mill. The family raised William Russell Grace (1832 to 1904) on the Ballylinan property. He left for South America, 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 - a reformer who took on Tammany Hall and who, in 1885, formally accepted the Statue of Liberty on the city's behalf. The Grace mausoleum, built in 1818 on the site of the old church at Arles a short way off, holds the family. It is a long reach from a flat south Laois parish to City Hall on the East River, and this village is where it starts.

Europe's biggest outdoor event, run from a house outside the village

The Queen of the Ploughing

The National Ploughing Association has its headquarters at Fallaghmore, just outside Ballylinan, in the home of Anna May McHugh. A native of Clonpierce near the village, she became secretary of the NPA and then, in 1973, its managing director, and has run the Ploughing for over fifty years. Under her the championships grew from a ploughing match into a three-day agricultural show that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors and well over a thousand exhibitors each September - the biggest outdoor event in Europe. The event itself travels around the country, but the organisation that builds it every year works out of this village.

Medieval ruins, and a coal line that lasted eleven years

The old church and the railway that came and went

The village graveyard holds the ruins of a medieval church, marked on the 1841 Ordnance Survey map as a church in ruins - an upstanding rectangular building roughly sixteen metres by seven, with a window and a double bell-cote on the west gable. Ancient coins were dug up beside it in the nineteenth century. The other piece of vanished infrastructure is younger: in September 1918, during the First World War, the British government opened a twelve-mile railway linking Ballylinan to Athy and to the coal workings at Wolfhill, to move fuel. It closed in 1929. The Athy section limped on hauling sugar beet until 1963, and then that went too. Nothing of the line is in service now.

04 / 07

Things to do outside.

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

The village and the old graveyard There is no waymarked trail here. Walk the length of the N78 through the village and out to the graveyard with the ruined medieval church, the window and the double bell-cote on the west gable. It is a stretch of the legs and a look at the one genuinely old thing in the village rather than a destination walk.

Short, in the villagedistance

30-45 minutestime

Back roads toward the Barrow The lanes east and south of the village run out across flat farming country toward the River Barrow and the Kildare line. Quiet, green, good for a wander on a dry day, nothing dramatic. South-Leinster tillage country that photographs as nothing in particular and is pleasant to be out in.

As long as you make itdistance

1 hour or moretime

05 / 07

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

GAA season under way, the farmland greens up, the roads are clear. A good time for a quiet look.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Long evenings and championship football. The village is at its busiest and most alive on a match day.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

Ploughing season - the NPA runs flat out from here in September even when the event itself is elsewhere. Harvest light on the fields.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Quiet and dark. The pub and the GAA keep going, but there is little reason to make a special trip.

◐ Mind yourself

06 / 07

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

Ballylinan is a working commuter and farming village, not a heritage town. The draws are the ruined church, the Grace story and the pub - not a streetscape to photograph.

Trying to see the National Ploughing here

The NPA headquarters is in Ballylinan, but the championships themselves are held at a different site somewhere in the country each September. Check the venue before you drive to Laois expecting the event.

Food and a bed without planning ahead

There is no real tourist accommodation or dining infrastructure in the village. Athy, a short drive north in Kildare, or Carlow town to the south is where the hotels and restaurants are.

Getting there.

By car

South of Athy on the N78, three kilometres from the Kildare border. Athy is the nearest town; Carlow town is roughly 20 km south and Portlaoise about 30 km north-west. The N78 runs straight through the village.

By bus

Limited rural service - check Local Link Laois Offaly and Bus Eireann timetables for the Athy and Carlow direction. The nearest railway station is Athy, on the Dublin Heuston to Waterford line, a short drive north.