The Swan Inn, c. 1900
Named after the pub
Most Irish villages are named for a saint, a ford, a fort or a family. The Swan is named for a public house. The Swan Inn was built around 1900 at the crossroads where the R430 meets the R426, and the settlement that grew up around it simply took the pub's name. The Irish, An Eala, is a straight translation of the English rather than an older place-name underneath it. The pub came up for sale in 2021 as a landmark property, so check it is open before you build an evening around it - but the name on the road signs is its name, and that is a fact worth knowing as you drive in.
From 1935 to Lagan Brick
Fleming's Fireclays and the brick village
The Swan exists in its modern form because of clay. P.J. Fleming opened a fireclay factory here in 1935 to exploit the rich local fireclay deposits, making bricks and chimney flues. The works gave employment to the whole area and built worker housing that made up almost the entire village until 2003. When Fleming's was absorbed into the Lagan Group it was rebranded Lagan Brick, and it still operates on the edge of the village. This is a rare thing in rural Ireland - a village whose original industry never closed. It is not picturesque, but it is honest, and it explains why the place is here at all.
Four townlands, one team
St Joseph's and the All Stars of 2003
The local GAA club, St Joseph's, draws its players from four small areas - Ballyadams, Luggacurren, Wolfhill and the Swan - because no single one of them is big enough on its own. For a parish this size the record is striking: in 2003 two of its players, Tom Kelly and Joe Higgins, both won GAA All Star awards. Higgins was also a serious boxer, with nine Leinster titles and two All-Ireland titles to his name. The pitches and the community centre are the real social hub here, more so than the pub, which is the usual shape of life in a village of this scale.
A 15th-century tower, the Bowens, John of the Pike
Ballyadams Castle
A few minutes north of the village, toward Ballylinan, stands Ballyadams Castle - a 15th-century fortified house, one of the tallest old structures in Laois, with views said to reach to Athy from the top. It takes its name from an Adam O'More who held it in the late 1400s, when the O'Mores were the dominant family in this part of the country. In 1551 the Earl of Desmond granted it to a Welshman, John Thomas Bowen, known as John of the Pike for the weapon he always carried; the Bowens held it for generations until it passed by marriage and sale in the 1700s. It is a ruin now, on private land - admire it from the road and check locally before crossing any fences.