town information laois

An example of a seventeenth-century market town. The ruins of Ballinakill Castle are of a late seventeenth-century castle built by the Dunnes (but never inhabited) on the site of one destroyed by Cromwellian troops under Fairfax. The configuration of streets around the large rectangular square is eighteenth century.

The town's entrance from Abbeyleix is marked by two trees known as Toll Trees where a toll was paid by visitors to the town. The town had important fairs, a brewery, wo...