Ballyfin 3.3

Ballyfin is a small village and parish in County Laois, Ireland. Located in the Slieve Bloom Mountains, the village is in the midlands of Ireland. It is located on the R423 regional road midway between the towns of Mountrath and Mountmellick.There are many hill walks nearby in the Slieve Bloom Mountains. Most of the area is covered in forest. The trees were planted by local farmers on marginal land unsuitable for farming.Ballyfin DemesneBallyfin Demesne is a 600-acre estate that was successively home to the O’Mores, the Crosbys, the Poles, the Wellesley-Poles and the Cootes. Over the years, several houses have stood on the site. The present building is a neo-classical mansion built by Sir Charles Coote (1792–1864) in the 1820s to designs by the leading Irish architects, Richard (1767–1849) and William Vitruvius Morrison (1794–1838). The house is considered the most lavish Regency mansion in Ireland.For much of the twentieth century, it served as a school, having been sold in 1928 by Sir Ralph Coote to the Patrician Brothers, a Roman Catholic teaching order. Since 2002, it has been the subject of an extensive restoration project and in May 2011, it opened its doors as a country house hotel.HistoryAccording to legend, Fionn Mac Cumhaill is said to have been raised here. Fionn ate the Salmon of Knowledge which gave him untold knowledge. Later he became leader of the Fianna. In the medieval period Ballyfin was part of the cantred of Laoighis Reta, the territory of the O ‘Mordha, or O’More, clan who lost out in the Laois-Offaly plantations, the most comprehensive settlement of the Tudor conquest of Ireland. In 1550 Edmund Fay was granted a lease for Ballyfin and about this date Ballyfin appears for the first time on the so-called Cotton Map (British Museum) where it is marked as a clearing in densely forested land.