Ballyfin

Ballyfin (Irish: Baile Fionn, meaning "town of Fionn") 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 mid way 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 Demesne is a 600-acre estate 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 2010 it opened its doors as a small hotel.