Ballyfin - History

History

According 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.

About 1600 Sir Piers Cosby purchased lands including Ballyfin and erected a castle. By 1637 Ballyfin was raised to manorial status but Cosby was on the wrong side in the turmoil of the 1640s and by May 1666 the estate was conferred on Periam Pole, a recent arrival from Devon. His successor William Pole built a ‘modern house’ to replace the Crosby castle and his son, another William (d. 1781), together with his wife Lady Sarah Moore, (d. 1780) daughter of the 5th Earl of Drogheda, set about transforming the demesne into one of the finest examples of the natural style of gardening to be found in Ireland. Centred on its 30-acre man-made lake, the landscape was much admired by Emily, Countess of Kildare, from Carton house in the adjoining county of Kildare who in a letter to her husband described Ballyfin as ‘a most delightful place indeed, much beyond any place I have seen in Ireland’.

William Pole was succeeded by his cousin, William Wellesley (1763-1845), who was the elder brother of Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington and who adopted the Pole name to become William Wellesly-Pole. Preoccupied with his political career in England, Wellesly-Pole left Ballyfin uninhabited for long periods, though he continued his predecessors’ improvements to the demesne, employing the landscape designer John Webb.

In 1813 Wellesly-Pole sold Ballyfin to the young Sir Charles Coote who had inherited the family baronetcy from his cousin the 7th, and last, Earl of Mountrath. The Cootes had been settled in Ireland since the arrival of the first Sir Charles Coote in 1601. An ambitious, indeed ruthless, soldier, Coote (1581–1661) had carved out vast estates in Ireland and been made a baronet by James I, before being killed at the siege of Trim in the 1641 Rebellion. Sir Charles’s descendant and namesake, together with his wife Caroline, set about rebuilding Ballyfin on a magnificent scale. Sir Charles enjoyed ownership of Ballyfin until his death in 1864 when he was succeeded by his son, also Sir Charles, who in turn was succeeded by his brother the Rev. Algernon whose grandson Ralph finally sold Ballyfin in the 1920 as Irish Independence hastened the demise of the Big House.

The estate was purchased by the Patrician Brothers, a Roman Catholic teaching order who ran a much-loved school from the estate, and who in 1928 added a wing to the house. In 2002, a decline in the number of brothers led the order to sell and the school was moved to the nearby village of Mountrath. The estate was purchased by a Chicago couple with strong Irish connections Fred and Kay Krehbiel who partnered with Jim Reynolds, to form Ballyfin Demesne Ltd. which has overseen a nine-year restoration project which has brought the house back to life. In May 2011 Ballyfin opened as a small hotel.