Heywood Gardens
Just north of the village, Sir Edwin Lutyens laid out the formal gardens at Heywood in the early 1900s, and they are the reason most people turn off the R432. Entry is free, the grounds are open every day of the year, and from the hillside the view south-east takes in seven counties. If you have half an hour, this is what to give it to.
The formal gardens are the centrepiece: a terrace, a red-tiled loggia carrying an inscription from Alexander Pope, and round windows set into the walls that frame views out over the parkland. At the heart is the sunken garden, an oval pool and fountain ringed by terraces. The planting is usually attributed to Gertrude Jekyll, Lutyens’s regular collaborator. Kingfishers and moorhens work the lake edges.
The wider demesne is older. Michael Frederick Trench shaped the eighteenth-century landscape after his Grand Tour, digging three artificial lakes and planting the lime avenues; he took advice from James Gandon, architect of Dublin’s Custom House, and named the house for his mother-in-law, Mary Heywood. The house itself is gone, and the gardens are now run by the OPW as part of Heritage Ireland.
A few practical notes. Dogs are welcome on leads; cycling, fires, camping and barbecues are not. The ground is uneven and there is deep water, so wear proper footwear. There is a free car park, toilets and interpretive signage, and guided tours can be arranged. In the same demesne, the gardens at Hazelbrook House open on summer weekend afternoons (June to September, Saturday and Sunday, 12pm–3pm, €5).
A market town with an unusual archive
Ballinakill (Baile na Coille, ‘town of the woods’) was laid out as an estate town, and the square still shows it. Sir Thomas Coatch was granted a charter for a market and fair in 1606; by 1611 Sir Thomas Ridgeway held the town, built a castle and pushed its growth, and from 1613 it returned members to parliament until the Acts of Union. The Market House still stands on the square, beside a monument raised in 1898 to the dead of the 1798 rebellion.
The town’s cattle fair was once reputedly the biggest in Europe. It ran until 1963, and a cattle mart still trades every Saturday, cows from 10am and bulls from half past.
Two churches sit side by side on Church Street. Nineteenth-century St Brigid’s, the Catholic church, holds an octagonal medieval font thought to have come from Dysart Gallen; next to it, All Saints (Church of Ireland) was built in 1821 on the site of a seventeenth-century predecessor.
The oddest thing in the town’s history is a footnote from the 1641 rebellion. When the castle and village were besieged, with forces under the Earl of Castlehaven and Lord Mountgarret among the attackers, the surrender and the plundering that followed were recorded by an unlikely eyewitness: a Patagonian servant who had worked twenty years for Captain Richard Steele. His testimony is the only account of its kind in the Irish archives.
The outdoor pool
The community-run outdoor pool is the other summer draw, open daily from June to September. It is heated, with a 35-metre main pool and a 10-metre toddler section, and a playground added in 2022. Residents swim free; non-residents pay a small fee, posted on the board along with the day’s hours, which run through the afternoon and into the evening.
Every August the Twin Trees Heywood Art and Culture Festival takes over the old toll-gate entrance for open-air workshops and painting sessions.
Masslough Lake
On the edge of the village, Masslough is a small semi-circular lake fringed with native woodland, holding roach, perch and tench. Permits to fish it are available through Ballinakill Angling Club.
Getting here and practical information
From Abbeyleix, take the R432 south-east for about 7km; the Heywood Gardens entrance is beside Heywood Community School. Both the gardens and the pool have free on-site parking, though it fills on warm summer weekends. Ballinakill Castle has no car park of its own, so use the streets nearby.
Heywood Gardens open at 08:30 daily and close at 21:00 from May to August, 19:00 in April and September, and 17:00 from October to March; the grounds stay accessible year-round.
Public transport is thin: a daily Slieve Bloom Coaches Town Link service connects Portlaoise and Borris-in-Ossory, and TFI Local Link route 822 runs from Mountrath to Carlow.
For the gardens, contact heywoodgardens@opw.ie or 086 8107916; for the pool, ballinakilloutdoorswimmingpool.com.
Nearby
- Emo Court – neo-classical house and formal gardens, about 25km north.
- Rock of Dunamase – a hilltop fortress with a long view, roughly 15km east.
- Abbeyleix – the bog boardwalk makes an easy nature walk.
- Aghaboe Abbey – medieval monastic ruins to the west.