The Mass Pit
The reason to stop in Raheen is a hollow in a field. Under the Penal Laws of the early 1700s, Catholic worship was restricted and Mass was often said out of sight of the authorities. Local history holds that a Protestant landowner named Baldwin came on a group of his Catholic neighbours praying in a deep pit in the fields and, rather than report them, granted a piece of his land for a proper chapel. The hollow is still called the Mass Pit, and it is still there.
A thatched chapel went up on Baldwin’s land in 1729. Nothing of it stands above ground now, but the village graveyard marks the spot where it once stood – the old burial ground was recorded in a county heritage survey in 2011. If you have twenty minutes in Raheen, walk from the church down to the Mass Pit and the graveyard. That short loop is the whole story of the place.
St Fintan’s church
The parish church, dedicated to St Fintan, was finished in 1857 in the Gothic Revival style that went up across Victorian Ireland: pointed arches, cut stone, a plain and dignified front. It replaced the 1729 chapel as the congregation grew, and it still holds Sunday and weekday Mass (the parish is run from Abbeyleix, on 057 873 1135). The exterior and grounds are open to visitors at any time, and the church is the tallest thing in the village, so it’s easy to find.
Sport and village life
Match day is the busiest Raheen gets. St Fintan’s Colt GAA field Gaelic football and hurling teams in the Laois leagues, and Raheen F.C. play soccer through the season; on a summer Sunday the pitches draw a crowd in from the surrounding townlands, and no one minds a visitor watching from the sideline. Tobar an Léinn national school anchors the other end of village life, with the odd seasonal fair or concert. The Raheen Vintage Rally, an annual run of vintage tractors and cars, is held each July nearby at Corbally, just outside Abbeyleix.
Be honest with yourself about what Raheen is, though. It’s a working village, not a visitor attraction: no café, no visitor centre, and little to hold you if you haven’t come for the church, a walk or a match.
Walks and the countryside
Raheen sits on the Laois plain with the Slieve Bloom foothills off to the west. Quiet lanes and rights-of-way link the village to neighbouring townlands, and the hedgerows and field margins are good for birds. The walk out to the Mass Pit and back is the obvious short one; for anything longer, Clonaslee to the west is the proper gateway into the Slieve Blooms and their waymarked trails.
Getting there
- By road: the R430, about 5 km south of Portlaoise. From Dublin, take the M7 to the Portlaoise exit and follow the R430 south.
- Parking: free roadside parking near the church and the school.
- Amenities: Portlaoise, ten minutes north, has the nearest shops, food and petrol.
- Accessibility: the village streets are paved and level. The old graveyard has uneven ground and old headstones, which can be awkward for wheelchair users or anyone unsteady on their feet.
Nearby
- Emo Court – an 18th-century neoclassical house in landscaped parkland, a short drive north-east.
- Rock of Dunamase – medieval hilltop ruins with a wide view over the midlands, to the north-east.
- Abbeyleix Bog Walk – a boardwalk across a protected raised bog, to the south, with signage on the habitat.
- Aghaboe Abbey – to the south-west, a monastic site founded by St Canice around 576 AD, with the ruins of a 14th-century Dominican friary (there is no round tower here).
If you have time for only one of these, make it the Rock of Dunamase: twenty minutes north, and the best view in this corner of Laois.