Ballitore

Ballitore House, situated on Fuller's Court Road, was once the home of the Strettels, the family of Abel, one of Ballitore's founders.[9] A wood was originally planted next to the house to enhance its beauty. The house was burnt down by the IRA in 1922, leaving only the original walls, but was restored again in 1926. only to fall into disuse again.

Originally a woollen mill, Ballitore Mill was later adapted for use as a corn mill, while flour was also milled widely including in the nearby village Crookstown less than one kilometre away.[9]

Built in 1720, Fuller's Court is the early home of the writer Mary Shackleton (later known as Mary Leadbeater) who was born here in 1758. The granddaughter of Abraham Shackleton, she was a pioneering educator whose pupils included Edmund Burke, Napper Tandy and Paul Cullen (who later became Ireland's first cardinal).[9] She married William Leadbeater in 1791 and became Ballitore's first postmistress.

Griesebank House, once known as the Mill House,[9] is a Georgian property dating from about 1700 that has been noted by the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage as being of considerable social and historical importance for its links with the Shackleton family and the development of Ballitore as a Quaker village.[26] It is situated next door to the remains of Ballitore Mill. Like nearby Griesemount House, it is named after the River Greese (also spelt Griese; Irish: An Ghrís) which flows between them, and powered the mill. Set in its own grounds, the house is adjacent to the ruined Ballitore Mill to the southeast. In the early 1990s, Jonathan Irwin and wife Senator Mary Ann O'Brien bought the house and upgraded the house with an adjoining contemporary wing. O'Brien is widely recognised as one of Ireland's early female entrepreneurs, having created the international chocolate brand 'Lily O'Brien's Chocolates' from the kitchen of Griesebank House.[27] During the same period, Irwin set up the Jack and Jill Foundation. In 2015 the house was put on the market.[27]

Griesemount House is a period property located close to the village possessing intact Georgian features and layout, and containing four reception rooms and six bedrooms.[28] The scale and fine detailing of the house have been noted by the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage.[29] George Shackleton, a grand-uncle of the Antarctic explorer Ernest, built Griesemount House in 1817 and raised 13 children there, including the noted botanical artist Lydia Shackleton who was the first artist-in-residence at the Botanic Gardens in Dublin.[30][31] One of Shackleton's first recorded sketches is of the house. In the 'Annals of Ballitore', a diary kept between 1766 and 1823 by local writer Mary Leadbeater, it is described how "on the 22nd day of the sixth month this year, (mid-summer's day) 1817, the first stone of George Shackleton's house at Griesemount was laid by his little niece Hannah White".[30] In the early 1970s, the house passed into the ownership of Sara von Stade, the widow of an American army lieutenant killed in Germany during the Second World War and mother of Frederica von Stade, the world-famous mezzo-soprano singer. Having bought it “for a knockdown price”, von Stade restored and updated the house including enhancement of the gardens.[28] The most recent owners bought the house in 1983 and began operating it as a part-time B&B circa 2003.[28] The house was put up for sale in 2017 with an asking price of €925,000,[28] and again in 2018 for €850,000.[31] In November 2019 the entire contents of the house were put up for auction, following the recent sale of the house.[32]

The Quaker graveyard in Ballitore

Close to the village lies the Quaker graveyard in which Mary Leadbeater and her husband lie side by side. Unusually for an Irish graveyard of the 18th century, there is no church. The yard is enclosed by four stone walls and the graves are simple and uniform; flat slabs announcing names only, with no superfluous messages, as is Quaker tradition.[9] The gravestones are designed to be uniform as, according to Quaker beliefs, all are equal in death.

The village's Quaker Meeting House was restored in 1975 by Kildare County Council,[33] and won a European heritage award in 1979.[34] As of 1999, the Meeting House also remained in service as a house of prayer for the local Quaker community, most of whom were noted to have "embraced the religion relatively recently", and who gathered on Sunday mornings.[34]

The Mary Leadbeater House

The Mary Leadbeater House now serves as a library and museum set in the village square.[35] Another one of the Leadbeater's houses was built with its gable end facing side-on to the main street and looked onto the village market square.[36] In the late 1990s, the house was restored by a FÁS scheme which won a national award worth £100,000. The meticulously ordered Quaker ethos of discipline and avoidance of excess can be observed in the design of the building with a sequence of lime-washed, small-windowed rooms which open up on each other.[37] The museum includes artefacts from the original Shackleton home in Yorkshire, dating from 1660.[38] The museum also holds items of Quaker interest such as a wedding dress and bonnet worn by Marian Richardson in 1853[38] and also holds manuscripts and letters from the Shackleton family, as well as watercolours by Mary Shackleton.[38]

The Quaker school in Ballitore was founded and run by the Shackleton family, and kept within the family for three generations. It was the most successful Quaker private boarding school in Ireland throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. By 1999 a small house existed on the site with a plaque on the wall in memory of the school.[9] In 2013, the Quaker school was demolished in order to make way for a Glanbia development in the centre of the town.[18]

Owen Finn Memorial Inscription

The 'Shaker Store', a workshop which sells Shaker furniture and other wooden gifts, is situated in the main square. The building in which the shop sits, built c.1770, is described in its entry in the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage as an "important component of the architectural heritage of Ballitore, representing the early development of the area as a planned Quaker village".[39] The building was the family home of the Lawler's for several generations and by 1999 the business was operated by Michael Lawler. An ancestor of Michael's named Paddy Dempsey was a leader of the United Irishmen and the first man killed in the Ballitore Rebellion, while another ancestor, Owen Finn, a blacksmith, was also a participant and executed for making pikes.[9] Both individuals are now memorialised by plaques, one on each of the villages two streets.