School: St John of God Convent, Rathdowney (roll number 16203)
- Location:
- Rathdowney, Co. Laois
- Teacher: The Sisters
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- XML “Ruins in Rathpiper”
- XML “Ballybuggy - St Brigid's Bush”
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- (continued from previous page)Ossory. It stood within a large Rath. Its ruins were cleared away abut 1836, and materials broken up for road metal.
- ST. Bridget is the patron of Ballybuggy & it is the constant tradition of the locality that there was a nunnery here, which she honoured with a visit on the occasion of her journey to Kildare, to meet St. Patrick at Cashel. "St. Bridget's Bush" still blooms beside the graveyard & bears the ex votos. At the foot of the bush is "St. Bridget's Stone" which is evidently a holy water stone, but one of the rudest imaginable, being nothing more than a rough, uneven boulder, 3ft by 2 and a 1/2 ft thick, with an artificial hollow.
Stretching from the graveyard to the south-east lay the ancient "town of Ballybuggy" Sixty or seventy years ago its foundations covered an area of six Irish acres: at present, as most of the land has been reclaimed they extend over but an acre and a half. The people say, and apparently with good reason that, in far off times, this was the chief town of the district