Ballitore House Ballitore House, situated on Fuller's Court Road, was once the home of the Strettels, the family of Abel, one of Ballitore's founders. 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; ) 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. During the same period, Irwin set up the
Jack and Jill Foundation. In 2015 the house was put on the market. 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. 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". 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. The most recent owners bought the house in 1983 and began operating it as a part-time
B&B .
Quaker graveyard 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. 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. 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. 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. The museum also holds items of Quaker interest such as a wedding dress and bonnet worn by Marian Richardson in 1853 The building was the family home of the Lawlers 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. Both individuals are now memorialised by plaques, one on each of the villages two streets. ==Amenities==