placenamesArless
An tArdlios
Arless, also written Arles, combines the memory of a tile-making village with two distinctive monuments: the Grace family mausoleum and the Church of the Sacred Heart. Their history links local craft production, family patronage and nineteenth-century Gothic architecture.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- An tArdlios · Irish · main form
- Arless · English · main form
Place & story
Tiles for Dublin
Samuel Lewis’s 1837 account describes Arles as a village of about forty houses on the Carlow–Maryborough road. Its roofing and flooring tiles had found buyers in Dublin and elsewhere, but slate was replacing them and tile-making was already approaching extinction. Small-scale yarn and linen manufacture continued. This account captures a local craft economy under pressure from a competing building material, rather than a village sustained solely by surrounding farms. [2]
The Grace mausoleum
The Grace family mausoleum was erected in 1818 on the site of an earlier church wing known as Grace’s chapel. Lewis describes a burial vault below and a second vaulted chamber above containing memorial inscriptions. A steep gabled roof and tall pinnacles gave the structure its conspicuous Gothic outline. Tablets from the preceding building were incorporated outside, so the new monument also preserved elements of an older family memorial space. [2]
The Church of the Sacred Heart
Pugin and Ashlin designed the present Church of the Sacred Heart, built between 1865 and 1868. The Dictionary of Irish Architects records its dedication on 24 May 1868 by the Bishop of Kildare, Dr Walsh, and names James Scanlon as contractor. The reported cost was £3,500. Mrs Grace of Gracefield funded furnishings supplied by Earley and Powells, including altars, stained-glass windows and a communion rail. The church therefore brings together a major architectural partnership, specialist church craftsmen and local family patronage. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Laois
- Barony
- Slievemargy
- Civil parish
- Killabban
- Within
- Ballynagall
- Coordinates
- 52.89399, -7.02075
- Logainm ID
- 107001 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Arless. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Arles: A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, 1837 · Samuel Lewis
- Arless, Church of the Sacred Heart: works record 14090 · Irish Architectural Archive, Dictionary of Irish Architects
- Church of the Sacred Heart, Arless, County Laois illustration: based on a Church of the Sacred Heart, Arless by Sarah777. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2026-06-02. How this page was prepared.