Rahan Retreat house, or the Collage, as we would call it in Tullamore, is correctly named, so I am led to believe, the Jesuits of Tullabeg, Rahan. My first recollection of it was in the early 1970’s of a sports day held there in the June Bank Holiday weekend. This was also the start of the long summer holidays from school, so I look back to those sports days with great fondness.

In later years, around the 1990’s I played golf on a golf course, that was based there and tried to improve my slice in a driving range, that was also there.  My memory tells me it became a nursing home for a while, but that could be my memory playing tricks on me.  I do know there was a public house there for a very short time. Just one or two rooms.

The history of the house is varied, but the main points would be

It was built between 1815 to 1818
It was used as a school  from 1818 to 1886 mainly as a preparatory school for Clongowes Wood College up to 1863.  After 1863 the boys completed their studies at Rahan. Due to debt the school closed suddenly and forever in the summer of 1886
From the summer of 1888 down to 1930 Tullabeg was the novitiate of the Irish province for the Jesuits
It was used as a house of ecclesiastical studies and enclosed retreats, from 1930-’62

It was then used as a retreat only house until 1991.

I went out there in April 2021 and took this video and Images. It was years since I was there and I was very sorry to see the state the building was in.  There was a lot of the windows broken.