Historic stone wall smashes onto parked cars in Laois town

A huge chunk of stone wall lying on cars in Rathdowney, Laois. Image from video by member of public.

placeholder image — A huge chunk of stone wall lying on cars in Rathdowney, Laois. Image from video by member of public.

'You can replace a wall, you can't replace human beings' -Cllr John King

A huge stone wall has collapsed and smashed into two parked cars in Laois this week, with luckily nobody injured.

The historic wall fell into a public carpark in Rathdowney, some time on Wednesday, February 18.

Huge chunks of the wall smashed onto the bonnets of two cars that were parked below it.

The carpark is behind the social welfare office in the south Laois town.

Cllr John King from the Mountmellick Borris-in-Ossory Municipal District, spoke to the Leinster Express / Laois Live.

Still from a video by a local resident, shared to a community Facebook group, showing the damage.

"On the plus side, there wasn't anyone injured.

"A couple of cars in the carpark got damaged, but there wasn't anybody sitting in them. There wasn't any danger to anyone visiting the shrine because there was a second protective wall built there," Cllr King explained.

He suspects that the recent heavy rains may have destabilised the stone wall.

"Like all stone walls, the water soaks down. It could be due to all the water after falling, we've never had as much rain.

"You can replace a wall but you can't replace human beings," Cllr King said.

He said that the stone wall will have to be rebuilt.

"This wall could go back in time to when the church was there. It was demolished in the 1960s. A shrine was put there to acknowledge that the church had stood there. Fr Martin decided to make a community garden there and a carpark to benefit shoppers. Then later we got funding for extra parking and the shrine was moved," Cllr King said.