The week between Christmas and New Year can be a difficult period for the family, with boredom setting in and massive feelings of guilt in some cases about over indulgence in the grub stakes.

A walk up to the Hell Fire Club above Rathfarnham is well worth the effort, but be sure to set off by midday because of the early dusk. If the day is fine and there is frost or light snow, then for the pre-teen age group it is worth while to carry a couple of tin trays for sliding down the hill. Go to the Yellow House in Rathfarnham and follow the road for Bodenstown, after the traffic lights with the sign post for Tallaght take the second next right hand turn. This is Scholarstown Road, take the first left and you are onto Stocking Lane, continue with this road all the way up a very steep gradient. When you pass Kilakea House restaurant on your right continue for another couple of hundred yards and you will see a Coillte sign for Kilakea forest. There is usually room to park your car at this lay by. Instead of taking the road through the forest take the first left hand path going up the mountain, this is a stiff climb at an angle of thirty degrees and not for anyone with chest complaints.

The Hell Fire club is located at the top of this mountain, Mont Pelier Hill and the reason for naming the mountain thus is quite unknown.

The building itself comes into sight quite suddenly, at the point when you are about to give up. It is incredibly forbidding and while it was built about 1720 by Thomas Connolly, speaker of the House, it has nothing at all reminiscent of the fine Georgian architecture of the period nor indeed of Castleton, the magnificent Connolly mansion. That it has withstood the elements for two hundred and seventy seven years is quite remarkable and indicates that Connolly employed the services of an excellent engineer for it's construction. Literature obtained from the Office of Public Works gives something of it's history. The club was built on top of two passage graves or tombs. A number of these tombs are scattered along the Dublin mountains. They were important statement making pieces of architecture by stone age settlements and communities, and the ones on Mont Pelier Hill while undated, are not more recent than 1,400 B.C.

Speaker Connolly decided to use as masonry for his project the stones from the large cairns that accompanied the passage graves. After a large storm the slated roof blew off. The locals who had been scandalised to begin with, at the desecration of the passage graves, spread the word that the devil had caused the roof to be blown away. Determined not to be beaten in the matter, Connolly devised a vaulted roof built of stones keyed in on their edges, rather in the manner of building a bridge. This roof was to hold until 1849, when a great bonfire which could be seen for miles out into the bay and as far away as Newbridge, was lit to honour Queen Victoria.

The building was reputed to have been built as a hunting lodge for Connolly, but the gradient of the mountain makes this unlikely. It is more likely to have been some kind of retreat for the great man, when he wished to escape from the burdens of State and it is similar to grotto type buildings that were fairly common at that time.

The Hell Fire Clubs were suppressed in England around 1730, because of the disgraceful and debauched behaviour of their members, on one occasion roasting a man to death on a spit.
They reactivated in Athy and then set up in Dublin, meeting at the Eagle Tavern in what is now Christ Church place. They assumed the names of the Red-Indian tribes of the "colonies", calling themselves Mohawks and Cherokees. Their behaviour in Ireland was as depraved as it had been in England. The property on Mont Pelier Hill was purchased from the Connolly estate by the club, around 1735.

Folklore around the grim building relates that the 'Bucks' who held gambling sessions and dice games there, entertained the devil, a chair was always left vacant for him at the gaming table (this table is in the furniture section of the National museum). An absolutely enormous black cat always sat at the table also, this giant cat is supposed to be the one that haunts Kilakea House, so that no one may sleep undisturbed by it there, as it makes it's nightly journey across the yard.

Folklore also has it that a priest was wandering on the mountain one night, and seeing light shining from what he thought was an empty building knocked at the door, he was invited in by the 'gentlemen' who were inside and he perceived that they were in the middle of an evil ritual, they were worshipping a giant black cat which had eyes sparking fire; very quietly and quickly he began to say the prayers of exorcism and with that the cat, which wasn't a cat at all changed into a demon and vanished into the night followed by the terrified Bucks.

If you make the climb up to the top of Mont Pelier Hill the view out to Lambay is worth it. However pass all cats politely, and be sure to be home before dark.