of Ireland, into the church, and Jesus with children, and over the main door of the church a window shows the Virgin Mary. Over the door is a statue of the Pieta. The Church of Ireland also has a church in the town, St Mary's, with a clergyman resident in Rathkeale. Hellfire Club East of the castle is the remains of the Hellfire Club, an almost intact redbrick building built in 1740 (the same year the monks abandoned the nearby friary). This bizarre secret society was founded in Dublin in 1735 by the Earl of Rosse, first Grand Master of the Irish Freemasons. It is one of two in Ireland (the other is outside Dublin). The Hellfire Clubs, throughout Ireland and Britain, were 18th-century clubs where rich men gathered to drink, gamble, and allegedly have mock crucifixions and homosexual orgies. Lurid rumours around Hellfire Clubs included visits by the devil and human sacrifice. These clubs popularised the combination of whiskey, butter and cream mulled by a red-hot poker known as "scaltheen". The club closed down by 1800. The façade of the building collapsed in the 1990s. Community hall In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the community organisation Muintir na Tíre built a community hall for the parish. Built in a time of economic depression, it was constructed with the voluntary labour of local people. It became a focal point in the social life of the town, used for dances, concerts and bingo. It replaced the library (which was too small) as a dance hall. It was also used as a national school while the new building was being built in 1962/63, and as a church when masses were held there during the 1977 refurbishment of St Mary's Catholic church. Transport The railway line that passes through the now closed Askeaton railway station was built by the former Limerick and Foynes Railway Company from 1856 to 1858, with the station opening on 12 May 1857. The Limerick–Foynes railway line had stations at Patrickswell, Kilgobbin, Adare, Ballingrane Junction (Rathkeale) and Askeaton. The railway line to Foynes passes north of the town, but Askeaton railway station was closed to passenger traffic on 4 February 1963 and freight on 2 December 1974, when the station closed. Trains for Foynes continued to pass through Askeaton until the line effectively lost all its freight services in 2000. In an interview on Limerick's Live 95fm on