Overview
One small Longford town gave its name to a family that produced a novelist Jane Austen read and admired, the priest who heard Louis XVI’s last confession at the guillotine, and the schoolboy Oliver Goldsmith. Edgeworthstown (Irish: Meathas Troim, ‘frontier of the elder tree’, also called Mostrim) sits in the east of County Longford where the N4 Dublin–Sligo road meets the N55. The reason to stop is the Edgeworths, and the best way to take them in is the short heritage and literary trail that loops out from the Maria Edgeworth Centre and back.
The Edgeworths
Richard Lovell Edgeworth built the family estate here in the early 18th century and filled the house with talk: an inventor and educational reformer himself, he drew Sir Walter Scott, William Wordsworth and the chemist Humphry Davy to the dinner table. His daughter Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) lived here from 1782 until her death and wrote the novels – Castle Rackrent among them – that made her, in her day, the most commercially successful novelist in these islands and an acknowledged influence on Austen. She’s sometimes called the ‘Irish Jane Austen’, though she got there first.
The family’s reach ran well beyond literature. Abbé Henry Essex Edgeworth, a relative born in the town, became confessor to Louis XVI and stood with him on the scaffold in 1793. Oliver Goldsmith got his early schooling at St John’s Rectory. And Oscar Wilde’s younger sister, Isola, died at that same rectory and is buried in St John’s churchyard, where Maria Edgeworth lies too.
The heritage and literary trail
Start at the Maria Edgeworth Centre, a museum set in one of Ireland’s oldest national school buildings, opened in 1841. Allow about an hour: the displays cover Maria’s writing and the family’s part in the early national education system, and you can pick up the self-guided audio trail here or book a guided walk through the Centre. Either takes you round the town’s literary landmarks.
The route takes in St John’s Rectory, where Goldsmith was taught and Isola Wilde died; St John’s Church and its graveyard, with the Edgeworth family tomb and the graves of Maria and Isola; St Mary’s Church, worth a look for its Clarke stained-glass windows; and the restored walled garden of Edgeworthstown House. One honest note on the house itself: it has been altered beyond recognition and is now Our Lady’s Nursing Home, so it’s closed to the public – the walled garden and the façade are as close as you get.
Practical information
- Maria Edgeworth Centre admission: Adult €7.50, children 10–16 €3, family €20, under-10s free. This is the one thing on the trail that isn’t free, and despite what some listings say, it is not a donation-only entry.
- Opening hours: Tuesday to Friday 10am–5pm, Saturday and Sunday 11am–5pm. Closed Mondays, so don’t build a Monday day-trip around it.
- Getting there: About an hour west of Dublin on the N4. The Dublin–Sligo train (the line through the town opened in 1855) takes roughly 90 minutes and leaves you a 15-minute walk from the Centre, past the statue of Maria Edgeworth.
- Parking: On-street in the town; there’s no signposted dedicated car park at the Centre.
- Facilities: Toilets at the Centre, with picnic space there and in the adjoining park.
- Accessibility: The trail through the town is largely flat, though some of the older church entrances have steps.
Around the town
- Maria Edgeworth Festival of Literature & Arts: the town’s literary festival, held each May.
- Corlea Trackway Visitor Centre – a preserved Iron Age bog road with a visitor centre, Longford’s top-visited attraction.
- Granard – a Norman motte and a hill-top town, north towards Cavan.
If you can, time it for the May festival, when the talks and workshops put the town’s literary past back to work. Otherwise, just come on any day that isn’t a Monday, do the audio trail, and read a little Maria Edgeworth on the train home.