Overview
Longwood earns a stop for two things a passing cyclist mightn’t guess. The first is a main street wide enough to have held livestock fairs since a royal charter of 1611. The second is a canal harbour a couple of kilometres east, where a bronze shoe set into the ground marks the route of the Famine walkers who trudged from Strokestown to Dublin in 1847. The village itself – Irish Maigh Dearmhaí, ‘the plain of the oak’ – sits on the R160 about 15 km south of Trim, and it’s more a services stop than a sight. Its population more than trebled in the 2000s, and it now runs to a Spar, a couple of takeaways, a hardware shop, four pubs and a triangular Fair Green at its centre. The oak the name remembers still shows in the townlands around it: Derringlig, ‘the oakwood of the hollow’, and Ballinderry, ‘the town of the oak wood’.
Fairs and landlords
Longwood’s roots run back to the Hospital of the Crutched Friars of St John the Baptist at Newtown Trim. When the monasteries were dissolved in 1540 the land passed to the Plunketts, and in 1611 James I granted Christopher Plunkett a charter to hold a fair here – one of the earliest in the county. Through the 19th century the green hosted fixed-date markets on 1 July, Whit-Tuesday, 12 July and 11 December, pulling traders in from across the region.
The Edgeworth family took the estate in the late 1600s and collected tolls from fair-goers for generations. In 1952 they handed the green over, free, to the parish priest, who passed it to the Diocese of Meath, and the era of landlord tolls ended. The green is still the centre of the village, hemmed by the old primary school and the Garda station.
The canal and the harbour
The reason to linger is water, and it’s mostly a short way out of the village. Longwood links straight onto the Royal Canal Greenway – a level, 130 km towpath from Maynooth to Cloondara – by a newly built laneway. Follow it about 2 km east to Longwood Harbour, also called Boyne Dock, where a lock-keeper’s cottage has been restored and taken over by the Ribbontail Paddlers canoe club. The bronze shoe here is part of the National Famine Way, one of a series marking the 1,490 people who walked the canal line to the Dublin coffin ships in 1847.
A couple of hundred metres west of the harbour, the Boyne Aqueduct carries the canal over the River Boyne, with a railway viaduct alongside it – two solid pieces of 19th-century engineering, built in the 1820s. The nearby Ribbontail Bridge takes its name from the Ribbon Society, the secret movement that backed poor tenant farmers in the early 1800s. For paddlers, Inchamore Bridge outside the village opens onto the Boyne Blueway; the stretch down to Trim is one for experienced canoeists rather than a first outing.
Around the village
The 1841 St Mary’s Church of the Assumption, late-Gothic with a western bellcote, anchors the streetscape; it replaced an earlier L-shaped church and still serves the parish. The former parochial house of about 1845 and a run of two-storey houses with raised quoins carry the 19th-century character.
Just outside Longwood, the Castlerickard motte rises over the Blackwater, a Norman earthwork of the late 12th or early 13th century, probably raised under Hugh de Lacy. Beside it are the ruins of Castlerickard Church and the odd pyramid-shaped Swifte family mausoleum. Further along the Trim road, Lionsden House has a dovecote, a lake and late-18th-century grounds worth a look if you’re minded to detour.
Practical information
Getting there – Longwood is on the R160, 15 km south of Trim and about 50 km north-west of Dublin, with the M4 a short run to the south. The nearest stations are Hill of Down and Enfield; a local bus or taxi covers the last stretch.
Parking – street parking along the main road in Meath County Council bays, plus a small free car park behind the GAA club.
Accessibility – the village centre is flat and easy going, and the canal towpath is level and suits pushchairs and wheelchairs in its surfaced sections. The motte and older church buildings have uneven ground.
Opening hours and fees – the Fair Green, church exterior and towpath are open year-round for nothing. The GAA club opens to visitors on match days.
What’s on – the old fair dates are gone, but the green still hosts summer gatherings and GAA fixtures, and the towpath is busy with walkers and cyclists year-round. For a real feel of the place, time a visit for a match or a canal walk, then push on to Trim Castle 15 km north, the largest Anglo-Norman castle in Ireland.