County Longford
An Longfort
- IrishAn Longfort
- ProvinceLeinster
- County townLongford
- Local governmentLongford County Council
- Area1,091 km²
- Population46,751 (2022)
- Highest pointCorn Hill, 278 m
Ballinamuck
On the twenty second of August 1798 about a thousand French soldiers under General Humbert landed at Kilcummin in Mayo. They took Killala, routed the army at Castlebar, and turned east, hoping to join the rebels in the midlands and march on Dublin.
Lord Cornwallis had assembled twenty five thousand men. Lake's column caught the French and their Irish allies at Ballinamuck on the eighth of September. After a brief fight the French gave up.
The French were treated as prisoners of war, and their officers were entertained in Dublin. Most of the Irish who had marched with them were slaughtered.
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Corlea Trackway
A road of oak planks laid across the bog in 148 BC. Locally it was called the Danes' Road. It is the largest of its kind found in Europe.
It may have been part of a route between Uisneach and Rathcroghan. The Office of Public Works says only that it may have been.
The planks were so heavy that they sank into the peat soon after they were laid. The road was useless almost at once, and preserved for two thousand years. Eighteen metres of it are on show in the visitor centre.
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Maria Edgeworth
Born in Oxfordshire in 1768. She came to Edgeworthstown at five, and from 1782 it was her home for the rest of her life.
She rode round the estate as her father's assistant and noted how the tenants talked. Castle Rackrent came out in 1800, built round the character of Thady Quirk. The king was said to have rubbed his hands and said he knew something now of his Irish subjects.
Walter Scott modelled Waverley on her novel The Absentee, and Jane Austen admired her. She died at home in 1849.
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