Edgeworthstown or Mostrim () is a small town in

County Longford County Longford ( gle, Contae an Longfoirt) is a county in Ireland. It is in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Longford. Longford County Council is the local authority for the county. The population of the county was 46,634 ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...

. The town is in the east of the county, near the border with

County Westmeath "Noble above nobility" , image_map = Island of Ireland location map Westmeath.svg , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Ireland , subdivision_type1 = Province , subdivision_name1 = , subdivis ...

. Nearby towns are

Longford Longford () is the county town of County Longford in Ireland. It has a population of 10,008 according to the 2016 census. It is the biggest town in the county and about one third of the county's population lives there. Longford lies at the mee ...

12 km to the west,

Mullingar Mullingar ( ; ) is the county town of County Westmeath in Ireland. It is the third most populous town in the Midland Region, with a population of 20,928 in the 2016 census. The Counties of Meath and Westmeath Act 1543 proclaimed Westmeath ...

26 km to the east,

Athlone Athlone (; ) is a town on the border of County Roscommon and County Westmeath, Ireland. It is located on the River Shannon near the southern shore of Lough Ree. It is the second most populous town in the Midlands Region with a population of ...

40 km to the south and

Cavan Cavan ( ; ) is the county town of County Cavan in Ireland. The town lies in Ulster, near the border with County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. The town is bypassed by the main N3 road that links Dublin (to the south) with Enniskillen, Bal ...

42 km to the north.

Name

The area was named Edgeworthstown in the 19th century after the

Anglo-Irish Anglo-Irish people () denotes an ethnic, social and religious grouping who are mostly the descendants and successors of the English Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. They mostly belong to the Anglican Church of Ireland, which was the establis ...

Edgeworth family. An estate was built there by

Richard Lovell Edgeworth Richard Lovell Edgeworth (31 May 1744 – 13 June 1817) was an Anglo-Irish politician, writer and inventor. Biography Edgeworth was born in Pierrepont Street, Bath, England, son of Richard Edgeworth senior, and great-grandson of Sir Sal ...

. His family—which includes

Honora Sneyd Honora Edgeworth (''née'' Sneyd; 1751 – 1 May 1780) was an eighteenth-century English writer, mainly known for her associations with literary figures of the day particularly Anna Seward and the Lunar Society, and for her work on children's e ...

(his second wife), writer and intellectual

Maria Edgeworth Maria Edgeworth (1 January 1768 – 22 May 1849) was a prolific Anglo-Irish novelist of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the n ...

, botanist Michael Pakenham Edgeworth, economist

Francis Ysidro Edgeworth Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (8 February 1845 – 13 February 1926) was an Anglo-Irish philosopher and political economist who made significant contributions to the methods of statistics during the 1880s. From 1891 onward, he was appointed th ...

, and priest

Henry Essex Edgeworth Henry Essex Edgeworth (174522 May 1807), also known as L'Abbé Edgeworth de Firmont, was an Irish Catholic priest and confessor of Louis XVI. Life He was born in Edgeworthstown, County Longford, Ireland, the son of Robert Edgeworth, the Church ...

—lived at the estate. The area's original name was the Irish ''Meathas Troim'' or ''Meathas Truim''. This was anglicized as ''Mastrim'' or ''Mostrim'' and variants. These names continued to be used by the locals. In 1935, at the behest of the local Town Tenants' Association, Longford County Council officially changed the town's name to Mostrim. However, in 1974, a local government order reverted the name to Edgeworthstown. Today, both names are in use.

Infrastructure

The town is located where the N4 Dublin-Sligo/ N5 Dublin-Castlebar road crosses the N55 Cavan-Athlone road. The town also has a railway station on the

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 ...

–

Sligo Sligo ( ; ga, Sligeach , meaning 'abounding in shells') is a coastal seaport and the county town of County Sligo, Ireland, within the western province of Connacht. With a population of approximately 20,000 in 2016, it is the largest urban ce ...

railway line Rail terminology is a form of technical terminology. The difference between the American term ''railroad'' and the international term ''railway'' (used by the International Union of Railways and English-speaking countries outside the United Sta ...

Edgeworthstown railway station Edgeworthstown railway station serves the town of Edgeworthstown (Mostrim) in County Longford, Ireland. Edgeworthstown station is served by national rail company Iarnród Éireann's Dublin to Sligo InterCity service and Dublin to Longford ...

opened on 8 November 1855. Edgeworthstown expanded significantly during the first decade of the 21st century with many new housing developments and updated transport infrastructure including a bypass. The N4 National primary route formerly ran along the Main Street until the town centre was bypassed in 2006. The N55 route from

still passes through the town centre.

Industry

Industries include animal feed processing and pet food manufacturing, with Paul & Vincent Limited and C & D Foods Limited employing several hundred people in the area. The latter, C & D Foods Limited, reopened a pet food plant in 2014 following an earlier fire.

Sport

The local

Gaelic Athletic Association The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA; ga, Cumann Lúthchleas Gael ; CLG) is an Irish international amateur sporting and cultural organisation, focused primarily on promoting indigenous Gaelic games and pastimes, which include the traditional ...

club is named Mostrim, while the minor section of the club is called

Wolfe Tones GAA Wolfe Tones GAA is a Gaelic Athletic Association club which comprises an amalgamation of the parishes of Oristown and Kilberry which are situated roughly halfway between the town of Navan and the town of Kells, in County Meath, Ireland. The cl ...

. The club has won three

Longford Senior Football Championship The Longford Senior Football Championship is an annual Gaelic Athletic Association competition organised by Longford GAA among the Senior grade Gaelic football clubs in County Longford, Ireland. The winning club qualifies to represent its county ...

s, in 1974, 1985 and 1992. In

Gaelic football Gaelic football ( ga, Peil Ghaelach; short name '), commonly known as simply Gaelic, GAA or Football is an Irish team sport. It is played between two teams of 15 players on a rectangular grass pitch. The objective of the sport is to score by ki ...

, Mostrim won an u-21 championship 2002 and the Wolfe Tones minor team won Minor A Championships in 2002 and in 2006. In

hurling Hurling ( ga, iománaíocht, ') is an outdoor team game of ancient Gaelic Irish origin, played by men. One of Ireland's native Gaelic games, it shares a number of features with Gaelic football, such as the field and goals, the number of p ...

, Wolfe Tones has won a record 19

Longford Senior Hurling Championship The Longford Club Hurling Championship is an annual Gaelic Athletic Association competition organised by Longford GAA among hurling clubs in County Longford, Ireland. The winner qualifies to represent the county in the Leinster Junior Club Hurl ...

titles. Hugh Devine Park is the home pitch for both Mostrim and Wolfe Tones. A local

soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

club, Mostrim United, previously competed in the Longford & District Schoolboy/girl League. As of 2022, this club had folded.

People

(1768–1849), writer, lived at Edgeworthstown House *

, (1845-1926),

philosopher. *

Bernard A. Maguire Bernard A. Maguire (February 11, 1818 – April 26, 1886) was an Irish-American Catholic Church, Catholic priest and Society of Jesus, Jesuit who served twice as the president of Georgetown University. Born in Ireland, he emigrated to the Uni ...

(1818–1886), Jesuit who became the president of

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private research university in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll in 1789 as Georgetown College, the university has grown to comprise eleven undergraduate and graduate ...

References

External links

St John's Church of Ireland Church, Edgeworthstown (Buildings of Ireland)

Edgeworthstown House
{{County Longford Towns and villages in County Longford Planned communities in the Republic of Ireland