Graveyard, Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford

Co. Longford |

Burial Grounds

Graveyard, Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford

The graveyard at Edgeworthstown carries a quiet but persistent association with one of Ireland's most celebrated literary families.

Three conjoined Edgeworth family memorials, spanning the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, are set directly into the north wall of the Church of Ireland building that stands a short distance to the south, creating an unusual layering of commemoration that blurs the boundary between the church structure itself and the burial ground it adjoins.

The site is irregularly shaped, measuring roughly 70 metres north to south and 60 metres east to west, and is enclosed by a stone wall that appears to date from the nineteenth century. Access is through wrought-iron gates on the western and west-south-western sides. The memorials within the graveyard run from the eighteenth century through to the twentieth, with the earliest recorded example dated 1705, placing the ground's active use well before the stone enclosure that now defines it. The Edgeworth family, whose most famous member was the novelist Maria Edgeworth, were the dominant landowning presence in this part of County Longford for generations, and the cluster of conjoined memorials built into the church wall reflects both their long tenure and the particular way Protestant Ascendancy families often marked their dead in close physical relationship to their parish church.

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