House - 17th century

The National Monuments Service's description

On the SE outskirts of Edgeworthtown (015-063----). In 1682 Nicholas Dowdall noted that ‘Sir John Edgeworth Knt. Coming into his Father’s Estate hath Improved it by building a fair house planted, Orchards and Gardens [LF015-063008-] very Sumptuous and Impalled a fair Park for Deer [LF015-063006-] and hath purchased land and near him on which he hath planted a very good Countrey Town [LF015-063----] ’... called Edgeworth Town antiently Masterinn [Mastrim]’ (Gillespie and Moran 1991, 210). The house was enlarged and modified in the early 18th century. The incorporation of the earlier house into the later rebuilding was noted by Maria Edgeworth in 1782, when she referred to 'an old chimney remaining from the former house, round which it was built, a chimney that has been the cause of maledictions to successive generations from that time to this' (Butler and Butler 1927, 251). She described the old house as consisting of ‘all the rooms on one floor opening into one another, small gloomy rooms, and a staircase taking up half the building’ (ibid. 251). A late-19th-century photograph from the Lawrence Collection (NLI, L_ROY_09983) shows several large chimney stacks rising from the roofline of the house, one of which is of late 17th-century date in appearance. The house is now a nursing home run by the Sisters of Mercy.

Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien

Date of upload: 18 June 2012

References

The Lawrence Collection of Photographs. Dublin. National Library of Ireland.

Butler, H. J. and Butler, H. E. (eds.) 1927 The black book of Edgeworthstown and other Edgeworth memories 1585-1817. London. Faber and Gwyer.

Gillespie, R. and Moran, G. (eds.) 1991 Longford: essays in county history. Dublin. Lilliput Press.