Overview
You can’t go inside Edgeworthstown House. It is now Our Lady’s Manor Nursing Home, a private residence, so please leave the grounds and entrances clear. That’s the honest starting point, because the house itself is not the visit. What you come for is the story of the family and the novelist Maria Edgeworth, who lived and wrote here, told at the Maria Edgeworth Centre in town. Edgeworthstown (traditionally Mostrim, Meathas Troim in Irish) sits in County Longford.
A legacy of ideas
The Edgeworth story in the midlands goes back to 1619, when Francis Edgeworth received a land grant during the Plantation of Longford. The house was built around 1725 by Richard Edgeworth (1701–1770), possibly on the fabric of an earlier house from the 1690s. But it was his grandson, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744–1817), who made the place matter: an engineer, surveyor and educational reformer who spent thirty years altering the house and testing progressive ideas on everything from farming to how children should be taught.
His daughter, Maria Edgeworth (1767–1849), grew up in that household and became one of the most celebrated novelists of her age. Her realist fiction and sharp social eye drew guests including Sir Walter Scott and William Wordsworth to Edgeworthstown. The line ran on into serious minds: Maria’s relative Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, a foundational figure in statistics and economics, held a chair at Oxford, and was the last of the family to live in the house before it was sold in 1935. It passed to the Sisters of Mercy around 1947 and has been a nursing home since the 1940s.
The Maria Edgeworth Centre
If you want the archives and the story told properly, the Maria Edgeworth Centre is the stop to make. It is housed in the former national school building, where local children were once taught using Richard Lovell’s methods, and it explains how the family’s ideas fed into Ireland’s national school system. Good for families and school groups.
Check the centre’s hours, admission and access before you visit, as they are set by the centre and can change.
Heritage walks
The centre can tell you about guided heritage walks around the town that use public routes. Ask its staff about dates and booking.
Maria Edgeworth is buried in the churchyard at St John’s Church in the town, as is Isola Wilde, Oscar Wilde’s younger sister, who died as a child.
Architecture
The house is deliberately plain, because the Edgeworths favoured practicality over show. Built c. 1725 and altered repeatedly between about 1782 and 1812, it has a tetrastyle Doric porch at the centre of the entrance front and box bay windows that replaced the earlier curved bowed ones, with a three-bay, three-storey breakfront on the south side. Later extensions were added when it became a care home, so it is a working building, not a preserved one. It is a private building, so the visit is about the story rather than the structure.
Events & Festivals
Ask the Maria Edgeworth Centre what is currently on, as dates change.
Getting There & Practical Information
Edgeworthstown sits at the junction of the N4 (Dublin–Sligo) and the N55 (Cavan–Athlone). Check current transport options before you travel.
- House Access: The mansion is a private residential care facility and is not open to visitors.
- Centre: Check the Maria Edgeworth Centre for hours, admission and access.
Nearby in Longford
If you have time to extend your trip through County Longford, the midlands offer a wealth of historic and natural attractions within a short drive:
- The Corlea Trackway Visitor Centre near Keenagh, showcasing an extraordinary Iron Age bog road.
- St Mel’s Cathedral in Longford Town, a striking 19th-century landmark.
- Lough Gowna and Sonnagh Fort, offering scenic lakeside walks and historic ruins.
- Derrycassan Wood, a woodland estate with historic ruins and quiet trails.