Longford

The county town, named for an O'Farrell fortress on the Camlin. The O'Farrells were princes of Annaly and held the Shannon crossings between the Pale and the Gaelic west. Oliver Goldsmith was born in the south of the county and put the countryside into 'The Deserted Village'.

Longford grew at a ford on the River Camlin, and its name is the Irish longphort, a fortress: the town was Longfort Uí Fhearghail, the stronghold of the O'Farrells, lords of Annaly. A Dominican priory was founded in 1400, and St John's Church was built on its site in 1710. In 1605 James I granted Sir Richard Nugent a Thursday market and an August fair here. The British Army built a cavalry barracks in 1815, and a spur of the Royal Canal reached the town in 1831; night boats ran to Dublin in about 17 hours, and one sank near Dublin in November 1845, drowning 15 people. In February 1922 the barracks were handed to the Free State and renamed Connolly Barracks.

Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Longford ↗, rewritten here and adding nothing it does not say; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

• Castle Forbes, County Longford · castle · 6 km

Straight-line distances from the town centre, from each site's documented coordinates.

• Corlea Trackway · An 18-metre stretch of the great oak road of 148 BC, preserved in a climate-controlled hall exactly where the bog swallowed it.
• Strokestown Park · The landlord here shipped 1,490 tenants to Canada in 1847, half died, and was shot dead that November. His house is now the National Famine Museum.
• Brí Léith — Midir and Étaín · Midir of the Sídhe played the High King Eochaid at fidchell for his own wife back, lost on purpose until the last game, then took Étaín out through the roof as two swans. Eochaid dug into this hill after her and was given fifty women wearing her face.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.