A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
An Longfort· Irish · main form · validated name
Longford· English · main form
Place & story
The canal reaches the market town
Samuel Lewis’s 1837 account presents Longford as a town being reshaped by transport. A branch of the Royal Canal had increased trade in grain, pork, bacon and butter. Corn stores stood beside the water, and the Earl of Longford had provided a boat basin, butter market and shambles. A daily passenger boat connected the town with Dublin. Lewis also recorded a distillery employing thirty-five men, a brewery and a tannery. These details place the Camlin town within a network of agricultural processing and waterborne exchange.[2]
Markets, barracks and a changing town
The same directory counted 720 houses in 1831 and described new streets and houses under construction. Its principal Saturday market sold corn, butter, bacon, pigs, hemp and flax. Military buildings formed another large presence: the cavalry barracks had stabling for 147 horses, while artillery barracks stood beyond them. Longford’s market economy and its role as a garrison town occupied the same streets, drawing farmers, traders, boat passengers and soldiers into the county town.[2]
People & connections
Padraic Colum’s workhouse birthplace
Padraic Colum was born in Longford workhouse on 8 December 1881, when his father Patrick was its master. A memorial marks the former workhouse site on the Dublin Road. Colum later remembered the homeless men who stayed there, an early influence on a writer whose work drew closely on rural life. After his father lost the post in 1887, the family moved away. Colum subsequently became a poet, playwright, children’s author and collector of folklore, and was among the signatories of the Abbey Theatre’s original charter. His connection with Longford begins in this unusually well-defined childhood setting.[3]
Both counts use the 2016 settlement boundary, allowing like-for-like comparison. CSO supplies the 2022 count on this older boundary for comparison only. The official 2022 Built Up Area has different boundaries.
View population figures
Longford — Census 2016 settlement footprint — census population
These figures use different area definitions. Read the boundary note before comparing them.
Longford, Longford — 2011 legal town and environs; 2016 census settlement
Published census settlement populations
10,008people · 2016
Settlement boundaries changed during this period. Differences may reflect boundary changes as well as population change. Where a 2011 legal-town-and-environs count is shown, it has not been recalculated onto the 2016 settlement boundary.
View population figures
Longford, Longford — 2011 legal town and environs; 2016 census settlement — census population
placenames