Ballinalee

Ballinalee or Saint Johnstown (Irish: Béal Átha na Laogh) is a village in north County Longford, Ireland. It is situated on the River Camlin, and falls within the civil parish of Clonbroney.

The village name in Irish means "Mouth of the Ford of the Calves". The name "St Johnstown" came from the name of the Church of Ireland Church of St. John. There are two fine Roman Catholic churches in the parish: the Church of the Holy Trinity in the village and the uniquely styled Church of St James in Clonbroney. Ballinalee was the site of the first convent in Ireland at Old Clonbroney. Its remains are still to be seen.

The Parochial hall on the Granard road, opened in 1939, is dedicated to the memory of Thomas Ashe, the Irish patriot. The local National School adjacent to the hall is named after St Samhthann.

The St Johnstown borough constituency in the Irish House of Commons was nominally representative of the town. In 1833, the Commissioners appointed by the UK Parliament to inquire into municipal corporations in Ireland reported that the corporation of the borough was "virtually extinct". The 1846 Parliamentary Gazetteer records:

It stands on the Camolin rivulet, and on the road from Granard to Longford, 6 miles west-south-west of Granard, 6 north-northwest of Edgeworthstown, and 6 north-east by east of Longford. It is a poor and miserable place,—a small daub caricature of even a rotten borough. In 1833, it contained only a new police barrack, a cottage ornée in course of erection by a gentleman who had acquired some of the burgess-freeholds, 5 houses of annual value between £5 and £10, and 40 houses of annual value less than £5. The charter, which incorporated it was granted in the third year of Charles II.; assigned 88 acres of land as the site and property of the town; ordered the place, still then only in posse, to be called the Borough and Town of St. Johnstown; appointed it a corporation, consisting of a sovereign, 11 other burgesses, and an unnamed number of free commons; gave that corporation the power of sending two members to parliament; and granted a weekly market on Tuesday, and annual fairs on May 1 and 2, and Nov. 11 and 12. The Earl of Granard eventually carried the borough in his pocket, and in consequence received the £15,000 of compensation for disfranchisement at the Legislative Union. The landed property granted by the charter was vested, not in the corporation as a public body, but in the twelve first burgesses to descend from them by inheritance or purchase; and it now exists in plots of from 6 to 8 acres, —two of which are called the Lords Plots, and belong to the Earl of Granard, while the others bear the names of Gladstone's, Adair's, Lecky's, and Kennedy's Plots, and Furrcy-Park, John's-Park, Rowleys-Hill, Gallow's-Hill, and High-Park. A grey friary, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, is supposed to have stood on the site of the town; but, if it ever existed, it has become completely untraceable. Area, 11 acres. Pop., in 1831, 255; in 1841, 299. Houses 50.

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