Strokestown

Strokestown Béal na mBuillí
Town
Church Street, Strokestown, looking east
Strokestown Location in Ireland
Coordinates: 53°46′37″N 8°06′14″W / 53.777°N 8.104°W / 53.777; -8.104Coordinates: 53°46′37″N 8°06′14″W / 53.777°N 8.104°W / 53.777; -8.104
Country	Ireland
Province	Connacht
County	County Roscommon
Elevation	56 m (184 ft)
Population (2011)
• Total	814
Irish Grid Reference	M929809

Strokestown, historically called Bellanamullia and Bellanamully (Irish: Béal na mBuillí), is a small town in County Roscommon, Ireland. It is located at the junction of the N5 National primary route and the R368 in the north of the county.

Notable features include the second-widest street in Ireland and the Strokestown Park House, an 18th-century mansion with the longest herbaceous border in Ireland.

Strokestown was the site of the estate of the Anglo-Irish Mahon family from about 1671 until 1982. On 2 November 1847 the patriarch of the family and landlord of the surrounding estate, Major Denis Mahon, was assassinated by several local men in an incident that became infamous across Ireland and Britain at the time. The killing was motivated by the removal of starving tenant farmers from the estate lands during the Irish Potato Famine of 1845. The killing of Denis Mahon did not halt the evictions, and eventually over 11,000 tenants were removed from the Mahon estate during that period.

There is a museum commemorating the Great Famine of 1845 in the town. Mary Lenahan, of Elphin Street, Strokestown, an ancestor of Mary McAleese, was among 16 people recorded in the Strokestown Estate Famine Archive as having received grain meal gratuitously on 23 June 1846. The archive was deposited in November 2008 in the Maynooth Archive and Research Centre in Celbridge, Co. Kildare.

The Irish name of the town was originally Béal Atha na mBuillí and was Anglicised as Bellanamully and Bellanamullia. The Irish name was edited down to the current Béal na mBuillí in the 1990s. This was done to fit the Irish town name on road signage. The town's name means "the mouth of the ford of the strokes", with "strokes" referring to ancient clan battles that took place there.

Strokestown on Film, The Billy Chapman (1902–59) Collection is a DVD which consists of 31 short films of people and events in and around Strokestown. The films were shot over a five-year period starting in 1948. Included are sports days, Corpus Christi processions, weddings, agricultural shows, livestock fairs and FCA and fire brigade training.