A family that named the bridge
The Rochforts
The Rochforts — possibly Norman, possibly French — turned up in Ireland in the thirteenth century and acquired large holdings across Kildare, Meath and Westmeath. By the eighteenth century the head of the family was Robert Rochfort, first Earl of Belvedere, who built Belvedere House on Lough Ennell in 1740 and ended up famous for locking his second wife Mary in a house on the estate for thirty-one years on a rumour of adultery with his brother Arthur. The bridge over the Derry River here, and the village that grew up around it, take their name from the same family. Belvedere is twenty minutes north if you want to see how the other half of the story ended.
2006, and the day the road went quiet
The bypass
Until 2006 the N6 — the main Dublin to Galway road — ran through the middle of the village. Lorries, coaches, holiday cars, all of it on the main street, all day. The M6 motorway opened that year and the through-traffic moved to the bypass overnight. Trade in the pubs and shops took a hit; the village street got walkable again. Twenty years on, the place reads as a commuter village with a quiet centre, which is a fair trade if you are the one living there.
A Mercy school built in 1954
St Joseph's
St Joseph's Secondary School opened in 1954 as a Sisters of Mercy school with thirteen pupils, most of them boarders. Boys were admitted from 1963. A new building went up in 1983. Enrolment now runs over a thousand pupils — boys and girls — pulled from the surrounding parishes and villages, and the school is one of the larger employers in the area. If you are passing the village at half past three on a school day, the traffic is the school run.