Streete & Parish Church.
Wilson’s astronomical work was continued by his nephew, Kenneth Edward. Born at Daramona in 1880 and trained there, Edward served in the British army as an engineer before retiring to Dublin where he worked at Dunsink and wrote a number of books in astronomy. He was particularly interested in planetary formation and in 1949 he suggested the existence on the outer edge of the solar system of an orbiting belt of material leftover from the creation of the planets.
Some of the material could enter the inner solar system from time to time and appear as comets or even help to form planetary ring rings such as those around Saturn. This belt of material has since been proven to exist and is names ion honour of Edgeworth and another astronomer Gerald Kuiper , who has the same idea , the ‘ Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt’. The recent discovery that Saturn’s rings are composed of ice also lends weight to Edgeworth’s theories on how the rings were formed.
Kildevin House is one of Streete's Georgian houses. Kildevin is a 2 storey house with a basement and a viewing piece on the top of the house. This house was built to designs by the original owner, Robert Sproule, who was a landlord in the Streete area during the mid nineteenth-century. Sproule was an authoritarian figure of much local notoriety and, apparently, he used the basement of Kildevin House as a temporary prison from time to time. Some of the cast-iron chains and restraining devices are still intact. A 'police station' was located to the west of the house, within the grounds of Kildevin.
Perhaps the curious designs to Kildevin House can be attributed to the authoritarian nature of Sproule as he could have used the balustraded towers to keep an eye on local activities and, subsequently, for intimidation purposes. The house was later the home of the Tyndall Family and of an Edith Wise, a cousin of William Butler Yeats and it is believed that Yates stayed in the house on several occasions and William Butler Yeats's daughter Mary Lettitia Grace died in the house while visiting her daughter who was living there at the time.
2005 marked the 150th anniversary of the ‘extension of the Midland Great Western Railway from Mullingar to Longford’. A station was set up at Inny Junction which served people from the Streete area, providing rail connections to Longford , Sligo , Mullingar , Dublin and Cavan through to Belfast. The Float station derives it’s name from a barge crossing two miles east on the River Inny, Float station was part of the 26 mile Cavan branch that left the MGWR Mullingar - Sligo mainline at Inny junction 10 miles north of Mullingar.
Inny Junction station didn't have road access! And is the only railway station in the British Isles not to be serviced by a road. rumour would have it that Michael Collins often used this line when on the run during the War of Independence to visit his girlfriend Kitty Kiernan in Granard.
Built in 1856 by the famous Irish railway engineer William Dargan the branch ran through sparse country to connect with the Great Northern at Cavan giving MGWR it’s inland link to Belfast and the six counties, despite this traffic levels were always limited and services came to end in 1960 as a consequence to the GNR closure of the Cavan link in 1957.
Politically , the majority of Streete’s people were supporters of Irish nationalism during the nineteenth century. People from the village travelled into Mullingar to hear Daniel O’Connell’s call for Irish self-government in 1843 and later on Parnell and the Land League were also popular in the district as was the firebrand Nationalist and land campaigner , Larry Ginnell. A Streete Corps of the Irish Volunteers was founded in 1914 and several local men fought in the War of Independence , but several locals also served in the British army during World War One and most of the local Protestant population would have been unionists up until 1922.
Charles Fagan born in Lismacaffery on 1 October 1881 – 8 May 1974) was a politician and farmer. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann in the 1933 general election as a National Centre Party Teachta Dála (TD) for the Longford–Westmeath constituency. He became a Fine Gael TD in September 1933 when Cumann na nGaedheal and the National Centre Party, along with the Army Comrades Association merged to form the new party of Fine Gael. He was elected as a Fine Gael TD for the Meath–Westmeath constituency at the 1937 general election.
He was re-elected at the 1938, 1943 and 1944 general elections. He left Fine Gael in 1948 and was elected as an independent TD for Longford–Westmeath at the 1948 general election, and was re-elected as an independent TD at the 1951 general election. He re-joined Fine Gael in 1954 and was elected as a Fine Gael TD for Longford–Westmeath at the 1954 general election, and was re-elected at the 1957 general election. He did not contest the 1961 general election.
Another local man achieved time as a sports star and politician in the twentieth century. Born in 1917 in Streete , Gerry L’Estrange won scores of medals for running in the 1930’s and 1940s . He was a Lenister Champion nine times and several times narrowly missed out on an all-Ireland medal. He was also a skilled hurler. He later embarked on a political career as a Fine Gael TD for Longford/Westmeath. He saw government service as a Minister of State and was one of Ireland’s first Euro Mps in the 1970s. He was famous for his passionate no-holds barred debating style and was several times expelled from the Dail Chamber. He retired from politics in 1987 and died in 1998.
Like many other parts of Ireland , Streete endured decades of high emigration and poor employment prospects before the economy finally turned. As elsewhere, technological innovations such as electric light and later the arrival of telephones, television and computers transformed life for the people of the area.