Historic Places in County Wexford

Coolhull Castle is a tower house ruin located in County Wexford, in the southeast of Ireland — not Cork, as the approximate region suggestion implies. The coordinates 52.23423, -6.70455 place it firmly in County Wexford, near the village of Wellingtonbridge in the barony of Shelburne. It is one of many tower houses that dot the Irish countryside, built during the medieval period when such structures served as fortified residences for local lords and Anglo-Norman families. What makes Coolhull particularly noteworthy among County Wexford's many ruined castles is its relatively well-preserved state and its setting within the quietly beautiful agricultural landscape of the Barrow and Slaney river catchment area. It stands as a tangible remnant of the complex layered history of Norman settlement and Gaelic resistance that defined this region for several centuries. The castle dates to the fifteenth or sixteenth century, a period of intensive tower house construction across Munster and Leinster, driven by a combination of local power struggles, the influence of the Gaelic resurgence, and the enduring legacy of the Anglo-Norman colonisation that began in the twelfth century. County Wexford was among the first areas of Ireland to be colonised by the Normans, and the Shelburne area bears the marks of that long history in its placenames, field patterns, and ruins. Coolhull Castle is believed to have been associated with one of the Old English or Anglo-Norman families who held land in this part of Wexford, though the precise family and the full documentary record of ownership are not comprehensively established in widely available sources. The castle would have served a dual function as a defensive stronghold and a symbol of territorial authority, commanding views across the surrounding farmland. Physically, the castle presents as a rectangular tower house of mortared stone, rising to a considerable height despite the loss of floors, roof timbers, and interior fittings over the centuries. The walls are thick, as was standard in tower house construction, designed to resist attack and to provide thermal mass against the Irish climate. Visitors approaching on foot will find the ruin brooding quietly in its landscape, the grey limestone and sandstone masonry softened by patches of ivy and moss. The ground around the base tends toward rough grass and nettles, and the smell of damp stone and vegetation is characteristic. On a still day the surrounding countryside is very quiet, broken only by birdsong and the occasional sound of farm machinery in the distance. The landscape around Coolhull is typical of south County Wexford — gently rolling farmland, hedgerow-divided fields, and the sense of an ancient, long-settled countryside. The area lies not far from the tidal reaches of Bannow Bay and the broader estuary zone of the south Wexford coast, which is historically rich territory. Wellingtonbridge is the nearest settlement, a small village that serves the local farming community. Further afield, the historic town of New Ross lies to the north, with its significant Viking and Norman heritage, and the town of Wexford itself is accessible to the northeast. The Hook Peninsula, one of Ireland's most dramatically historic stretches of coastline, is within reasonable driving distance to the south. For visitors, Coolhull Castle is the kind of place best approached as part of a broader exploration of County Wexford's medieval heritage rather than as a standalone destination with formal visitor facilities, because it has none. There is no admission charge, no interpretive centre, and no managed access in the way that a State-maintained monument would offer. Access is via rural roads, and visitors should expect to navigate narrow country lanes. The castle is on private land or at the edge of agricultural land, so it is worth exercising discretion and courtesy. The best time to visit is spring or summer when the days are long, the light is good for photography, and the roads are more easily navigable. Autumn offers atmospheric low light and quietude. Wellington boots are advisable given the likely state of the ground around the base of the ruin. One of the enduring fascinations of sites like Coolhull is precisely their anonymity within the wider historical record. Ireland contains hundreds of tower houses, many of them unsung and unvisited, yet each one represents a community, a family, and a chapter of local history that shaped the landscape now visible. The survival of Coolhull to even its current ruined state is itself remarkable given the turbulence of post-medieval Irish history, including the Cromwellian campaigns of the 1650s that devastated much of County Wexford and displaced many of its Old English Catholic families. Whether Coolhull suffered damage in that period or simply fell into gradual disuse and decay is not clearly recorded, but its walls still stand as quiet testimony to a long and complicated past.

The castle is sited on rock at the head of the tidal Slaney river in the centre of Enniscorthy, 13 miles north of Wexford in the south west of Ireland. Enniscorthy Castle is a grey stone Norman castle. It consists of four communicating three quarter drum towers at the corners and a rectangular keep 4 storeys tall. The castle sits in the centre of the town on a small patch of land. Facilities Enniscorthy Castle; now used as the Wexford County and Folk Museum has recently been refurbished and reopened to the public. It has an extensive display of items related to the rebellion in 1798 and a special display of items relating to its use of a prison. It also features items of local and agricultural interest throughout the centuries. The castle was built during the 1230's by Gerald de Prendergast. The original building was passed by marriage into the Rochford family in 1253 and during the 15th century to the MacMurrough Kavanaghs who granted it a group of Franciscan monks. Enniscorthy Castle became property of the crown in the 1530's and was home to the poet Edmund Spencer. The castle was leased to Spencer who was popular with Queen Elizabeth I because he linked her with King Arthur and heaped praise upon the Tudors. It is believed that the poem 'The Faerie Queen'; written by Spencer, was based on Queen Elizabeth herself. She was said to be so pleased that she chose to grant him a pension for his life and made a gift of the castle to him. In 1649 the castle was captured by Cromwell's troops after a siege and in 1798 was used as a prison during the rebellion. The castle was restored twice in the 19th century once by the Earl of Plymouth and changed into a dwelling and again by local MP at the end of the century, when it remained a home until 1951. The castle is now home to the Wexford County Museum and has the reputation of being one of the longest inhabited castles in Ireland The Arts Enniscorthy is noted for a number of festivals. The Strawberry Fair is held in the last week of June each year and features amusements, live bands and crowning of the Strawberry Queen. The annual Blackstairs Blues festival features concerts and workshops by international and local performers. The Enniscorthy Street Rhythm and Dance Festival in August each year includes dance exhibitions, fireworks, parade, concerts, dancing and dance workshops.

Loftus Hall is set in a bleak and open site on the Hook Peninsula overlooking Waterford harbor and Dunmore East, 12 miles from Waterford. Loftus Hall is a huge rectangular nine bay mansion house built over 3 floors. It is set on a site of 63 acres of arable land with its own private beach. The Hall is in good repair and consists of 22 bedrooms and 7 reception rooms. One of the outstanding features of the mansion is the hand-carved oak staircase. The original hall was built during the period of the 'Black Death' in 1350 by the Redmond family. During Cromwell's invasion it was confiscated from the family and handed over to the Loftus family in the 1650's who had to repair the hall from the considerable damage caused by cannon fire. The head of the family had many titles but in the 1800's was created Marquess of Ely. In 1870 the hall was demolished by the 4th Earl and the present hall was built on its foundations. The only remaining parts of the old hall that were left were the foundations of a circular tower and an underground passage. The new hall was very up market for its time including a handmade Italian staircase, gas lighting and central heating. In 1917 the hall was sold to the Holy Order of the Sisters of Providence. They converted the hall into a school and convent for young girls and it remained in their care until 1983. This time it was converted into a hotel by Michael Devereaux but in the late 1990's it was forced to close. The hall remained in the Devereaux family until 2008. It is currently owned by the Quigley family. The hall is a tourist attraction with guided tours of the property and vartious events are hosted there. The Arts A film 'The Legend of Loftus Hall was released in 1993 and another with title 'Loftus Hall' was released in 2014. Legends It is believed that in 1762 a man visited the house from a ship docked on the Hook Peninsula. Anne Loftus invited him into the house and noticed he had a cloven foot, she screamed and the man went up through the roof in a puff of smoke leaving a large hole which could never be properly repaired.

Taghmon Castle is a ruined tower house in the village of Taghmon in County Wexford, a medieval settlement founded on the site of the seventh-century monastery of Saint Munnu. The castle dates from the later medieval period and reflects the well-settled Anglo-Norman agricultural landscape of mid-Wexford. The village takes its name from the Irish Tech Munnu, house or church of Munnu, and the medieval parish church standing as a direct successor to the early Christian monastery gives the village an unusual continuity of religious purpose across fourteen centuries. County Wexford has a particularly rich heritage of early Christian monasteries, Norman manors and tower houses reflecting its status as one of the earliest and most thoroughly colonised parts of Anglo-Norman Ireland.

The Ferns Castle is found in the centre of Ferns, in Ireland's County Wexford. Ferns Castle, is now in a state of predominant ruin. About half of the castle still stands, with the towers being in varying states of disrepair. There are remnants of what was once a three-storey square keep with a tower at each corner. As the towers go, one has been lost completely, another is mostly ruin, and a third is still about half-standing. The fourth and almost completely preserved tower is the southwestern one, which still has a circular chapel, seven of its fireplaces, ornamental carving, and a vaulted basement. The remains of a moat surround the castle's keep. Facilities Ferns Castle is open to the public between the 24th of May and the 29th of September each year. Opening hours are between 10:00am and 6:00pm. Its restaurant seats up to 30 people, while its tour accommodates 15 and lasts for 30 minutes. Access to the castle is free. It provides car parking, toilets including toilets for the disabled, although disabled access to the castle itself is somewhat limited by its narrow and plentiful staircases. The castle sometimes has exhibitions and seasonal events, information about which is available upon request. There is no exact date for the building of Ferns Castle, though it is suspected to have begun in 1222 by Earl William Marshall the younger. It was not completed, however, until the mid 13th century. William de Valance was its owner by this time. The castle's use as a residence was discontinued very early in the 14th century; the moat was filled in by around 1310 and it had reached a state of disrepair by 1324. It changed hands quite often after then - it was taken and reclaimed several times by different parties until 1551, when it was taken for the Crown by John Travers. The Crown then held possession of it until the mid 17th century. It was then handed to Cromwell's soldiers who are suspected to have brought about its demolition.

Fethard Castle is situated in the seaside resort of Fethard, the main town on the Hook Head peninsula in County Wexford. Fethard Castle is a ruined L-shaped fortified house, with a prominent four storey round tower at the outer corner of the "L". Facilities The castle grounds are open to the public and can be entered without charge. It is possible to walk around the castle but entry to the ruins is not permitted. The borough of Fethard was granted to Hervey de Montmorency after the Normans arrived in Ireland in 1169. He gave the land to Christ Church Canterbury who built a castle on the site of motte and bailey construction. The mound of the motte is still visible. The stone castle now on the site was built on the site in the 15th century, probably by the Bishop of Ferns. Fethard passed to the Loftus family in the 17th century, before the family moved to nearby Loftus Hall. The castle was then occupied by tenants of the Loftus estate, and underwent several modifications before being abandoned in 1922. The castle has since fallen into ruin.

Slade Castle stands at the very tip of the Hook Peninsula in County Wexford — not in the Cork area as the prompt suggests, but firmly in the southeast of Ireland, which is where these coordinates actually place it. It is one of the oldest and best-preserved tower houses in Ireland, a compact but remarkably intact medieval fortification that rises dramatically from the rocky shoreline of Waterford Harbour. The castle is notable for its unusual setting: it sits almost at the water's edge in the small fishing village of Slade, where the land tapers to a narrow point between the open sea and the harbour estuary. For visitors, it offers a rare combination of genuine medieval architecture, an atmospheric coastal setting, and a sense of quiet remoteness that is increasingly hard to find in heritage tourism. The castle dates from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century and was built by the Laffan family, Anglo-Norman settlers who had established themselves on the Hook Peninsula during the medieval period. It later passed into the hands of the Stafford family, another prominent Anglo-Norman dynasty in County Wexford, who occupied and maintained it through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The structure consists of a four-storey tower house attached to a later bawn or fortified enclosure, a configuration typical of Irish tower houses of the period. The Staffords, like many Catholic landowning families in Leinster, faced dispossession during the Cromwellian settlements of the 1650s, and the castle fell into decline thereafter. It was never substantially rebuilt or converted for later domestic use, which is precisely why it survives in such an authentic and relatively unaltered state. In person, Slade Castle is a striking presence. The tower is built from local dark limestone and has a slightly severe, weathered quality that suits its exposed position. The masonry is robust and thick-walled, designed to withstand both human assault and the relentless battering of Atlantic-influenced weather. The windows are small and deeply splayed, and the battlements at the roofline give the structure its unmistakably military silhouette. Standing beside it, particularly on a day when the wind is coming in off Waterford Harbour, you become acutely aware of how elemental this place is — the smell of salt and seaweed is constant, gulls call overhead, and the sound of water against the rocks just metres away creates a backdrop that would have been entirely familiar to its medieval inhabitants. The surrounding village of Slade is tiny and largely unchanged in character, a cluster of stone buildings and a small working pier that still sees fishing boats come and go. The Hook Peninsula itself is one of the most scenically distinctive corners of Ireland, a long, flat finger of land jutting south between Waterford Harbour to the west and Bannow Bay to the east. The landscape is open and windswept, with low hedgerows, stone walls, and wide views across the water. A short distance to the north lies the village of Fethard-on-Sea, and further up the peninsula is Hook Lighthouse, one of the oldest working lighthouses in the world and the peninsula's most famous landmark. The entire area falls within a landscape of considerable historical density, with early Christian sites, Norman earthworks, and medieval churches scattered across the peninsula. Access to Slade Castle is straightforward by car. The Hook Peninsula is reached from New Ross or Waterford via the R733 road, which runs the length of the peninsula to Hook Head. Slade village sits near the southern tip, a short distance from the lighthouse. The castle is visible from the road and the pier, and there is informal parking in the village. The site is managed by the Office of Public Works (OPW) and is a National Monument, though it is not a staffed heritage site with regular guided tours in the way that Hook Lighthouse is. Visitors should expect an exterior viewing experience rather than a fully interpretive interior visit, though access arrangements can vary. The best times to visit are late spring and summer, when the weather is most cooperative and the evening light on the water and the stone is particularly beautiful. Even in poor weather, the atmosphere of the place is compelling, though the coastal exposure means wind and rain can be fierce in winter months. One of the more fascinating aspects of Slade Castle is how thoroughly it has avoided the fate of so many Irish medieval buildings, which were either demolished for building materials, absorbed into later country houses, or heavily restored in the nineteenth century to suit Victorian romantic tastes. Slade escaped all of these interventions largely because of its isolation and the modest economic importance of the surrounding area after the medieval period. What remains is therefore authentically fifteenth-century in its fabric, an increasingly rare thing. The juxtaposition of this ancient fortification with the working fishing pier beside it — lobster pots, ropes, and small boats against a backdrop of medieval limestone — gives Slade a quietly extraordinary quality that rewards visitors who take the time to make the journey to this far corner of Wexford.