Woke at 8:15 with Denise worried we’d missed breakfast. We hadn’t and tucked into another full Irish with gusto born of not having dinner last night. We eventually set off for the Irish National Heritage Park.
This is a lovely 35 acres of Irish history from about 5,000 BC to the arrival of the Normans in 1169. We were about the first to arrive so fortunately missed the bus load of 75 school kids on an excursion. The park is very well laid out and the exhibits brilliantly reconstructed. In fact the only trouble is the location. It is surrounded on two sides by very busy roads which you can’t really escape. It would be perfect for someone who was profoundly deaf!
Leaving that aside (and the birds were valiant in their attempts to drown out the trucks, buses and manic Irish drivers) we visited each age and I bored Denise with my limited knowledge of early human history courtesy of my modules at Surrey Uni.
Although very good on information regarding the exhibits, the brochure is not as forthcoming about the park itself. The website, also, does not say how it came about but is very informative for anyone wishing to look further at the excellent exhibits. Some of the stonework rivals Skara Brae though, of course, it was built quite recently! All under the watchful gaze of experimental archaeologists, of course.
We stopped for a coffee at the halfway mark, just before the crannog. Now here’s a thing. The Irish seem to have just discovered tourism. Ignoring the well oiled machines which are Blarney and Bunratty, everywhere else seems to be lacking in the fundamentals. For instance, this park has a big (if somewhat tacky) gift shop and carvery attached but in order to stop halfway, which is recommended, for a refresher, you have to walk through the gift shop to the café then back through the main entrance to start again. Surely this would be better accessed via the path – customers could still visit the gift shop if they so wanted – but instead there is just a big stone wall separating the drinkers from the walkers. And while I’m at it, why do they hide away the guide books? My regular readers will know how I ALWAYS buy one but rarely do I have to ask…except in Ireland. Ok, these are just niggles but the park is really excellent and the guidebook very good and it’s a shame the place falls down on this.
The second half of the park is just as impressive as the first. The crannog (a man-made island with thatched roundhouses on it) is magnificent and looks real, as if the inhabitants had just left to go and catch the nights dinner and the Viking boat pulled up on the shore of the lake, equally lifelike.
Something I learned is that the Normans lime-washed their castles in order to make them more impressive to the natives. This made them white and stark in the otherwise green landscape. The reconstructed castle in the park looks very bright and gleaming.
Poor Denise was in for a lot of walking again but she managed very well in her inappropriate shoes!
After our few hours of history we decided to visit the castle at Enniscorthy. What a grotty little town! We arrived at 12 and the place was swarming with school kids on lunch break. The castle, which houses an apparently impressive museum (according to the Eyewitness guide) was closed up tight with no signs indicating opening/closing signs or even indicating that it WAS the museum. It looked a sad and sorry place. We searched for a pub but could only find a packed wine bar (Rackards). The barman forgot my Guinness – I had to remind him – though Denise’s tea was ok. We later found an excellent pub closer to the river, the Antique Pub which we obviously SHOULD have visited instead.
After refreshment, we wandered over to the Pugin designed St Aidan’s Cathedral but, as usual, it was locked up tight, so had to make do with looking at the outside. Nice example of Gothic revival but would have liked to have seen inside.
I have found some information on the Internet if anyone’s interested, otherwise just skip this paragraph! The foundation stone was laid in 1843 and the cathedral was built around the existing church. In 1849 the old one was demolished from inside. Pugin’s central tower (for he loved his tall towers and spires) was added in 1850 and the cathedral finally blessed by Bishop Thomas Furlong in 1860. In 1871 the spire was erected but, along with the tower, was immediately demolished as they had started collapsing! This wasn’t fixed until 1873. After all this, the cathedral was restored in 1994!
The TIC is way out of town so there’s no chance of finding out anything. We left the town thinking it a hole, which is probably unfair but the reality is, it doesn’t welcome tourists. My advice is to visit (if you must) via the out of town TIC – it’s at something called the 1798 Rebellion Centre, which is apparently quite good – and maybe they can fill you in first. We decided to drive to The Dunbrody Plague Ship in New Ross instead.
Now here’s a tourist-centric enterprise! The site is a replica of the Dunbrody plague ship which left New Ross for America during the 1840 potato famine. The tour starts with an introductory video which puts the history into perspective then you are taken aboard the ship. A few parts of the ship were undergoing repair for a sailing soon so it’s a shame we didn’t get to see everything but what we did see was pretty sad. I mean in human terms, not exhibit-wise! For some reason the captain was not presenting the tour as he normally does so we had one of the shop guys. He was fine but on the ship we were introduced to a Mrs White from steerage and a Mrs O’Brien from first class who put it all into stark reality. If we’d had the captain as well I think it would have added just a tad more of this reality. Still, it was excellent and quite amazing what people will put up with to find a new life. We discovered that JFK’s great-great grandfather was an immigrant from New Ross and arrived in the US with nothing, JFK returned to the town after being elected president and the old Kennedy house is now a shrine for people who like ex-presidents.
The only real problem with the Dunbrody is they had no guide books at all! I asked the woman who said “We used to have some but we’ve run out.” The website is worth a peek.
The nicest touch is the tickets. As you pay your money you are given a copy of an original ticket (Passengers’ Contract Ticket) which lists the passengers, the cost and the rations for the trip. Being in steerage, my family (Patrick and Catherine Keefe and their little daughter Mary) had to make their own meals with the flour, oatmeal, rice or potatoes they were given each day (3½lbs) and the measly 3 quarts of water. They could only cook above deck so if the weather was foul they went without. For this they paid £7. They even had to bring their own bedding and food utensils! It was a lot different in first class where you could have a cabin and your meals served to you!
The toilets were the worst. In first class you got to sit over a hole in the bow of the ship but in steerage all you had was a bucket which was to be emptied every day over the side. In bad weather the buckets would slosh and splash and sometimes spill everywhere! And there was no escape for these poor people. Quite a few of them died, including poor Mrs White who left 5 orphaned children to arrive at New York to try and find an orphanage. Ghastly stuff.
We managed to get out just ahead of a massive Japanese tour group and headed out to visit the Irish Tintern Abbey, which I’d never heard of. It was a gift in the 13th century from a grateful William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke. In 1200 he set sail for Ireland but after a ferocious storm, was shipwrecked in Bannow Bay. Relieved at reaching land safely he vowed to build the Cistercian Abbey as thanks. It is in a beautiful location, on a gentle slope looking down at a small but elaborate bridge which spans the tiny Tintern Stream. There is no information to be found anywhere at the site (the above I found on a website which is worth a look) and just a group of busy looking workmen engaged in restoration work.
[2023 UPDATE: THE WEBSITE IS NOW FOR WATERFORD LAWYERS SO I’VE REMOVED THE LINK]
We wandered round and I tried to explain to Denise what we were looking at but my knowledge of abbeys is sadly lacking so it was all stabs in the dark I’m afraid! We walked down to the lovely Norman bridge and up to a small ruined church. Gravestones are dated from the 17th century to 1993. Denise thought it was probably a small family chapel which has fallen into disrepair (it has no roof apart from anything else) when the family left or the land was subdivided. I think she’s probably right but I’ve not been able to find any information about it. It was a lovely peaceful spot though and well worth a stroll around.
We returned to the car and drove back to Wexford along the curious coastal way – curious because there wasn’t much coast to see. After dropping our stuff in our room and paying Georgina’s mum for last night and tonight, we walked down to The Dragon Heen Chinese restaurant for a lovely dinner with panoramic views of the station and taxi-rank. The food was excellent but they didn’t serve Guinness so I had to make do with a Tiger beer.
After dinner we strolled back to our room where I left Denise to write up her journal and I went in search of the missing Guinness. It didn’t take long for success. I sat in the Thomas Moore pub lapping up both the beer and the atmosphere. They promised a traditional Irish band at 8pm but Mirinda texted me her room number (she’s staying the night in Leeds) so I popped out to the phone box and we chatted for ages. Afterwards, feeling exhausted, I decided to skip the pub and went back to our room where we watched TV until falling asleep at about 10pm. Home tomorrow.
