County Wexford: history, culture, food and places

The history of County Wexford

Wexford's history begins with the Vikings, who founded Waesfjord as a fortified trading port around 800 AD, and continues through 1169, when Anglo-Norman knights landed at Baginbun and Bannow Bay and began the conquest of Ireland, and on to the 1798 Rebellion, the bloodiest single episode of the United Irishmen's uprising.

Wexford town's name is Norse, not Irish. Vikings established Waesfjord, meaning inlet of the mud flats, as a fortified harbour town around 800 AD, and the street plan of the old town, narrow and running parallel to the quay, still traces that Viking layout. Wexford was one of the handful of genuine Viking towns in Ireland alongside Dublin, Waterford, Cork and Limerick.

The county's bigger historical claim is 1169. A small force of Anglo-Norman knights, invited in by the deposed king of Leinster, Dermot MacMurrough, landed at Bannow Bay and nearby Baginbun on the Hook peninsula. It was the first Norman foothold in Ireland, and within a few years it had grown into the conquest that shaped Irish land ownership, law and politics for the next seven centuries. Baginbun still carries the old rhyme: at the creek of Baginbun, Ireland was lost and won.

The Normans built accordingly. Tintern Abbey, founded around 1200 by William Marshal after a storm at sea, and Dunbrody Abbey nearby are both substantial Cistercian ruins from this period, and Hook Head Lighthouse, maintained by monks from the twelfth century and still a working light today, is one of the oldest operational lighthouses in the world.

Wexford's other defining chapter is 1798. The county became the centre of the United Irishmen's rebellion against British rule, with rebel forces holding much of the county for several weeks before being defeated at the Battle of Vinegar Hill outside Enniscorthy in June 1798. The rebellion was suppressed with severe reprisals, but it produced a body of ballads, memory and monuments that still shape how the county understands itself, and the National 1798 Rebellion Centre in Enniscorthy tells that story in full.

The county's twentieth-century story runs through emigration and one particular family. The Kennedys of Dunganstown, a few miles from New Ross, left for Boston in 1848 during the Famine years, and their descendant John F. Kennedy returned to the homestead as a sitting US president in June 1963, a visit still spoken of locally as if it happened last year.

c. 800 AD

Vikings found Waesfjord, the fortified port that becomes Wexford town.

1169

Anglo-Norman knights land at Bannow Bay and Baginbun, the first Norman foothold in Ireland.

c. 1200

Tintern Abbey founded by William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke.

1798

The Rebellion. Rebel forces hold much of the county before defeat at Vinegar Hill.

1848

The Kennedy family emigrates from Dunganstown to Boston during the Famine.

1963

President John F. Kennedy visits the family homestead at Dunganstown.

1966

The Dunbrody, a replica Famine emigrant ship, later launched at New Ross.

Culture and the opera festival

Wexford's cultural signature is the Wexford Festival Opera, held every October since 1951, which stages rarely performed operas in the town's compact opera house and turns the whole town into a festival for two weeks. The county also carries a strong 1798 commemorative culture and a quieter tradition of maritime and farming heritage.

Wexford Festival Opera is not a provincial curiosity. It has built an international reputation over more than seventy years specifically by staging operas that the major houses overlook, and singers and directors treat it as a serious credit. For two weeks each October the town's pubs fill with opera-goers alongside locals, and the ShortWorks and lunchtime recital programmes bring the festival out of the opera house and into the street.

The other cultural current running through the county is 1798 itself. Enniscorthy, Vinegar Hill and the National 1798 Rebellion Centre keep that history present in a way that goes beyond a museum visit; ballads about the rebellion, particularly Boolavogue, are still sung locally and are recognisably part of the county's identity rather than folklore performed for visitors.

Johnstown Castle, just outside Wexford town, adds a different layer: a nineteenth-century Gothic Revival mansion and walled gardens now paired with the Irish Agricultural Museum, which tells the story of Irish rural life, farming and, notably, the Great Famine, through one of the country's best social history collections.

Wexford is also a strawberry county, in the way Clare is a music county. Wexford strawberries have their own local festival tradition and their own devoted following at farmers' markets across the country each June and July, and locals will tell you the difference between a Wexford strawberry and any other kind with real conviction.

What to eat in County Wexford

Wexford eats what comes off its own coast and out of its own soil: mussels and oysters from Bannow Bay and Kilmore Quay, seafood landed at the county's working harbours, Wexford strawberries in early summer, and the produce of a county that has some of the best arable land in Ireland.

Kilmore Quay is the place to understand Wexford seafood. It is a small working harbour with a fleet landing prawns, scallops and whitefish, and a counter beside the pier selling what came in that morning. There is no ceremony to it. Scallops are best in winter, prawns in summer, and the Saltee Islands boat leaves from the same pier in season.

Bannow Bay, on the county's southern coast, produces oysters grown in the sheltered water where the Normans first landed, and the county's mussels, farmed along the sheltered inlets of the coast, turn up on menus from Wexford town to Dublin. This is not artisanal branding so much as a working coastline that happens to grow excellent shellfish.

Wexford strawberries, grown on the county's warm, well-drained soil and helped by the Sunny South East's extra hours of light, are sold at roadside stalls and markets through June and July and are genuinely better than the imported alternative most of the year gives you.

The county is also one of Ireland's better arable regions, which shows up as good bread, good dairy and a growing craft brewing scene: YellowBelly Brewing Company in Wexford town has built a serious local following for its beer and its taproom, and it is as good a place as any to end a day on the coast.

Bannow Bay oysters

Grown in the sheltered bay where the Normans landed in 1169.

Wexford mussels

Farmed along the sheltered coastal inlets, on menus countywide.

Kilmore Quay seafood

Prawns and scallops landed and sold at the pier. Winter scallops, summer prawns.

Wexford strawberries

Grown on the county's warm soil, sold roadside from June through July.

YellowBelly beer

Craft brewery and taproom in Wexford town.

The 1798 nickname and county pride

Wexford people are known nationally as the Yellowbellies, a nickname whose exact origin is debated but is most often tied either to the yellow sashes worn by a Wexford regiment or to a local strain of frog, and the county wears the name with real affection: it is the name of the county's Gaelic games teams and now its best-known craft brewery.

Wherever the nickname started, Wexford people use it themselves, which is the surest sign a nickname has stuck. You will see it on GAA jerseys, pub signs and the brewery's cans, and asking a local for the real origin story is a reliable way to start a long, contested and enjoyable conversation.

On the pub side, Wexford town's old streets, laid out on the original Viking plan, hold a dense run of traditional pubs, and the county's coastal towns, Kilmore Quay, Duncannon and Courtown among them, each have a small run of pubs built around fishing and farming trade rather than tourism.

During Wexford Festival Opera in October, the pubs around the Theatre Royal and the Cornmarket fill with an unusual mix of opera-goers in evening dress and locals in from the farm, which is part of the appeal of visiting during the festival rather than around it.

The Sunny South East: beaches, the Hook and the wetlands

Wexford's coastline runs from Rosslare Strand in the east around the Hook peninsula to Duncannon in the west, taking in Curracloe Beach, Hook Head Lighthouse and the internationally important Wexford Wildfowl Reserve, and the county markets itself, with justification, as Ireland's Sunny South East.

Curracloe Beach, a long run of dunes and open Atlantic-facing sand north of Wexford town, is best known outside Ireland as the beach used for the Normandy landing scenes in Saving Private Ryan, and it remains one of the finest and least crowded beaches on the east coast. Rosslare Strand, further south, is calmer and shallower and better suited to families and swimming.

Hook Head Lighthouse, at the tip of the Hook peninsula, has operated in some form since the twelfth century when Norman monks first tended a light there, and it is regularly described as one of the oldest operating lighthouses in the world. The tower can be climbed and the surrounding limestone headland is a dramatic short walk in its own right.

Wexford Harbour and the mudflats beside the town make up the Wexford Wildfowl Reserve, which hosts one of the largest wintering populations of Greenland white-fronted geese anywhere in the world, along with brent geese and a wide range of wading birds, and it is a serious stop for birdwatchers rather than a casual detour.

The county's other water feature is the Barrow, Nore and Suir estuary near New Ross, sheltered water that made the town a working port for centuries and is why the Dunbrody Famine Ship, a full-scale replica emigrant vessel, is moored on the quay there today.

Getting there and getting around

Drive from Dublin in under two hours, or arrive by ferry through Rosslare Europort from France, and allow one to two nights. Wexford has no useful rail network for touring the coast, so a car is the practical way to see the county properly.

Most American visitors reach Wexford by car, either from Dublin Airport, which is under two hours away on good motorway, or as part of a route along the southeast coast between Dublin and Waterford or Cork. Rosslare Europort, on the county's southeast tip, runs ferry services to Cherbourg and Roscoff in France, which makes Wexford a genuine gateway county for anyone combining Ireland and continental Europe on the same trip.

The coast road linking Rosslare, Kilmore Quay, the Hook peninsula, Duncannon and New Ross is slow but scenic, and it is the only practical way to string together the Hook Lighthouse, Tintern and Dunbrody abbeys and the seafood stops without doubling back. Inland roads toward Enniscorthy are quicker and more direct.

Bases, briefly. Wexford town for the old streets, restaurants and the opera festival. Rosslare Strand for beach time and the ferry connection. New Ross for the Kennedy sites and the Dunbrody ship. Enniscorthy for the 1798 history and a smaller, quieter town base.

Weather is genuinely a little different here. The southeast records more sunshine hours and less rainfall than most of the rest of the country on average, which is the real basis for the Sunny South East nickname rather than pure marketing, though an umbrella is still worth packing.

Eleven places worth planning a day around

Ordered roughly east to west, with what each one actually is, why we send people, and what to know before you go.

1. 01 · North of Wexford town, 15 minutes' drive

   Curracloe Beach

   A long stretch of dunes and open Atlantic-facing sand, used for the Normandy landing scenes in Saving Private Ryan.

   One of the best beaches on the east coast, and quiet outside July and August despite the film connection.

   PlanningFree car parks at the north and south ends. Strong currents in places, so check flags before swimming.

2. 02 · South of Wexford town, near Rosslare Europort

   Rosslare Strand

   A calm, shallow, family-friendly beach along the Blue Flag stretch of the county's southeast coast.

   The easier swim of the county's two main beaches, and a natural stop before or after the ferry.

   PlanningGood for young children. Rosslare Europort, for ferries to France, is a short drive further south.

3. 03 · County town, on the Wexford Harbour estuary

   Wexford town and the Viking quay

   A narrow medieval street plan laid out by Viking settlers, with the Bullring, the Norman West Gate and a working quay.

   The best walkable town in the county, and the base for Wexford Festival Opera each October.

   PlanningPark on the quay and walk the narrow streets on foot. Opera festival accommodation books out well ahead.

4. 04 · North Slob, on Wexford Harbour

   Wexford Wildfowl Reserve

   A wetland reserve on reclaimed harbour land, hosting one of the world's largest wintering flocks of Greenland white-fronted geese.

   A serious birdwatching site, at its best between October and April when the geese are in.

   PlanningVisitor centre and hides on site. Bring binoculars; the geese keep their distance.

5. 05 · Tip of the Hook peninsula, 45 minutes from Wexford town

   Hook Head Lighthouse

   A working lighthouse maintained by monks from the twelfth century, one of the oldest operating lighthouses in the world.

   A genuinely rare structure, on a dramatic limestone headland, with a climbable tower.

   PlanningGuided tower tours run on a schedule that varies by season. The surrounding rocks are exposed to wind year round.

6. 06 · Saltmills, on the Hook peninsula

   Tintern Abbey

   A Cistercian abbey founded around 1200 by William Marshal, with a walled garden and woodland walk.

   A substantial Norman ruin without the crowds of the better-known abbeys, in a genuinely pretty setting.

   PlanningManaged by the OPW. The woodland walk to the estuary is worth the extra half hour.

7. 07 · Campile, near the Hook peninsula

   Dunbrody Abbey

   A large roofless Cistercian abbey ruin from the twelfth century, beside a yew maze and visitor centre.

   One of the best-preserved medieval church ruins in the southeast, and an easy stop between the Hook and New Ross.

   PlanningGrounds and maze have separate seasonal opening. Combine with Tintern Abbey on the same drive.

8. 08 · South coast, 25 minutes from Wexford town

   Kilmore Quay

   A small working fishing harbour with a thatched village behind it and a seafood counter beside the pier.

   The most worthwhile short stop on the southeast coast: boats, ice and fish, and the departure point for the Saltee Islands.

   PlanningScallops peak in winter, prawns in summer. Saltee Islands boat trips run in season, weather permitting.

9. 09 · Off Kilmore Quay

   The Saltee Islands

   A pair of privately owned islands and one of Ireland's most important seabird sanctuaries, reached by seasonal boat.

   Gannets, puffins and guillemots in huge numbers between April and July, with nobody managing the crowds because there are none.

   PlanningBoats run from Kilmore Quay in season only, and are cancelled in poor weather without much notice.

10. 10 · New Ross quayside

    The Dunbrody Famine Ship, New Ross

    A full-scale, seaworthy replica of an 1840s emigrant sailing ship, with costumed guides on board.

    The clearest, most physical way to understand what the Famine emigration actually involved, docked where emigrant ships once left.

    PlanningGuided tours run on the hour. The adjoining Irish Emigrant Heritage centre holds passenger records.

11. 11 · Dunganstown, near New Ross

    The John F. Kennedy Homestead and Arboretum

    The Kennedy family farmhouse, still worked by descendants, plus the nearby Kennedy Arboretum planted as a memorial to JFK.

    The site of JFK's 1963 homecoming visit, and one of the few places in Ireland with a direct, documented family line to a US president.

    PlanningSmall and personal rather than a large visitor operation. The arboretum is a separate, larger site nearby with walking trails.