Four books in the post on Wexford families andthe arts in Askeaton

Four books arrived in the post this week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

There are many things I miss during this pandemic lockdown: there are missed opportunities for travel to my favourite places, walks on the beach, eating out, time sipping a double espresso in cafés … And I sorely miss opportunities to browse in some of my favourite bookshops.

Over the last few months, I have bought a number of books online. But that is no substitute for losing count of time as I browse the shelves of a good bookshop, serendipitously coming across a book I never knew about but realise I always wanted to read.

Serendipity continued to manifest itself this week when four books arrived in the post unexpectedly, two from my old friend Michael Freeman in Rosslare, Co Wexford, and two from Michele Horrigan of Askeaton Contemporary Arts.

Helen Skrine is the author of The Boxwells of Butlerstown Castle, published recently under the imprint of Butlerstown Castle Press and co-edited with her daughter, Anna Skrine-Brunton.

But the Boxwells are one among the families that for hundreds of years have owned castles in Co Wexford and have influenced social, political, economic and cultural change across the world.

The Bowxwells have lived for centuries at Butlerstown House and Butlerstown Castle, just a mile or two away from two other castles linked with the Boxwell family, Bargy Castle and Lingstown Castle. This is a fascinating memoir of the Boxwell family, which came England in the 1600s and settled in Co Wexford. She tells the story that is sometimes tragic and often-times funny.

She charts the contribution of members of the Boxwell family to government, medicine, sport, community and even rebellion, through war and peace to the present day.

Butlerstown Castle, like Ballybur Castle in Co Kilkenny, had its origins as a tower house, ‘a modest affair aimed not at warmongering or at display of power and wealth, but merely at survival, for defence in a hostile and embittered environment.’

The so-called ‘English’ baronies of Forth and Bargy in Co Wexford became more thickly populated with castles than any other part of Ireland. They included Bargy Castle built by the Rossiters, Lingstown Castle built by the Lamberts, Ballycogley Castle, built by the Waddings, and Butlerstown Castle, near Tomhaggard, built for the Butlers of Mountgarret, and with views north to Forth Mountain, west to the Comeragh Mountains in Co Waterford, and south to the Saltee Islands.

Helen traces the Boxwell family back to John Boxall or Boxwell of New College, Oxford, a favourite of Queen Mary, and John Boxwell (1614-1677) of Wootton Bassett, and a third John Boxwell who moved from Wootton Bassett to Co Wexford in the late 17th century.

For many people in Co Wexford, the Boxwell family is best-known for the close family relationship that links John Boxwell, John’s brother-in-law John Colclough and John’s cousin, Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey, the three key figures in the 1798 Rising in Wexford.

But she also tells the stories of colourful family members, including Susan Boxwell the artist; John Boxwell, Governor of Dhaka, now the capital of Bangladesh; William Boxwell, President of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland; and Colonel Ambrose Boxwell of the Indian army.

There are honeymoons in Rome and Athens, tennis in Assam, Bengal and Chittagong, hunting with the Killinick Harriers, polo in Malaysia and a connection with Chris de Burgh. There are stories that take the reader to South Africa and Brazil, and of coffee in White’s Hotel, the Opera Festival in Wexford, and starting an arts centre in the Old Town Hall in Cornmarket.

There are intriguing connections with the Elgee family and Oscar Wilde; with Whitley Stokes and William Stokes, pioneers in medicine; with Percy French; and through her mother with the St Leger family of Doneraile. And there is the story a ‘visit’ to Bargy Castle by the IRA during a Christmas party at the height of the Irish Civil War.

In addition, 16 family trees help guide the reader labyrinthine details of the different branches Boxwell family tree, with the many intermarriages within the Boxwell family, the details of kinship with other kindred families, including the Harveys, the MacMurroughs Kavanaghs and the St Legers, and extensions of the family to Abbeyleix, Liverpool and Brazil.

The cover photographs are by Jim Campbell and Ger Lawlor, while many of the photographs inside this generously illustrated book are by Ger Lawlor, Helen’s son-in-law Simon de Courcy Wheeler and Pat O’Connor.

Helen Skrine is due to feature soon on RTÉ’s programme Nationwide.

Berna Borna, originally from Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny, was a teacher at the Muslim National School in Clonskeagh almost 25 years, and was the school principal for the last five of those years. Her novel Shades of Integrity is her debut fiction and is published under Michael Freeman’s imprint of Three Sisters Press in Rosslare.

Her novel about a Muslim family from Egypt living in Dublin is due to be launched early next year. She says, ‘Coming into contact with the Muslim community has been a great privilege and blessing. The experience was enriching beyond the ordinary. The community comprises people from many differing countries and cultures. We have much to learn from each other.’

It is an appropriate corrective to negative images of Muslims and Islam created by this week’s horrific killings in Nice.

The book is prefaced with a quotation from Khalil Gibran:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.

Michael Freeman is from Glynn, Co Wexford. He lived in Dublin for many years, working as a freelance journalist, a press officer for Macra na Feirme and in PR and publishing. He returned to Wexford with his wife Brigid in 2005 and now lives in Rosslare.

A suggestion by the Wexford historian and author Nicky Furlong led him to set up Three Sisters Press, and the first book he published was volume five of Nicky’s Wexford in the Rare Auld Times. Other books from Three Sisters Press include Sailor, Airman, Spy, Memoir of a Cold War Veteran by Ted Hayes (2018).

Michele Horrigan from Askeaton, Co Limerick, is Director and Curator at Askeaton Contemporary Arts, and a former curator at the Belltable in Limerick.

ACA Public is the publishing initiative of Askeaton Contemporary Arts, and recently published Countercultures, communities, and Indra’s Net by John Hutchinson, beautifully designed by Daly-Lyon.

ACA Publishing has also published Men Who Eat Ringforts by Sinéad Mercier and Michael Holly, and featuring Eddie Lenihan.

Environmentalist Sinéad Mercier explores the legal and moral complexities surrounding the nature of ringforts, while artist Michael Holly’s fieldwork with folklorist Eddie Lenihan reveals and analyses many sites of resonance in Co Clare. In addition, extensive large format aerial imagery and historical maps licensed from Ordnance Survey Ireland detail changes over recent decades to these landscapes.

Men Who Eat Ringforts is printed with fluorescent Pantone inks, substituting the standard cyan, magenta and yellow process colours, resulting in a luminous effect to images throughout.

This new book was co-published in August with Gaining Ground, a public art programme based in Co Clare.

Meanwhile, Askeaton Contemporary Arts are in the post-production stage, getting ready to launch its own YouTube channel. They promise something to watch during lockdown.

The tale of the Wexford Whale and its new role in science and conservation

I heard the tale of the ‘Wexford Whale’ on Wexford’s quays earlier this month (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

Earlier this month, walking along the Quays in Wexford during my summer ‘Road Trip,’ I heard the story of the Wexford Whale, and its role in helping to conserve the world’s whale population – a tale I never heard while living in Wexford.

On a chilly morning on 26 March 1891, Edward Wickham and two companions, Blake and Saunders, came across an enormous whale that had been beached the day before on the Swanton’s Bank, a sandbank at the mouth of Wexford Harbour, near the Hantoon Channel, after being harpooned by a local fisherman.

Ned Wickham was the coxswain of the Wexford Lifeboat based at the Fort, Rosslare Point, and had set out to investigate the stranded creature. Without the buoyancy of water to support her massive body, the stranded animal was suffocating under her own great weight as the tide ebbed.

The group of men beat the whale with metal bars in a crude attempt to slay her and Ned Wickham – in an act of mercy or in an act of enterprise – eventually killed the animal when he plunged an improvised harpoon under one of the flippers, and put the dying animal out of her agony.

Newspaper reports from the time describe how he bravely approached the animal, using an improvised harpoon to ‘dispatch the big fish.’

And so, the life of this Leviathan of the deep came to an end – a female Blue Whale measuring 25.2 metres (82 ft). The dead whale became a local celebrity, with boat trips organised to bring sightseers out to the body of this monster from the deep. Newspapers reports described the whale’s arrival as a ‘strange visitant from strange seas.’

The Ballast Office on the Crescent Quay, Wexford, was built in 1835-1840 as the offices of the Wexford Harbour Commissioners (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

As ‘a Fish Royal,’ the remains were claimed for the Crown and were auctioned. The carcase was bought at auction by William Armstrong, chairman of Wexford Harbour Board at the time, for £111 for its oil and meat – today’s equivalent of €11,958.

Armstrong had a business on Wexford’s Main Street and, with whale oil was such a valuable commodity, he saw an opportunity to profit.

Some 20 men were employed cutting up the meat for dog food and extracting 630 gallons of whale oil for fuel, or 14 45-gallon drums that were sold for 1s 6d per gallon, making about €5,380 in today’s terms from whale oil alone. The remaining meat was sold off as pet food.

This episode took place just before a global boom in commercial whaling, and the Wexford Whale represents an important moment in the history of this species.

Initially, the whale was wrongly identified as a Sperm Whale. But the correct identification of the Wexford Whale was made by a newspaper journalist. He saw the black baleen plates in the animal’s mouth, and knowing that Sperm Whales have teeth, he realised that a mistake had been made and that the creature had to be a Blue Whale.

Interestingly, although Armstrong may have increased his profits by selling the baleen for use in women’s corsets, enough of the material survived, and this is now held in the Natural History Museum, Dublin – known to generation of children in Dublin as the ‘Dead Zoo.’

However, the enterprising William Armstrong sold the skeleton to the Natural History Museum of London for £250, or €26,930 in today’s terms.

There, the bones were put in storage, where they remained for 42 years. Eventually, the Mammal Hall was built and opened in 1938 to accommodate Wexford’s Blue Whale. There it was displayed, suspended above a 28.6 metre (93 ft) life-size model.

The skeleton of this magnificent specimen measures over 25 metres in length and weighs 3 tonnes.

In recent years, staff at the museum in London spent months preparing the old bones for their new home, cleaning it, repairing it and strengthening it over many months for display. The process was filmed by the BBC and when the Natural History Museum reopened in July 2017, the Wexford Whale took centre stage at the museum entrance. The display was officially opened by the Duchess of Cambridge and Sir David Attenborough.

Blue Whales are the largest known animal on Earth. The Blue Whale is a carnivore whose average life span in the wild is about 80 or 90 years. They can weigh up to 200,000 kg and grow to a size of around 32 metres. A blue whale’s tongue alone can weigh as much as an elephant, its heart as much as a car.

Commercial whaling drove the Blue Whale was driven to the brink of extinction in the 19th and early 20th century. It is one of the rarest whale species and estimates say there are only between 10,000 and 25,000 whales left on the planet. Commercial whaling saw the creatures on the verge of extinction before they became protected under international law in 1966.

The specimen in London has been given the name ‘Hope’ as a symbol of humanity’s power to shape a sustainable future. This dramatic change to the entrance hall refreshes the museum’s image, with its new focus on living science.

The museum hopes the Wexford Whale will capture the imagination of visitors and challenge the way we think about the natural world.

Ned Wickham … used an improvised harpoon to ‘dispatch the big fish’

Saint John’s, a lost mediaeval church, and the once forgotten grave of John Redmond

The site of the mediaeval Saint John’s Church is behind the white-washed wall on the corner of Lower John Street and John’s Gate Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019; click on image for full-screen resolution)

Patrick Comerford

Saint John’s graveyard or cemetery is located on the corner of Lower John Street and John’s Gate Street, behind a lime-washed perimeter wall with rendered coping. The entrance is from Lower John Street, and Wexford Council maintains the cemetery. However, I found when I visited on yesterday afternoon [18 January 2019] that because of the fragile condition of the cemetery, it is still kept locked, as it has been for many decades.

This graveyard is an important element in the church history and heritage of the Diocese of Ferns and of Co Wexford. This Church stood outside the walls of Wexxford town, on the corner of John Street and John’s Gate Street in the present cemetery, but its ruins have long since disappeared.

Although no church ruins survive, this extensive graveyard occupies the site of the mediaeval Church and Hospital of Saint John, founded in the early 13th century by William Marshall, the builder of Tintern Abbey, Co Wexford. It was given to the Knights of Saint John by his son, the younger William Marshall.

Mediaeval Wexford once boasted 20 churches, but Saint John’s was the only church in the town with a steeple.

A presentment of a Jury of Wexford town and Corporation made in October 1537 found that, ‘On ye 20th day of March 1532, ye Suffreign and Comyns of ye Town of Wexford kept fyre to the doore of ye steeple of St. John’s for to let out a thyef that made escape of ye towne gaole.’

At the dissolution of the monastic houses at the Reformation, Saint John’s was suppressed and the site was granted in perpetuity to laymen. The church was demolished and its stones were used as building material.

Saint John’s Church graveyard has a large collection of gravestones from 1723 and 1932 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The graveyard has a collection of gravestones recording deaths between 1723 and 1932, and at least one marker is signed by James Byrne of Clone, an example of the Irish churchyard sculpture tradition in Co Wexford.

The most important graves and tombs in Saint John’s Cemetery are those of the Talbot and Redmond families.

The most prominent mausoleum was erected in 1828 on a rectangular plan. It is made of cut-granite, with a stepped roof, and has cast-iron fleche or ‘spirelet’ pinnacles at the corners, granite ashlar walls, a cut-granite plinth, cut-granite monolithic piers at the corners, and a beaded cornice on a blind frieze.

The Tudor-headed door opening is between paired clustered colonettes with a cut-granite step threshold, and a cut-granite flush block-and-start surround with chamfered reveals framing the cast-iron panelled double doors that have a quatrefoil-perforated overpanel.

The Talbot and Redmond mausoleum is an important part of the early 19th-century heritage of Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

This mausoleum is an important part of the early 19th-century heritage of Wexford. It was erected by John Hyacinth Talbot (1794-1868) after the death of his wife, Anne Eliza (née Redmond) (1799-1826). They were married in 1822 and she died in childbirth.

The mausoleum Talbot built for his wife is the one in which members of the Redmond political dynasty are buried too, including John Edward Redmond MP (1806-1865) of The Deeps; John Edward Redmond MP (1856-1918), chairman of the Parnellite Minority and Chairman of the Irish Parliamentary Party; and his son, Captain William Archer Redmond MP (1886-1932), who fought in World War I.

Towards the end of the 1700s, the Redmond family became involved in trade, commerce and shipping. John Edward Redmond was a liberal MP for Wexford Town from 1859 until he died in 1865. Through his influence, the railway was brought to Wexford, he developed Wexford harbour and the docks and he was responsible for the reclamation of 5,000 acres of Wexford harbour now called the slob lands.

The monument in Redmond Square to his memory is inscribed with his last words: ‘My heart is in the town of Wexford, nothing can extinguish that love but the cold sod of the grave.’

His nephews, John and Willie Redmond, grew up in Ballytrent House, near Rosslare. John Redmond was born on 1 September 1856 in Kilrane, Co Wexford. He was an MP first for New Ross (1881-1885), and then for North Wexford (1885-1891). He became the main ally and supporter of Charles Stewart Parnell, and after Parnell died in 1891 Redmond became the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party.

Redmond remained in Parliament as the MP for Waterford City (1891-1918). In 1910, after two general elections, HH Asquith and the Liberals needed Irish support to secure the Parliament Act of 1911. Redmond’s support was won in return for the (third) Home Rule Bill introduced in 1912, and Redmond secured Home Rule in 1914.

However, his victory was side-lined with the outbreak of World War I later that year, and the Irish Volunteers soon split between those who enlisted in the army and those who supported the Irish rebellion.

During the Irish Convention on Home Rule, John Redmond died in London on 6 March 1918 from heart failure after an operation to remove an intestinal obstruction. His last words were, ‘Father, I am a broken-hearted man.’ He was 61.

Fearing street protests, Redmond’s friends and family took his body from Kingstown Harbour (Dun Laoghaire) and placed it on a special train to Wexford town. The people of Wexford turned out in their tens of thousands for his funeral in Wexford town. The bells of ever church in the town tolled simultaneously, every shop was closed, and house blinds were drawn.

His seat in Parliament was taken by his son Willian Archer Redmond, who had been MP for East Tyrone. But later that year, Redmond’s party was defeated by Sinn Fein in the general election in December 1918.

An inscription on the mausoleum reads:

Here lie the remains of
+
JOHN EDWARD REDMOND, MP
(MP for Boro’ of New Ross 1881-5.
North Wexford 1885-1891.
Waterford City 1891-1918.)
and Chairman of the
Irish Parliamentary Party
until his death,
which occurred on March 6th 1918,
aged 61 years.
Also his son
CAPt. WILLIAM ARCHER REDMOND, DSO, TD,
MP for East Tyrone 1910-1918,
for Waterford City and County, 1918
till his death.
Died at Waterford April 17th 1932
aged 45 years.

A commemoration event in the town marked his death for many years. The centenary of his birth in 1956 attracted seven government ministers and in an address Éamon de Valera paid tribute to a ‘great Wexford man’ – while decrying his decision to encourage Irishmen to fight in World War I.

Outside, a panel on the John Street wall points out that graveyard is the burial place of Richard Monaghan (‘Dick Monk’) Captain of the John Street Corps of United Irish rebels in 1798. He led his men in actions in Co Wexford, Co Wicklow, Co Kilkenny, Co Carlow and Co Laois and was killed by a party of Yeomen near Bunclody around 27 June 1798.

Saint John’s churchyard was kept locked for many decades (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Over the years, however, the cemetery was kept locked, the Redmond mausoleum was neglected fell into disrepair, its granite walls covered in grime its railings rusting and the pinnacles falling off.

The tomb was cleaned up for the centenary of the passing of the Home Rule Act in 2014 and the cemetery was cleaned up for the centenary of his death. The local author Billy Roche has written two pieces for a walking tour, one for the mausoleum and another for Redmond Park, named in honour of John Redmond’s brother, Major Willie Redmond, who was killed at the Battle of Messines Ridge.

Saint John’s is open by request but is still closed to the general public. Wexford County Council has plans to re-open the graveyard and provide access to the Redmond mausoleum. The graveyard conservation works plan to return the site to a grassed space.

The author Billy Roche has written a pieces for the Redmond mausoleum as part a walking tour (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Three Edwardian houses in a terrace in Limerick

No 8 to 10 O’Connell Avenue … an elegant Edwardian Terrace close to the inner city in Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 20170

Patrick Comerford

On my way into Limerick, usually about once a week, I often hop off the bus before it reaches the city centre so that I can walk in and have time on my way to appreciate the Victorian and Edwardian architecture of the houses that line each side of Ballinacurra Road and O’Connell Avenue.

Three houses on O’Connell Avenue, numbers 8, 9 and 10, form one elegant Edwardian terrace built in the early decades of the last century. This terrace of three elaborately composed Edwardian houses is an eye-catching example of large-scale domestic terraced architecture in the inner suburbs of Limerick dating back to the early 20th century. The houses and the terrace add to the architectural variety and heritage of the Edwardian and Victorian terraces on O’Connell Avenue.

Each of these three houses is individually named: No 8 is Naomh Iosaf, presumably after the nearby Saint Joseph’s Church; No 9 is Mayfair; and No 10 is Glenade. All three were built around 1900.

No 8, Naomh Iosaf, on the left in the photograph, is an end-of-terrace two-bay three-storey red brick and pebbledash-rendered house, with an advancing two-storey three-sided canted bay window surmounted by balustraded balcony accessed by gabled half-dormer window bay.

The pitched natural slate roof has terracotta ridge tiles, an intersecting secondary dormer gable roof with an elaborately detailed timber bargeboard that has a timber finial at the apex.

There is a redbrick chimneystack with a stringcourse and cornice beneath the concrete flaunching to the north gable wall and the south party wall, with moulded clay pots.

The façade at the ground-floor and first-floor levels is faced in redbrick that is laid in English garden wall bond with a limestone plinth course, and there is redbrick wrapping around the bay window aprons.

A moulded rendered stringcourse delineates the second-floor level, which is finished in a pebbledash render. There is timber strutwork to the dormer gable. The house has a plain rendered rear elevation.

The square-headed window opening over the front door has redbrick reveals, there is a flush chamfered limestone lintel and a sill and two-leaf timber casement window with over-lights and curvilinear glazing bars. The oculus above has a smooth rendered surround and a fixed multiple-paned coloured glass light.

The three-sided canted bay window has limestone ashlar surround that includes piers, flush chamfered sills and a lintel. The single and two-leaf timber casement window has over-lights and curvilinear glazing bars.

A cast-iron panelled balustrade encloses the bay balcony. The square-headed balcony opening is for a door flanked by sidelights, with the curvilinear glazing casement echoed by a glazed door panel.

There is a covered front-door porch with a timber frame rising from a red brick plinth base, and with closed brackets and an open tripartite light.

The encaustic tiled entrance platform has a limestone step. The segmental-arched door opening has a plain timber doorframe, a glazed and timber-panelled door, leaf and leaded coloured glass and a segmental over-light.

The front site of this house is enclosed by a snecked and coursed limestone plinth wall with limestone ashlar coping that supports wrought-iron railings. There are cast-iron gateposts and a wrought-iron gate leaf.

The central house in this terrace of these three is No 9, known as Mayfair. This mid-terrace house is similar to its neighbours on each side.

The third house in the terrace, Glenade, or No 10, is an end-of-terrace two-bay three-storey red brick and pebbledash rendered house. The principal difference with its neighbours is the replacement uPVC door and frame, but the house retains many of its original Edwardian features.

This terrace and these houses were designed by John Horan (1853-1919), who was the Limerick county surveyor. Horan, who was the son of an engineer, was born in Co Tipperary in 1853, attended Cookstown Academy, Co Tyrone, and then studied civil engineering at Queen’s College, Belfast (1871-1874), where he graduated BE (1874) and ME (1882).

During his college holidays, he worked with his father, who was the contractor’s agent superintending work on the Woodburn Reservoirs of the Belfast Waterworks. He worked alongside John Frederick La Trobe Bateman and Charles Lanyon.

After graduating, he worked at Rosslare Harbour, Co Wexford, in 1875, on the Upper Inny drainage scheme (1876-1877), on railway and private projects (1878), and in Rosslare again (1879-1881), when he lived at Bushville, Tagoat, Co Wexford, before going to England to work on building the Alexandra Dock.

Horan returned to Ireland when he was appointed county surveyor for the western district of Co Limerick in 1884, working from the County Surveyor’s Office in Rathkeale. In 1893, he was given responsibility for the whole county and also began to practise privately in Limerick. His private work include involvement in repairing the spire at Saint Mary’s Church, Rathkeale, in 1899;

He also had offices at 50 George Street, Limerick (1894-1900), 82, George Streeet (1901-1911) and 4 Pery Square (1911-1913). He was also the engineer for the Rathkeale and Newcastle Junction Railway Company (1896-1900).

He lived at Churchtown, Newcastle West, Co. Limerick, and Templemungret, Limerick, before He died on 31 July 1919.

A journey through Lent 2016 with Samuel Johnson (41)

A sign marking the house in Lichfield where Samuel Johnson was born in 1709 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During Lent this year, I am taking time each morning to reflect on words from Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the Lichfield lexicographer and writer who compiled the first authoritative English-language dictionary.

In an essay in The Adventurer, No 24 (25 August 1753), Samuel Johnson questions the view commonly held at the time “that England affords a greater variety of characters than the rest of the world. This is ascribed to the liberty prevailing amongst us, which gives every man the privilege of being wise or foolish his own way, and preserves him from the necessity of hypocrisy or the servility of imitation.”

He describes taking a stagecoach journey across England, when was confined to a small space with strangers who did not know one another and who were reluctant to engage freely in conversation with each another. He observes:

How readily the predominant passion snatches an interval of liberty, and how fast it expands itself when the weight of restraint is taken away, I had lately the opportunity to discover, as I took a journey into the country …

It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.

Yesterday’s reflection.

Continued tomorrow.

Is silence induced by travel in a confined space? The train from Wexford to Rosslare Harbour (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A walk down Anne Street in Wexford is like walking down memory lane

Wexford Presbyterian Church, Anne Street, dates from 1840 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Patrick Comerford

As I strolled down Anne Street in Wexford, from the corner with North Main Street down to the Quays, many memories came to the forefront.

I could remember how the street corner was a gathering place before lunch for many men – and they were all men in those days – who had signed on. In the 1970s, an aspiring politician complained that she had offered some of these men a day’s work and a day’s pay on her husband’s farm. But one-by-one they had turned down her offer.

The implication, of course, was that they were “gougers” and “shirkers” and that they were indigent because of their indolence. How impudent and imprudent of her. Perhaps she was hoping that their dole would be cut off in order to teach them a lesson.

But one brave unemployed man was quick to reply. He pointed out that the day’s wage being offered was only marginally higher than the meagre amount he was receiving as unemployment assistance. That margin would have been worn away by the cost of travelling out from the town to the farm, by the extra cost of living, including food and fare, and all for long hours that he would be away from his family.

In the meantime, the husband-farmer would prosper and increase his profits and the efficiency of his farm.

The aspiring politician never came back with a better offer, as far as I can remember.

The new buildings on the right-hand side of Anne Street going down the hill have totally wiped out the memory of the Shamrock Bar and the County Hotel. There were memories of the Sinnott family, Mancie Mahon – who was named in honour of the 1929 centenary of Catholic Emancipation – and fire, people, places and events that are still in memories scattered through Billy Roche’s Tumbling Down and his Wexford Trilogy.

On the left-hand side of Anne Street, the Presbyterian Church is a tribute to the survival of a community that has had a continuous presence in Wexford since the 17th century.

The Revd Robin Elliott invited me to preach in the Presbyterian churches in Wexford and Enniscorthy in 1973, when I was still only a 21-year-old. They were the first churches I ever preached in, although at the same time the late Canon Norman Ruddock had also invited me to speak at the Lenten study in his parish in Killane and Killegney.

The present church in Anne Street dates from 1840. The second minister, the Revd John Bond (1846-1849), had been ordained in the Church of Ireland, and later returned to the Church of Ireland.

In 1927, Wexford Presbyterian Church was united with Enniscorthy Presbyterian Church, which was formed in 1865. A joint Presbyterian-Methodist agreement in 1977 drew in Gorey Methodist Church and saw the closure of Wexford Methodist Church in Rowe Street.

This arrangement came to an end in June 2005, so that the churches in Wexford and Enniscorthy are now part of the Presbyterian home mission, and the church in Gorey is a Methodist church once again.

The Revd Stephen Rea was appointed to Wexford Presbyterian Church in 2006, but he has since moved to Athy, Co Kildare, and the notice board outside indicates that the church is without a minister at present.

At the end of Anne Street, I remembered how in the 1980s or 1990s there was a Greek restaurant here, adding to the international dimension of the culinary fare on offer in Wexford.

Along the Quays, the train line still follows the track that once ran alongside the former “Woodenworks.” A train was slowly and cautiously making its way through the raib along the Quays in the direction of the former South Station and on to Rosslare.

Time trundles on. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

The Rosslare train makes its way along the Quays in Wexford, slowly (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Sunset and evening shadows in Rosslare, a morning of welcomes in Wexford parish

Sunset behind the sand dunes at Rosslare Strand on Saturday evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Patrick Comerford

Seaside resorts have a particular beauty in winter. The beaches are usually abandoned, the sands are clean and unspoilt, the waves are higher, and the sunsets – although earlier in day – seem to linger longer, with sharper, clearer colours in the skies.

I spent the weekend in Wexford and Rosslare, enjoying long walks on the beach at Rosslare Strand, strolls through the narrow streets of Wexford town, and returning to Saint Iberius’s Church this morning.

I was staying at the Cedars Hotel in Rosslare Strand just for one night, and two of us travelled down from Dublin at lunchtime on Saturday on a journey that took just an hour and a half.

A window table La Dolce Vita, looking out onto charming Trimmer’s Lane Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

We had lunch in La Dolce Vita in Trimmer’s Lane, off North Main Street and close to the ruins of Selskar Abbey and the proud modern statue of Wexford’s greatest hurler, Nicky Rackard. Some years ago, one of Ireland’s leading restaurant critics wrote that he would eat the food out of the bin in La Dolce Vita.

We had a table by the window looking out at this tiny charming square. Roberto and Celine Pons have been in business at La Dolce Vita for about a dozen years, serving authentic Italian rustic food, great Italian wines and home-made Italian breads … yesterday I had the I had the Spaghettini aglio, olio e peperoncino (thin spaghetti with garlic, olive oil and chilli).

Strolling along the Quays in Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Later, I had a stroll along the Main Street, and ended up spending more time than I planned in the Book Centre. I was taken aback and flattered to find I had a half-page entry in The Wexford Book: Who’s What and Where’s Where edited by Michael Doyle, Michael Freeman and Philip Murphy, and published in November 2013 by County Books.

No-one had asked for my biographical details, but obviously my profile had been compiled by researchers who know me, and it is a flattering profile too. I suppose I had arrived in Wexford almost forty years after leaving it, and without ever even knowing it.

We are anxious to get to Rosslare while it was still bright enough to walk along the beach. But there was still a little time to walk down Anne Street for a walk along the Quays back to the car.

Waves breaking on the beach at Rosslare Strand on Saturday evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

After checking in at the Cedars Hotel, In Rosslare, I wanted to find the small house I had rented in Rosslare for a few months in the mid-1970s before moving from the Wexford People to The Irish Times.
It took little effort to find the house, but like so many places in seaside resorts, it was closed up and seemed a little weary for the weather-battering it must have received in recent weeks.

A rented house that was home in Rosslare Strand shortly before I moved to Dublin in the mid-1970s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

The field behind, that had grazing cattle in the mid-1970s, was overgrown and abandoned, but we strolled through the damp undergrowth to the golf links that separate it from the sand dunes.

Even the golf course had been flooded in places after the recent heavy rains and high tides.

Down below, on the beach, the tide was just beginning to recede, but the waves were tall and heavy, and out further more and higher waves were breaking on the horizon. To the right, a ferry was pulling out of Rosslare Harbour. Behind the dunes, the sun was beginning to set.

Victorian houses in bright pastel colours retain their wrought-iron porches (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

We strolled back through the resort, passing shuttered apartments and empty shops. Kelly’s Resort Hotel looked inviting, but most of the holiday homes were closed.

Rosslare cannot be dismissed easily as a brash resort. There are Victorian houses that once faced the beach painted in bright pastel colours and still retaining their wrought-iron porches.

Beside these houses, Marconi House is on a site that has a claim to a place in scientific history. Over 100 years ago, Gugliemo Marconi (1874-1936) – whose mother Annie Jameson was from Daphne Castle, near Enniscorthy, Co Wexford – established a wireless transmitting station here in 1901 to act as a link between Poldhu, Cornwall, and Clifden, Co Galway. He was investigating how to send signals across the Atlantic to compete with the transatlantic telegraph cables.

On 12 December 1901, he announced that a message transmitted by his company’s station in Cornwall had been received at Signal Hill in St John’s, Newfoundland. The distance between the two points was about 3,500 km and Marconi’s announcement was heralded as a great scientific advance. His station at Rosslare Strand closed down at the beginning of World War I in 1914, but a plaque outside Marconi House recalls this ground-breaking event.

Sunday morning in the Bull Ring in the heart of Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

This morning, I woke to a bright sunrise, with the sun streaming into through the windows as it rose above Rosslare Harbour, and there was a clear view across the dunes to the sea.

Inside Saint Iberius’s Church, Wexford, on Sunday morning (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Later in the morning, there was a warm welcome at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Iberius’s Church on North Main Street. It is a few years since I either spoke or preached in this church, but both the church and the clergy retain many happy memories and it played an important part in my faith development in the 1970s.

Our opening hymn was Will your anchor hold in the storms of life? … and I thought of how this question must have faced many in the recent high waves and storms.

Later we sang Praise, my soul, the King of heaven, written by the Revd Henry Francis Lyte (1793-1847), once a curate in Taghmon, which is now part of Wexford Union of Parishes.

The Ferrycarrig Hotel stands on the banks of the Slaney, where the river spreads out into a broad estuary before entering Wexford Harbour (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

After another stroll through the town, we had lunch in the Ferrycarrig Hotel. It stands on one of the most beautiful locations at a point where the River Slaney spreads out into a broad estuary before entering Wexford Harbour.

By the now the heavy rains had returned, and we headed north along the banks of the Slaney through Edermine, Enniscorthy, Scrawalsh and Bunclody. We drove on through Tullow, Baltinglass and Blessington. It was dark by the time we arrived back in Dublin this evening.

Returning to Rosslare with its sandy beach and memories of fireside meals in winter

Stepping back in time at the Cedars Hotel … it’s almost 40 years since I lived in Rosslare Strand, Co Wexford

Patrick Comerford

For a short time in the mid-1970s, I lived at Rosslare Strand.

I moved out of my two-room, top floor flat in High Street, Wexford, and in the middle of winter rented a house in Rosslare Strand that was used as a summer holiday home by the Martin Family.

I was in my early 20s, and naively I had failed to realise how difficult the daily commute was going to be in the winter months of November and December for someone who would never learn to drive.

I was working then as a journalist with the Wexford People group of newspapers, and each morning I would walk along the sandy beach at Rosslare Strand to catch the first train from Rosslare Port to Dublin that served as a commuter train to Wexford Town. How we jested that the North Station was at the west end of Wexford Town, and the South Station at the east end of the town.

Each evening, I would catch the late train or hitchhike back the 10 miles from Wexford in the cold, wet dark hours of winter.

I soon began to wonder why I had given up that flat in High Street. It was directly opposite the works’ entrance to the People office, and today it might up talked up as a penthouse apartment. Only a month or two earlier, I had enjoyed the pleasures of being beside the Theatre Royal, with almost a front row seat when it came to hearing rehearsals for the Wexford Festival Opera.

The house was cold in winter, to say the least. We had to arrange adroitly for coal deliveries, and when the house began to heat up condensation would cover the walls and the windows and drip down all night. To compound these inconveniences, the shower never seemed to work. Can you imagine the surprise of washing at the kitchen sink – “wash up as far as possible, wash down as far as possible, then wash possible” – only to look up and see a cow looking in the kitchen window?

Living in Rosslare Strand had many compensations, and many unexpected pleasures. The area was still rural, without the broad expanse of holiday homes that have mushroomed in the intervening decades. There were long walks on the beach, and when it was dry, the winter skies were bright and star-filled.

And, in the evenings, there was a welcome across the road in the Cedars Hotel, where the proprietor took pity and offered budget dinners by the fireside. He was a brother of Bishop Eamon Casey, and he was a larger-than-life character with a warm-hearted, jovial personality.

Rosslare Strand clings to its name to distinguish it from nearby Rosslare Harbour and the Rosslare Europort.

Rosslare has been a centre for tourism for over a century, and claims to be the sunniest spot in Ireland. Living there in winter I never appreciated the fact that Rosslare enjoys 300 hours more sunshine each year than the average place in Ireland. The long sandy strand is a Blue Flag beach, there is a number of golf courses in the area, and Rosslare has some well-known hotels and restaurants.

To the north of where I once lived, there is a long sand-spit that stretches north from Rosslare and separates Wexford Harbour from the Irish Sea. Until the early 1920s, this spit stretched many miles further north, almost touching the Raven Point so that Wexford Harbour once had a very narrow mouth. Rosslare Fort stood at the end of this spit.
However, in the winter of 1924-1925 a storm breached the spit and it was gradually washed away – it must have been a winter like the one we are experiencing in Ireland at present. Rosslare Fort was abandoned and all that is left today is an island hat can be glimpsed at low tide.

Nevertheless, the weather means this part of Ireland rejoices in being the “Sunny South-East” ever since Rosslare recorded 1,996.4 hours of sunshine in 1959, the highest recorded in Ireland.

I left Rosslare at the end of 1974 to move from the Wexford People to The Irish Times.

I am back in the Cedars Hotel this weekend for the first time in 40 years. The showers work, the food is excellent, and there are plenty of opportunities for walks on the long, sandy stretches of beach. I wonder if I’ll find that old Martin family home.