| Source: | The Scenery and Antiquities of Ireland | c. 1841 | J. Stirling Coyne & N. P. Willis |
| Section: | Volume I, Chapter IV-17 | Start of chapter |
The coast eastward from Bannow is low and flat, presenting few features of pictorial interest until we reach the Tuskar Light-house, built on a small island-rock, lying off Carnsore Point, which forms the south-eastern angle of Ireland From this point the shore bends suddenly northward, and we soon enter the picturesque Harbour of Wexford, through a narrow inlet. "It is formed," says Mr. Hay, "by two narrow necks of land bending towards each other, like two arms closing after an extension from the body, which appearance the river's mouth assumes by its banks, not very unlike the old Piraeus of Athens. The extremities of these peninsulas, denominated the Raven on the north and Roslare on the south, form the entrance into the harbour, which is about a mile and a half broad, defended by a fort at the point of Roslare."
The bay into which the river Slaney discharges itself is spacious, and well defended from the sea; but the obstruction of a bar of shifting sand near the entrance, and the shallowness of the water in the harbour, which will not allow vessels of more than two hundred tons burthen to enter it, has considerably lessened the advantages which it would otherwise have derived from its excellent situation in a commercial point of view. The town of Wexford is of great antiquity, and was founded at an early period by the Danish settlers in Ireland; and that it was long the emporium of the south-eastern portion of the country, and the principal port of passage between England and Ireland, there are abundant evidences to prove. The town was anciently surrounded by walls, some traces of which are still discernible: but a large part of the modern town lies outside of the former mural lines of defence.
| Next: | Kinsale |
| Previous: | The Saltees, County Wexford |
| Contents: | The Scenery and Antiquities of Ireland |
| Category: | Antiquities |
Truelove's Journal: A Bookshop Novella
From a sad, comfortless childhood Giles Truelove developed into a reclusive and uncommunicative man whose sole passion was books. For so long they were the only meaning to his existence. But when fate eventually intervened to have the outside world intrude upon his life, he began to discover emotions that he never knew he had.
A story for the genuine booklover, penned by an Irish bookseller under the pseudonym of Ralph St. John Featherstonehaugh.
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Annals of the Famine in Ireland
Annals of the Famine in Ireland, by Asenath Nicholson, still has the power to shock and sadden even though the events described are ever-receding further into the past. When you read, for example, of the poor widowed mother who was caught trying to salvage a few potatoes from her landlord's field, and what the magistrate discovered in the pot in her cabin, you cannot help but be appalled and distressed.
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Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger
This book, the prequel to Annals of the Famine in Ireland cannot be recommended highly enough to those interested in Irish social history. The author, Mrs Asenath Nicholson, travelled from her native America to assess the condition of the poor in Ireland during the mid 1840s. Refusing the luxury of hotels and first class travel, she stayed at a variety of lodging-houses, and even in the crude cabins of the very poorest. Not to be missed!
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Henry Ford Jones' book, first published in 1915 by Princeton University, is a classic in its field. It covers the history of the Scotch-Irish from the first settlement in Ulster to the American Revolutionary period and the foundation of the country.
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