Page 4 of 5
Westgate Tower is actually Selskar Gate, a private 13th-century gateway to Selskar Abbey. It is the town’s only surviving medieval gateway.
A 2.2-magnitude earthquake struck County Wexford on 18 March 2014, with locals initially attributing the tremor to passing trucks. A similar event had occurred in 1892.
Old footage from 1968 or 1969 shows school children crossing Summerhill in Wexford Town. The video was recorded by artist Betty Forde at a time when a Mercy Convent primary school operated in the area.
The Bullring in Wexford Town was named after the blood sport of bull-baiting, introduced by the Guild of Butchers in 1621.
Selskar Abbey is a ruined medieval abbey in Wexford Town. The first Anglo-Irish treaty was signed at the location in 1169.
The ruins of St. Patrick’s Church in Wexford Town date back to medieval times. Its graveyard contains victims of Cromwell’s 1649 sacking and the headless body of United Irishman John Henry Colclough.
Nineteenth-century Wexford prison records show a man sentenced to four days for throwing a weight with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, while children as young as seven were detained as ‘strolling vagrants.’
The tower house at Ferrycarrig is a 15th-century Norman fortification built by the Roche family to protect the River Slaney ferry. It is one of the few Irish tower houses built for military purposes, featuring gun loops and a murder hole.
Wexford Gaol opened in 1812 and served as a prison, reformatory, and military barracks before its conversion into council offices.