Wexford

Wexford stands at the mouth of the river Slaney, a harbour town founded by Vikings around 800 who called it Veisafjǫrðr. For some three centuries it was a largely independent Norse city-state, until Diarmait Mac Murchada, King of Leinster, and his Norman ally Robert Fitz-Stephen besieged it in May 1169 and the bishop of Ferns talked its defenders into terms. The Norman settlers who followed brought a medieval dialect, Yola, which was spoken across the baronies of Forth and Bargy for centuries, and Wexford received its first charter in 1318.

By 1337 the town was an outpost of English settlers on the Leinster coast. In the 1640s it sided with Confederate Ireland, and a fleet of privateers based here, manned by Flemish and Spanish sailors as well as local men, raided Parliamentarian shipping and sent part of the proceeds to the Confederate government at Kilkenny. For that Cromwell's army sacked Wexford in 1649, killing many of its people and burning much of the town. In the eighteenth century it rebuilt itself with gabled Dutch Billy houses on Main Street, and in 1798 the United Irishmen held the town through the Wexford Rebellion.