Medieval Ireland: Kilkenny, Jerpoint and the Viking Triangle

Editor's note

Tree Grove stands on the New Ross Road at Archersgrove, three kilometres out, with the Nore Valley Walk nearby; two nights, and the city is the point of them. The Medieval Mile runs from Kilkenny Castle, a Norman fortress turned into a house, its Long Gallery remodelled in the 1860s for the Butler family's pictures, to St Canice's Cathedral, whose 9th-century round tower is one of only three in Ireland you can still climb. Between them are Rothe House, a merchant's townhouse on Parliament Street, and the Black Abbey, a Dominican friary founded in 1225. On St. Kieran Street, Kyteler's Inn was the home of Dame Alice Kyteler, convicted of witchcraft in 1324. Eleven kilometres north, Dunmore Cave is where Viking raiders killed the people sheltering inside in 928.

Editor's note

Nore Valley Park lies at Annamult outside Bennettsbridge, in the river country south of Kilkenny; two nights. Jerpoint Abbey is a 12th-century Cistercian house with one of the finest carved cloisters in Ireland: knights, bishops and saints in the arcade columns, and a double effigy tomb in the nave. A kilometre and a half upstream lies Newtown Jerpoint, a town with a mill, market and port on the Nore, emptied after the Black Death in the 1340s and never reoccupied. Its streets are grass; the ruined church of St. Nicholas holds the tomb the de Frene family claimed as that of St. Nicholas of Myra. At Kells, Geoffrey FitzRobert's priory of about 1193 encloses three acres behind a curtain wall set with tower houses, the Seven Castles, open at all hours.

Editor's note

Duncannon Beach Holiday Park sits at Ballystraw on the Wexford shore, one night, with the coastal walk from Ballyhack to Dunbrody at hand. The drive here uses the Passage East car ferry: a short crossing of the harbour that saves a long way round by road, and this route assumes you take it. Across the water is the Viking Triangle. Reginald's Tower is the only urban monument in Ireland to keep a Norse name, from Raghnall, and the oldest civic building in the country, now holding the Viking museum. The Medieval Museum, raised round the 13th-century Choristers' Hall and the 15th-century Mayor's Wine Vault, keeps the 14th-century Waterford Charter Roll and the cap of maintenance Henry VIII gave the Mayor in 1536, the only piece of his clothing that survives.

Editor's note

Ferrybank Caravan & Camping Park is at Tincone on Wexford harbour, the last night, with the Faythe Heritage Trail in the town. At Ferrycarrig the Irish National Heritage Park sets out settlement in Ireland from the Mesolithic to the Norman invasion of 1169: sixteen reconstructed dwellings across 34 acres, among them a portal dolmen, a ringfort, a monastic site, a crannóg and the Viking harbour where the tour ends. On the hill of Carrig above the Slaney is an excavation of one of the first Norman fortifications in Ireland. Inland at Enniscorthy, Vinegar Hill carries the old windmill tower that served as rebel headquarters; the battle here on 21 June 1798 was the decisive defeat of the United Irishmen, and the National 1798 Rebellion Centre is in the town below.