Wexford

As we have now come to expect from Cork University Press this is beautifully produced book profusely illustrated with maps diagrams aerial and ground photographs most of them in colour. There is hardly a page without illustration but this is far from a coffee table book; the illustrations with detailed captions are used to support a well researched and informative text. In its different way this urban history admirably complements the monographs of the Irish Historic Towns Atlas. ~Robin Glasscock Medieval Settlement Research

This is the second town atlas volume to be produced by Cork University Press the first being an atlas of Cork city see Landscape History vol. 28 2006 . The Wexford atlas is actually part of the established and acclaimed Irish Landscapes series published by the Press and like other volumes in this series it is well produced and beautifully illustrated with facsimile historic maps and prints as well as bespoke historical cartography. As with the Cork atlas the author of the Wexford volume has particular local expertise and takes a chronological approach to the town s historical landscape development. Indeed Wexford is a town with a fascinating past that is linked not just with Irish history but English and Scandinavian too. Compared to Cork though Wexford is a small town but equally it has long had regional importance for the south east of Ireland and continues to serve as both an Irish Sea port and county town. Wexford provides a good example of a port town developed initially in Ireland s Viking era and thus comparable to others such as Carlingford and Waterford as well as being subsequently expanded under Anglo Norman English rule during the later Middle Ages. Traces of these external cultural influences are to be seen in Wexford s urban landscape in the vestiges of its antecedent street patterns and church dedications for example. Billy Colfer takes the reader through the landscape evidence drawing upon urban topography and archaeology along with documentary sources. As with so many of Ireland s towns and cities at Wexford there are hints in its urban landscape of earlier Irish settlement pre dating the arrival of these later outsiders though Colfer makes it clear that only with the coming of Scandinavian Vikings in the late ninth century does urban development first begin to appear on the site most probably occurring some time during the tenth century as was the case with nearby Waterford. With the onset of Anglo Norman occupation in the later twelfth century Wexford s urban landscape was extended to the north west along the shore of Loch Garman and also outside the town s walls where suburbs were established. These new extensions expanded the physical extent of Wexford considerably and indeed only as late as the midnineteenth century does the town begin to go beyond these medieval suburban limits. Such observations are made possible by comparing the volume s maps although no urban growth map is included leavingreaders to draw their own interpretations. One aspect where the historical cartography could have been improved is the inclusion of more detail on the maps showing the urban topographies of both the Hiberno Norse and Anglo Norman towns especially their relict patterns of medieval property parcels that are visible still on later eighteenth and nineteenth century maps and plans of the town. Here the CUP town atlas product somewhat falls behind the more established Irish Historic Towns Atlas series published by the Royal Irish Academy whose atlases do include urban growth maps as well as detailed topographic and morphological analyses of town plans. On the other hand the Wexford volume does an excellent job in relating past historic features and structures to the modern urban landscape thus helping students and visitors alike to interpret the historic townscape around them. This is especially clear in Colfer s discussion of Wexford s medieval castle and its town walls and gates. Wexford s early modern and modern development is also given careful and considered treatment by Colfer such as the role played by the port in the sixteenth century and the impact of Cromwell s attack on the town in 1649. This difficult period for the town and for Ireland appears to be the historical context for the earliest map of Wexford reproduced in colour in the volume. Further facsimiles of maps and plans of the 1700s and 1800s are also well reproduced though a case might have been made for including the beautifully drawn and coloured large scale Ordnance Survey plans of the town from the 1840s as an aid to further historical topographic and archaeological study of Wexford. Not only do these particular plans capture Wexford on the eve of a major transformation in its local landscape they also provide sufficient topographical detail of plot boundaries and street patterns for personal study of the town s inherited medieval and post medieval urban features as is possible with IHTA atlas maps . All the same Colfer s Wexford volume is a fine addition to a growing range of Irish landscape studies which successfully and usefully embrace both rural and urban environments and take in a broad time period in this case stretching across the development of Wexford s historic landscape from its prehistoric settlements along the Loch through to the post modern development of the town s waterfront. ~Landscape History