Wexford

Sister cities

• Lugo
• Annapolis
• Couëron
• Fleurus

History

The town was founded by the Vikings in about 800 AD. They named it Veisafjǫrðr, meaning 'inlet of the mudflats'. In medieval times, the town was known as Weiseforthe in the Yola dialect of Middle English. According to a story recorded in the dindsenchas, the town's Irish name, Loch Garman (lake of Garman), comes from a man named Garman mac Bomma Licce who was chased to the river mouth and drowned as a consequence of stealing the queen's crown from Temair during the feast of Samhain. For several hundred years (from the 9th to the early 12th century), Wexford was a Viking town, a city-state, largely independent and owing only token dues to the Irish kings of Leinster. However, in May 1169 Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster and his Norman ally Robert Fitz-Stephen besieged Wexford. The Norse inhabitants resisted fiercely until the Bishop of Ferns persuaded them to accept a settlement with Dermot. Wexford became an Old English settlement throughout the early to late Medieval period. An Anglo-Frisian language, known as Yola, was commonly spoken in south Wexford from the time of the Norman invasion in 1169 until it began declining in the mid-19th century. While Yola was extinct by the 1870s, Compared to other parts of Ireland, the Irish language was not as widely spoken in the baronies of Forth and Bargy, which include Wexford town, from the 9th century onwards due to heavy settlement of Norse, Norman and continental Europeans. However, Leinster Irish was the main language spoken in the more northern baronies of County Wexford, and it was spoken widely during the early to late Medieval period, until its decline in the 17th century. Following the Crusades, the Knights Templar had a presence in Wexford town. Up to the present, their name is perpetuated in the old Knights'…