Qualla: Wicklow

Wicklow: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 瑞丽江的河水, CC BY-SA 4.0. There are two completely different names for this town and neither one explains the other. The English name Wicklow comes from the Old Norse - Wykinglo in twelfth-century records - meaning roughly "the Vikings' meadow." The Irish name is Cill Mhantain, "church of the toothless one." The folklore explanation is wonderful: Saint Patrick and his followers tried to land on Travailahawk beach south of the harbour, and hostile locals attacked them, knocking out the front teeth of one companion. Manntach, "the toothless one," was undeterred. He came back, eventually founded a church, and gave his name to the place. The Anglo-Normans who later conquered this part of Ireland preferred the Viking name. Today the town has 12,957 people, and on a very clear day you can see Snowdonia in Wales across the Irish Sea.

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Image: 瑞丽江的河水 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Wicklow: Ptolemy's Menapia

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sarah777, CC BY-SA 2.0. When excavators dug the Wicklow road bypass in 2010, they uncovered a Bronze Age cooking pit - a fulach fiadh - and a hut site in the Ballynerrn Lower area of the town. Radiocarbon dating placed the site at around 900 BC. Five hundred years later, by 600 BC at the latest, an iden...

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Image: Sarah777 | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wicklow: Coote's Vengeance

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 瑞丽江的河水, CC BY-SA 4.0. The town has its dark corners. In 1641 the rebellion against English rule swept through Wicklow and was quickly answered. Sir Charles Coote led English troops to retake the town and engaged in what contemporaries called "savage and indiscriminate" slaughter of the townspeople. Lo...

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Image: 瑞丽江的河水 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Wicklow: The Friary, the Town Hall and the Harbour

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Trevorquinn, CC BY-SA 4.0. The oldest surviving building in Wicklow proper is the ruined Franciscan friary, founded in 1252 and dissolved by Henry VIII in 1551 - its bones stand at the west end of Main Street, inside the gardens of the local Catholic parish grounds. Wicklow Town Hall dates from around 1690...

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Image: Trevorquinn | CC BY-SA 4.0

Wicklow: A Quiet Town in a Sheltered Bay

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ridiculopathy, CC0. Wicklow's climate is gentler than its windswept reputation suggests. The Wicklow Mountains shelter it from the prevailing westerly winds, and Ballyguile Hill blocks moisture coming from the south-west. The town receives only about 60 percent of the rainfall that falls on Ireland'...

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Image: Ridiculopathy | CC0