In 1169 the Anglo-Normans landed on the Hook peninsula in Co Wexford. Since then, this small area has retained a strategic presence, writes Eileen Battersby.
Think of a coastline long and sandy, possessing the expected long stretches of beach and sand-dune. That, for the most part, describes the coastline of Co Wexford, but the conventional is countered by the drama of a long, narrow rock-bound promontory, the Hook peninsula. It is a region unto itself, still bearing the impact of the Anglo-Norman presence that defined its character and continues to determine its landscape. The continuing existence of two splendid abbeys - Tintern, built through one man's gratitude to God, and Dunbrody, created by the Cistercians, is part of the story told brilliantly with passion and scholarship by historian Billy Colfer.
His new book, The Hook Peninsula, extends the outstanding case study on the region that he contributed to the Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape (Cork, 1997). Long before that, in 1978, while still a primary school teacher and already an active local historian, he wrote an excellent history of the Hook which he followed in 1992 with Historic Hook Head, a comprehensive map guide. An historical geographer's eye shapes his overviews and he knows how to use maps and photographs. Colfer is, quite clearly, the leading authority on this area. A magnificent aerial shot on page 148 not only illustrates the surviving field patterns, it presents the Hook in all its singular splendour.
Anyone arriving on the peninsula is either a resident or has a specific purpose, because the Hook is not a passage leading on to somewhere else, it is a self-contained entity - as sure of its identity as is Slade Castle and the lighthouse itself.
The Hook is defined by and concerned with itself and its closest, most intense neighbour, the sea. Throughout this study, Colfer makes clear that for all its wonder and beauty, the sea is a dangerous friend. This is obvious as the Hook's most famous landmark, its lighthouse, the Tower of Hook, has maintained a constant vigil for 800 years.
Many have been lost off the Hook's coast. One man who came close, yet survived, was William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke. In the autumn of 1200, Marshall had set out to make his first visit to Ireland. Disaster struck, and he faced shipwreck and probable death off the Wexford coast. Fear made the good man pray, and he promised that, should he survive, he would build an abbey. On landing at Bannow Bay, he kept his word and bequeathed land for the foundation of a Cistercian abbey. Monks from Tintern in Monmouthshire, of which he was patron, settled. By the time of its dissolution in 1530, Tintern de Voto - Tintern of the Vow - had become the third-richest Cistercian abbey in Ireland. Only St Mary's in Dublin and Mellifont, the foundation house in Co Louth, were richer.
Dunbrody Abbey was founded by Hervey de Montemarisco, Strongbow's uncle. As many were aware, few bodies were as effective at organising as the monks of the Cistercian order. Even now, centuries after falling into relative ruin, the abbey with its large Gothic church remains a wonderful sight, if austere in ornamentation.
Colfer, who was brought to "my father's native Hook" as a baby knows his material with the intimacy that comes from being part of it. He attributes the region's cultural identity, and the continuity of that identity, to the area's physical remoteness as a peninsula. Yet through that very isolation came the Hook's strategic importance, particularly during the medieval period.
Situated at the mouth of Waterford Harbour, Hook extends about five and a half miles southwards. Four miles across at its widest point, it is only about half a mile, or 800 metres, wide at its narrowest. From its opening pages, the book sets out to tell its story through pictures as much as through words. A remarkable range of exciting photographs, many by the author and others archival, balance superb use of period watercolours, many by the 19th-century artist George Victor Du Noyer.
Having explained the geology, the diverse topography and stressed the wealth of habitat: "The south Wexford coast, supporting a unique cluster of natural heritage sites, is one of the outstanding coastal heritage features in Ireland and Europe. Of 14 proposed Natural Heritage Areas designated along this coastline, six are located in the Hook region", Colfer also outlines the wildlife: birds are very important here, and particularly significant is the presence of the chough. Bannow Bay is well known as a wintering site for more than 20,000 birds, including the pale-bellied Brent goose. Tintern Abbey hosts a nationally significant colony of whiskered bats.
Few monuments from the prehistoric era survive on the Hook: it's possible that there never were any, perhaps because access deeper into the interior was provided by the three rivers flowing into Waterford harbour, and settlers went further inland. Bronze Age and Iron Age material is scant although, as he points out, the element "dún" (fort) in the name Duncannon (Conan's fort) is a strong indication that the promontory was the site of an Iron Age fort, while there are three Iron Age forts in Waterford harbour.
As early, in his book, as the section on the prehistoric landscape, Colfer refers to the pace of development and the need to protect. Conservation awareness is a constant theme, and he makes several references to the impact of holidays developments not only on the landscape but in terms of how a transient, seasonal population affects a settled community.
With the sections on the medieval landscape and the arrival of the Anglo-Normans, the text gathers pace as Colfer is on favourite territory. It was here, at Bannow Island, in 1169 that the Normans first landed and went on to capture the Norse town of Wexford. The establishment of the manorial system proved crucial in the shaping of the landscape and in the organisation of the emerging society. A map on page 35 illustrates the distribution of Anglo-Norman settlement in Wexford. Interestingly, there are few sites in the north and this reflects some degree of the Irish recovery by the close of the 13th century.
Unique in the settlement story is Clonmines, possibly founded by William Marshal senior in the early 13th century and described by Colfer as "the most impressive example in Ireland of a deserted medieval town where only the stone elements survive; there are no visible remains of the ordinary houses of wood and clay." Its location on a "torturous channel", its limited hinterland and its economic isolation resulted in its eventual abandonment. Its ruins include an Augustinian priory and fragments of a Jacobean house. As long ago as 1684, this ghost town was described as "a place of great trade in times passed , and a harbour for shipping of indifferent bulk until the sand filled up the ancient passage near the town of Bannow." A concentrated sequence on Clonmines offers a copy-book use of illustration and text. Colfer's own watercolour is used alongside period drawings. Most telling of all, however, are two photographs which certainly convey that however difficult the site was to prove, it is beautiful. Somehow "a sense of the atmosphere, colour and intimacy of the medieval town" that once flourished lives on.
As expected, the Tower of Hook is looked at in detail. Particularly effective is the use of an isometric drawing. This stoic building, a witness of so much history, is probably the only secular medieval building in Ireland still serving its original purpose.
Moving on through the 17th century, the account becomes dominated by the creation of the estate system and the arrival of two families. The Colcloughs, having been granted Tintern Abbey by Henry VIII, eventually took up residence in it. The last member of the family left in 1959. Also central was the Loftus dynasty which had been established in Ireland by Adam Loftus, the first provost of Trinity College. A landholding distribution map shows the extent of the Loftus estate by 1703.
Local history as read by Colfer, a scholar with a storyteller's flair and an archivist's thoroughness, against the background of national events, illustrates the cultural and social evolution of a special place. This dazzling and intriguing account is the culmination of passion and scholarship. It completes the picture so vividly begun by him in the atlas and now completed in rich, loving detail.
The Hook Peninsula by Billy Colfer is published by Cork University Press (40)