An tSráidbhaile · Co. Waterford
One street, one square, a cove at the bottom of the hill, and a Tidy Towns trophy cabinet that has run out of shelves.
Stradbally is one street and a square. The name says so - An tSráidbhaile, the street-village. It runs down a hill in the middle of the Copper Coast, between Bunmahon to the west and Annestown to the east, with the River Tay cutting under the road and out to a cove at the bottom. About five hundred people live here. They have, over the last forty-odd years, won more Tidy Towns medals than any village this size has any right to.
The village you see now was laid out in the late 1700s by the Uniacke family of Woodhouse, the big house up the road. Two-storey terraces around a market square, a church, a school, a couple of pubs, and a road down to the sea. The Uniackes married into the Beresfords in 1844 and the Beresfords held the place until 1971, which is recent enough that older villagers will name the last lord without thinking. The cottages around the square get repainted every few years in a heritage palette. The thatch on the newer development at the edge of the village is real thatch, not film-set thatch.
Don't come for a list. Come for a slow morning. Walk down to the cove, walk up the cliff path toward Annestown, eat a sandwich at the pub on the square, drive ten minutes in either direction along the coast road and you have seen as much of the Copper Coast as most visitors ever do. Stradbally is the kind of place that rewards staying still.
