A fruit, a county, a brand
How Wexford became strawberry country
Wexford grows strawberries because the soil is light, the south-east is the sunniest corner of Ireland, and the climate is just warm enough. The industry took off after the Second World War, and the parishes around Clonroche - with broken-up estate land and willing farmers - ended up at the centre of it. By the 1970s and 1980s the Wexford strawberry was a recognised name on Dublin and Cork shop shelves. Polytunnels stretched the season and the operation grew. The roadside stalls you pass on the N30 in June and July aren't a tourist gimmick. They're the shop window of a working industry.
Carrigbyrne farmhouse cheese
St Killian and the Wagonwheel
In 1982, Luc and Anne Grubb started making cheese at Carrigbyrne, in the parish between Clonroche and New Ross. They named their flagship after Killian of Würzburg, the seventh-century Irish missionary, and packed it in a small hexagonal box that has been a fixture in Irish delis and supermarkets ever since. A second cheese, the Wexford Wagonwheel, came later. The dairy has had ownership changes since the Grubbs stepped back, and production has gone through quiet patches - so if you're hoping to buy at the source, ring ahead or look for current stockists rather than driving out on spec.
The big house in the trees
Castleboro House
The Carews built Castleboro House in the 1770s, a couple of kilometres east of Clonroche, designed by the Scots architect Daniel Robertson. It was Palladian, palatial, and at the centre of an estate that ran the village. In February 1923, during the Civil War, an anti-Treaty column burned it to the ground - one of dozens of Irish country houses lost in those months. The walls still stand in the woods, smoke-blackened and roofless, on private land. You can glimpse the silhouette through the trees from the local road. Don't climb fences.