Ferns, Fearna, Co. Wexford

Ancient capital of the Kingdom of Leinster. The man who let the Normans in is buried here.

Ferns is a one-street village now, on the old N11 between Enniscorthy and Gorey. Drive through it in three minutes and you would not know what happened here. What happened here is most of the 12th century.

Diarmait Mac Murchada - Dermot MacMurrough - was King of Leinster from 1127 until his death in 1171, and Ferns was his capital. He founded the Augustinian abbey here around 1158 for the health of his soul. He lost his kingdom to a coalition of Irish kings in 1166, sailed for England, and came back two years later with a borrowed Norman warlord called Richard de Clare - Strongbow - and a small army. The country never quite went back to what it was. Diarmait died at Ferns in May 1171 and is buried in the cathedral graveyard. There is a high cross shaft above what is reputed to be the grave. The locals will tell you it is.

Fifty years after Diarmait's death, William Marshal, the great Anglo-Norman knight who had married Strongbow's daughter and inherited Leinster, built the stone castle that still half-stands at the top of the village. Square plan, four round corner towers, one tower with a circular chapel cut into it that survives in nearly perfect condition. The Marshalls held it until the Irish Kavanaghs burned it in 1346, took it back, and ran the town until the Tudor crown reasserted itself in 1540. Most villages have a story. Ferns has a hinge - the place where Gaelic Ireland and Norman Europe collided and the rest of Irish history fell out the other side. Come for the stones; stay because of what they mean.