Two weeks in June
1798
Gorey was held by the United Irishmen for roughly a fortnight in June 1798. The Battle of Tubberneering on 4 June was an ambush in a narrow defile south of town: Lieutenant-Colonel Walpole's column of around 400 men was routed, Walpole himself killed, and three cannon captured. Crown forces abandoned Gorey. Within a week the rebels marched on Arklow, where the line held against them. The road to Dublin closed there. The cannon are still in the story, two hundred and twenty-eight years later.
How a town doubles in a generation
The trebling
In 1996 the population of Gorey was 3,939. In 2022 it was 11,517. The single biggest cause is the road: the N11 became the M11, the bypass opened in 2007, the motorway upgrade followed in 2009, and Dublin commuting times collapsed. Wexford county was already growing faster than the national average; more than half the increase happened in the Gorey municipal district. The Main Street kept its bones. The estates fanned out behind it.
The Bowe family country house
Marlfield House
Mary and Ray Bowe bought Marlfield - a Regency house on thirty-six acres on the Courtown Road - and opened it as a hotel in 1978. They were members of Relais & Châteaux by 1983, an early Irish entry into that club. Their daughters Margaret and Laura now run it; the kitchen garden still feeds the dining room; the Conservatory still ends most weekends booked out. It is the south-east's quiet flagship country house.
The Gothic Revival twins
Pugin in Gorey
Augustus Pugin - the man who designed the interior of the Houses of Parliament at Westminster - also did two buildings in Gorey: St Michael's Church and what became the Loreto Convent. They are paired Gothic Revival exercises, sober and sharp, drawing on Dunbrody Abbey down the county. Both still serve their original functions. You can walk from one to the other in five minutes.