POSTED FROM

KILMORE QUAY

CO. WEXFORD · IE

Kilmore Quay
Cé na Cille Móire, Co. Wexford

The Ireland's Ancient East
STOP 06 / 08

Cé na Cille Móire · Co. Wexford

Working boats, white walls, and the Saltees a half-hour out.

Kilmore Quay is a fishing village on the south Wexford coast that has somehow held its shape. The harbour is a working harbour - trawlers, lobster boats, the ferry to the Saltees - and the front street is a row of low, white, thatched cottages that look like an old picture-postcard because they are an old picture-postcard. About four hundred people live here. In July the population multiplies and then in October it goes back to itself.

The Saltee Islands sit five kilometres offshore. Great Saltee is the bigger one, privately owned by the Neale family since the 1940s, open to day visitors who come for the seabirds - puffins on the cliffs, gannets in the air, razorbills wedged into every ledge. The ferry runs April to September from the marina, weather permitting, which it often isn't. Build a flexible day.

What makes the village more than a postcard is the fishing. The boats unload at the pier and the seafood ends up in three or four kitchens within walking distance. The Seafood Festival in early July has been running for decades. The chowder in Mary Barry's tastes the way it tastes because the langoustines were alive that morning. Stay a night, walk the front, eat fish, look at the sea.

Don't come for two hours on the way to Rosslare. Come for a day. Better, two. The Burrow at Ballyteige is a four-kilometre stretch of dunes and beach behind the village, with wild orchids in May and a memorial garden at Forlorn Point that is one of the more affecting small spaces on this coast.

Population

~400

Walk score

Front street to harbour in five minutes

Founded

RNLI lifeboat first stationed 1847

Coords

52.1731° N, 6.5847° W

01 / 09

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The thatched front

Whitewashed walls, reed roofs, still standing.

A run of 19th-century mud-walled cottages along the road into the harbour. Originally wheaten straw, mostly thatched in reed now. The local conservation group fights for every roof. It shows.

Stories & lore → 02 The Saltees

Twenty minutes out to a private bird island.

Great Saltee is privately owned, accessible by day, full of puffins, gannets, razorbills and gulls April to August. The ferry runs from the marina between April and September. Weather decides.

Stories & lore → 03 The harbour

Real fishing fleet, real seafood plates.

The boats still land in the morning. The kitchens - Mary Barry's, the Silver Fox, Kehoe's - buy what comes off them. The Seafood Festival the first weekend in July is the year's loudest day.

Where to eat →

02 / 09

The pubs.

None of these are themed Irish pubs, because they don't need to be. A few that earn the trip:

Kehoe's Pub & Parlour

Maritime, well-loved

Pub & food, family-run

Top of the hill opposite the church. The walls are full of bits salvaged from local wrecks - pieces of the SS Idaho among them. Fresh seafood on the menu, Irish steak too, and the pints are pulled properly.

The Wooden House

The famous one

Pub-restaurant in the centre

The thatched yellow building you've seen on every Wexford postcard. Refurbished, still pouring. The thatch and the whitewash are not a costume - the building is what it looks like.

Stella Maris Centre Café

Daytime, no fuss

Community café

Not a pub. Lunches in the village hall - fresh haddock, plaice, an open crab sandwich, all reasonably priced. Tuesday to Sunday. Run as a community employment scheme. Worth your money.

03 / 09

Where to eat.

Place	Type	€	Local note
Mary Barry's Seafood Bar & Restaurant	Seafood restaurant	€€	On the road into the village. Head chef Nicky Cullen, scallops landed five hundred metres away, an in-house sea tank in summer where you can pick your own lobster. The chowder is the chowder you came for.
The Silver Fox	Seafood restaurant	€€€	Long-running fish house on the front. Award-listed for years. Book ahead in summer or eat at four.
The Wooden House (kitchen)	Pub food	€€	The pub does fish and chips, seafood platters, the usual. Sit outside if the wind is down and watch the boats come in.
Kehoe's Pub & Parlour (kitchen)	Pub food	€€	Same kitchen as the pub. The seafood chowder is properly made. Steaks are good if you've eaten enough fish.
The Centre Café (Stella Maris)	Café & lunch	€	Breakfasts and a lunch menu of locally landed fish at very fair prices. Daytime only. The fried plaice is what it should be.

04 / 09

Where to sleep.

Place	Type	Local note
Saltees Coast Hotel	Small hotel	Ten rooms, ten minutes' walk into the village. Restaurant, bar, breakfast, the lot. The de facto hotel of Kilmore Quay.
The Wooden House Apartments	Self-catering apartments	Self-catering units attached to the famous thatched pub-restaurant. Walking distance to a pint, the harbour, the chipper. Book months ahead in summer.
Quay House	Family-run guesthouse	Family-run B&B in the heart of the village. The host knows the boat schedule, the tide, and which restaurant is doing the best fish that night.
A thatched cottage on the front	Self-catering	A few of the protected thatched cottages along the road into the harbour are let by the week. Trident and a handful of agencies handle them. Stay if you can - sleeping under reed is not the same as sleeping under slate.

05 / 09

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

Reed, mud-walls, fought for

The thatched front

The cottages along the road into the harbour date from the early 19th century. Mud-wall construction, lime-washed, originally roofed in wheaten or oaten straw and now mostly in reed. They are of national architectural importance and they would not still be standing without the Kilmore Quay Conservation Group, who chase grants, push back on bad renovations, and explain to outsiders why a cement render kills a mud wall. A handful are now holiday lets. The rest are still lived in.

Ireland's bird island

The Saltees

Great Saltee and Little Saltee sit about five kilometres offshore. Privately owned since 1943, when Michael Neale bought them and crowned himself Prince Michael the First - the throne is still there on the island, and you can sit in it. The cliffs hold one of the largest gannet colonies in Ireland, plus puffins, razorbills, guillemots and Manx shearwaters. The ferry runs from the marina April to September, weather permitting. You get about three and a half hours on the island. Bring water, bring sandwiches, watch where you put your feet near the cliff edge.

Why the lighthouses got built

The graveyard of a thousand ships

The waters off this coast - the Saltees, the Coningbeg rock, the Tuskar - wrecked enough ships over the centuries to earn a nickname. The lifeboat station went in here in 1847, fell out of use by 1857, came back permanently in 1884 and is still here. The memorial garden at Forlorn Point - opened in 2001, designed in the shape of a mooring bollard, with a propeller from the SS Lennox lost off the Saltees in 1916 - is the village's collective remembering of what the sea took.

A lightship in the car park

The Guillemot

Down at the harbour sits the Guillemot, an Irish Lights vessel built in 1923 and decommissioned in 1968. It was bought by a local maritime committee, towed in, and made into a small museum - model ships below deck, an RNLI exhibit, photographs. The fittings are original. The museum has been on and off life support for years; check ahead before going. When it's open, it's the best fifteen euros in the village.

06 / 09

Things to do outside.

Wear waterproofs. Bring a sandwich. Tell someone where you're going if it's the mountain.

The harbour & front Out the front street past the thatched cottages, around the marina, down to the pier and the lightship Guillemot, back along the seafront. Do it before breakfast and watch the boats unload.

1.5 kmdistance

20 mintime

Forlorn Point & the memorial garden From the harbour car park west along a paved promenade to the memorial garden at Forlorn Point. Bollard-shaped, ship-of-stone, names of the lost. The Saltees sit dead ahead. It is not a postcard walk; it is a quiet one.

2 km returndistance

30-40 mintime

Kilmore Quay-Ballyteige Burrow Trail A waymarked loop from the harbour out along the dunes of Ballyteige Burrow, a Special Area of Conservation. Wild orchids in May, sea-thyme in summer, wading birds year-round. Check the tide before you go - the beach disappears at high water.

4.2 km loopdistance

1h 15mintime

Ballyteige Burrow long beach walk If you keep walking northwest from the loop you've got the better part of nine kilometres of sand and dune system to play with. Empty most days outside July. Turn back when you've had enough.

Up to 9 km one waydistance

However long you havetime

07 / 09

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

Quiet, the wild orchids come up on the Burrow in May, and the Saltees ferry starts up on April 1st. The light off the dunes is the best you'll get all year.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Busy. The Seafood Festival kicks off the first weekend in July and the village fills. Book accommodation and the better restaurants weeks out. Saltees ferry running daily, weather permitting.

◐ Mind yourself

Autumn

Sep-Oct

The locals' season. The ferry stops on September 30th, the Burrow goes back to itself, and the village exhales. Storms get spectacular. The Write by the Sea literary festival lands in late September.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Half the kitchens close or run shorter hours. No Saltees boats. If you want a working fishing village in its own clothes - windy, wet, a fire in Kehoe's - this is it.

◐ Mind yourself

08 / 09

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

Showing up at the marina expecting to walk onto the Saltees ferry

The boat goes weather-permitting and books up. Phone Three Sisters Cruise Company or Nick Furlong Angling Trips ahead. A flat blue forecast in May still cancels in a swell.

Kilmore Quay as a two-hour stop on the way to Rosslare

You'll see the thatch, eat a sandwich, miss the Burrow, miss the boats, miss the point. Stay a night. The village is the slow version of itself.

Driving the front street in summer at lunchtime

The road is narrow, the parking is at the harbour, and pedestrians have right of way. Park at the marina car park and walk in. The whole village is five minutes end to end.

Treating the thatched cottages as a photo backdrop

People live in them. Most of the cottages on the front are private homes, not film sets. Photograph the row, not the front door someone is trying to open.

Getting there.

By car

Wexford town to Kilmore Quay is 25 minutes on the R739. From Rosslare Harbour it's 30 minutes by the coast. New Ross is an hour. Park at the marina - the front street wasn't built for cars.

By bus

Wexford Bus / Local Link runs a service from Wexford town to Kilmore Quay several times a day. Slow but it works. No direct national-network service.

By train

Nearest station is Wexford (Rosslare line, Dublin Connolly to Rosslare Europort). Then a bus or taxi for the last 25 minutes.

By air

Dublin Airport is 2h 15m by car. Waterford Airport (limited service) is closer at about 1h 10m. Most visitors come via Rosslare Europort, 30 minutes east.