Why Morriscastle is called that
The Morris castle
Morriscastle Strand is named for a medieval tower house owned by the Morris family - minor Norman-Gaelic gentry on the east Wexford coast. The castle was in ruins long before the nineteenth century. What was left of the structure was demolished in the 1930s; the stump of the ruin still sits in the dunes and is part of the protected Kilmuckridge-Tinnaberna Sandhills heritage area. The family is gone. The name is on every road sign within five miles.
The walk to Oulart Hill
Hatter's Bridge, 1798
On 26 May 1798 Father John Murphy of Boolavogue, six kilometres west of Kilmuckridge, raised the standard of rebellion. The local United Irishmen of Kilmuckridge and the surrounding parishes were among those who answered - they rendezvoused at a local landmark called Hatter's Bridge before walking on to meet the loyalist forces at Oulart Hill the next day. The Battle of Oulart Hill, on 27 May 1798, was the first major rebel victory of the Wexford rising. Most of the men who walked back through Kilmuckridge afterwards were dead inside the month.
5,000 people, a strand, a pub
The summer village
Kilmuckridge had 235 people in the 1996 census and 722 by 2016 - a tripling in twenty years, on a base that had barely shifted in the previous century. Almost all of that growth came from holiday homes, second houses and retirees on the back of the Morriscastle Strand trade. By the second week of July the local population on the dunes runs to over 5,000. By the last week of August it is back to under a thousand. The village is the only constant; everything around it doubles and halves with the school holidays.