XPW043535 IRELAND (1933). General View, Wexford, Wexford, Ireland, 1933. Oblique aerial photograph taken facing South/West.

RPSI No4 "Sea Breeze" makes slow progress along North Quay, Wexford, on Sunday, July 29th, 2007, at 2.15 pm. The pedestrians are walking on a paved area reclaimed from the waterfront.

In 1936, Wexford Town was described (Bartholomew's Gazetteer of the British Isles, Ninth Edition, 1943)as a seaport, municipal borough and capital of the county, with a population of 12,206. There were two railway stations, North and South, with an extension of the Great Southern Railway along the quayside to Rosslare. The harbour is very capacious, but its entrance is impeded by sand bars and so larger vessels dock at nearby Rosslare.



By the end of the 19th century, Wexford's industrial and shipping boom was in decline, as traffic was transferred to the more modern port facilities at Rosslare. However, the 1930s witnessed the provision of council housing away from the urban core and the old walled town, to the south and west, a process which continued during the decades after the Second World War. Following closure of the port in the 1970s, a successful mussel industry was established in Wexford Harbour. Mussels are sown and harvested by a fleet of purpose-built mussel dredgers, which add colour and vibrancy to the waterfront.



Ref: Wexford: A Town & Its Landscape, Billy Colfer, Cork University Press, 2008.