Medievalist Daryl Hendley Rooney from Trinity College Dublin talks about the famous churchman, scholar and historian Gerald of Wales (c.1146–1223) and his upbringing at Manorbier Castle in Pembrokeshire. He discusses Gerald's mixed Norman and Welsh…

This is a subject about which little is known, and only a retired academic would be rash enough to take it on. But there are interesting possibilities to consider. That is why I recently wrote a book called Maritime Archaeology on Dry Land. It was…

Looking across the Irish Sea to Snowdonia in Wales on a bright snowclad morning is a disconcerting experience. From Wicklow, Wexford and even parts of Dublin it seems as though you could walk across to the Welsh coastline, and there are some…

Chill Mhantáin, County Wicklow, is located on the east coast of Ireland. In 1897 an article released in the Irish Times referred to the active port as the ‘Lake of Ships’. However, in the late 1800s the port came into disrepair. Parliamentary papers…

We may associate seabirds with islands – puffins standing sentinel on ledges, guillemots in serried ranks on slim ledges – but this is only a temporary habitat. On land they are edgy, vulnerable to predation. These are, after all, sea birds and the…

The race to be the first to cross the Irish Sea by hot air balloon would turn out to be a family affair. After James Sadler’s high-profile attempt failed in October 1812, the baton was taken up by his 20-year-old aeronaut son, Windham Sadler, in…

The invention of hot air balloon travel in the 1780s was an international sensation, and intrepid individual aeronauts quickly took on the challenge of trying to complete increasingly daring journeys. However, efforts to cross the Irish Sea for the…