Most Welsh place-names that incorporate the names of saints occur in the form of llan with the name of the saint, and places named Llangybi (the enclosure, church or parish of Cybi) can be found elsewhere in Wales on the Llŷn Peninsula, in…

When exploring the shared cultural history of Irish Sea Port towns, it is expected that there will be movement of people in both directions. However less expected is emigrants leaving from both Ireland and Wales, to head to the same Liverpool port…

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…

Dr Cordula Scherer leads the Irish Research Council-funded project, Food Smart Dublin. The project investigates how the seafood consumption of Dublin people can be encouraged by reconnecting with our coastal cultural heritage through the discovery…

Folk music in this part of Pembrokeshire has a distincly Irish sound and local phone registers contain many Irish family names. Gary Jones sat down with Ports, Past and Present to explain how the advantagous geography of Fishguard harbour had an…

In the 1950s, Rosslare Harbour was a quiet village with the ferry port, the railways, farming and fishing being the main areas of employment. Following the great loss of Rosslare Fort in 1924/25, a lifeboat station was permanently transferred to…

Legend goes that St Patrick, a Christian missionary to Ireland in the fifth century, used the leaves of the shamrock to explain the concept of the holy trinity: the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Ireland's tourism identity has long used the symbol of…

Virginia Woolf travelled widely in Britain and Europe throughout her life, but visited Ireland only once. On 27 April 1934, she sailed out from Fishguard to Cork for a motoring tour with her husband Leonard, visiting the novelist Elizabeth Bowen at…

Dublin port during the early twentieth century was a place of great business trade and work. Having been refurbished in the 1800s to give way for more shipping of trades and goods, the port had become a huge employment area for most of Dublin.…

Peerless Jim Driscoll (1880-1925) was an outstanding boxer of Irish heritage. Driscoll is described as ‘a fighter who is always mentioned in lists of the greatest pugilists never to have won a world title’. Driscoll grew up in an extremely poor…