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The project to discover more about medieval Ferns was set up by the Irish Archaeology Field School (IAFS), which provides opportunities for students and volunteers to take part in all aspects of archaeological survey, excavation, and research, with a strong teaching element. The excavations are largely funded by those who take part, typically paying £5,000 (which includes meals, tuition, and field trips) for a four-week programme. Participants also earn credits towards their degree studies in archaeology and anthropology.
Partnership with the local community is an important component of any IAFS programme. Students stay with local families, and the host community takes part in the fieldwork and the interpretation of the results based on their local knowledge. The results are intended to enable the community to tell a compelling story about their town, too, and to reinforce its importance as a key heritage attraction in the region.
Further funding and active support for the Ferns project came from the Ancient Connections partnership, which ran from 2019 to 2023 and brought together Pembrokeshire County Council, the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority, Wexford County Council, and Visit Wexford in an initiative to encourage heritage-based tourism on both sides of the Irish Sea.
Having secured a major grant from the European Regional Development Fund, Ancient Connections helped to pay for the excavations, the community outreach work, and the project publications. Ancient Connections has also established the 100-mile Wexford–Pembrokeshire Pilgrim Way, linking St Davids and Ferns, designed to encourage travellers to visit both sites (see CA 399).
When St Aidan left Pembrokeshire, St David gave him a parting gift of a hive of bees (one assumes they were hibernating at the time), and the honey bee has been adopted as the symbol of the new pilgrimage route, carved on waymarks and used as a logo by pilgrim-friendly businesses, such as cafes and guest houses along its path. Unlike St Aidan, though, today’s pilgrims no longer have to entrust themselves to a fragile coracle to cross the Irish Sea – they can use the Fishguard to Rosslare ferry.
Earlier activity
Another legacy of the project is the newly published volume of essays entitled Discovering Medieval Ferns (see ‘Further reading’ below and CA 407), which begins by asking what attracted St Aidan to Ferns at the end of the 6th century. Previous excavations and chance finds tell us that this was already the site of prehistoric activity. Four polished axe heads made of green tuff from the Great Langdale region of Cumbria have been found locally as evidence of Neolithic trade.
Earlier excavations at Ferns Lower (the neighbouring townland) have uncovered a Bronze Age pit and an Iron Age ring-ditch with the skeletal remains of a minimum of seven individuals, as well as glass beads, with radiocarbon dates indicating a site lifespan from the 4th century BC to the 1st century AD. A further Bronze Age burial site, consisting of six cremation pits, has been identified directly north of today’s cathedral church in the centre of Ferns, as well as two parallel ditches in the field directly north of these burials, originally interpreted as part of an early medieval ringfort but now regarded as part of the early medieval monastic enclosure.
The density of prehistoric archaeology in the vicinity of Ferns suggests that the early monastery may have been deliberately placed at this location because of its earlier significance, as seems to have been the case at several other monastic sites in Co. Wexford. On the other hand, this continuity might simply reflect the inherent attractions of Ferns as a settlement site, occupying a sheltered location at the meeting point of two fertile river valleys – those of the River Bann and the River Slaney – both providing navigable access to the Irish Sea.
According to later annals and hagiographies, it appears that St Aidan was granted land there for his monastery by a person named Beacc, a cousin of the local ruler, the ‘king’ of Leinster, Brandub mac Echach (d. AD 605). Many such foundations were being established in Ireland at this period – as many as 5,000, according to one estimate, and 32 in Co. Wexford alone – but few have been surveyed or excavated. They leave very little mark on the landscape, being largely constructed from organic materials, such as timber and thatch.
Excavated evidence
A chapter in the book is devoted to analysing the 44 excavations that have taken place in and around Ferns in recent decades to see whether any of them have yielded evidence for the early monastery. The features that are most likely to have survived below ground are the boundary ditches enclosing the settlement, and one possible section of monastic enclosure was found on Station Road, where a ditch containing iron-working debris and charcoal has been dated to cal AD c.331-557. A geophysical survey undertaken by Ger Dowling in 2015, as part of a Discovery Programme research project, revealed further evidence of two concentric ditches that were interpreted as marking the eastern limits of the monastic enclosure, within which was a possible field system and track.
Based on these and other results, Ian Doyle (in Medieval Wexford, 2016) argued for a circular inner enclosure, c.200m in diameter, and an outer enclosure, c.350m in diameter. A more recent excavation carried out by Catherine McLoughlin (of Stafford and McLoughlin Archaeology) suggests that the outer enclosure was even larger. This revealed a 115m stretch of early medieval ditch, averaging 3m in width and 1.5m in depth. Samples from the basal fills were dated to cal AD 659-851 and 727-940. Catherine interprets this as the western limit of the outer enclosure, with a diameter of at least 500m.
Catherine’s excavation also found a sub-rectangular enclosure, measuring some 50m by 40m, joined to the internal side of the monastic enclosure. This was dated to AD 685-873, making it broadly contemporary with the enclosure ditch to which it was attached. The remains of a rectangular timber building, defined by post-holes and pits, was located within the enclosure. There were no finds from this early phase, but later medieval activity within the enclosure was reflected in the remains of a smithy, with an extensive area of hearths, pits, furnaces, and waste, as well as pottery, pins, nails, glass, and a plough coulter.
During excavations close to St Mary’s Abbey, the IAFS project discovered further sections of the early ditch and new data was added to the steadily accumulating body of evidence when Ger Dowling undertook a more extensive geophysical survey, in collaboration with the project, in 2021. Drawing the different strands of evidence together has enabled fresh conclusions to be drawn about the monastic boundary. The authors propose that this was defined by two roughly concentric ditches, with diameters of 175-220m and 315m. Remarkably, the curving line of the modern Station Road preserves the line of the outer boundary, in keeping with the evidence from other towns, such as Armagh, Duleek, Kells, Kildare, Kilkenny, and Lusk, where the modern street pattern reflects the layout of the early monastic settlements that once dominated those places.
The 115m stretch of ditch and the rectilinear enclosure associated with it – found during Catherine McLoughlin’s excavation – is now interpreted as part of a third and larger area enclosed to the west of the two concentric ditches. Geophysical survey was unable to provide adequate data to follow the entire course of this outermost circuit, but a cropmark visible on Google Earth indicates a possible relationship with the first two enclosures, or it could point to the existence of further annexes or enclosures.
The third enclosure is probably a slightly later addition to the bivallate enclosure, representing a major extension of St Aidan’s foundation and making Ferns one of the largest such sites in Ireland. Of the other early ecclesiastical enclosures identified in Co. Wexford, four have diameters under 50m, ten are between 50m and 100m, ten are between 100m and 200m, two have a maximum diameter of 250m, and two are over 300m. Even without the extension, Ferns would therefore fit into the larger end of the scale, but with the additional third enclosure it is on a par with the important sites at Armagh, Clonmacnoise, and Glendalough.
By analogy with other early ecclesiastical sites in Ireland with three or more enclosures, it is likely that the settlement was divided into separate sections with specific functions and inhabited by groups of people with different roles. The innermost circuit probably surrounded a church and accommodation for clerics and students, while craft workers and industrial activity occupied the outermost areas.
Power struggles, peace, and prosperity
Ferns subsequently emerged as the chief centre of the most powerful and influential family in the south Leinster region, the Uí Cheannsalaigh (‘grandsons of Cennsalach’) dynasty. Members of the family successively served as heads of the religious community – often passing the role from father to son or brother to brother. The annals report that this was not always a peaceful succession: in the 8th century, different branches of the family fought each other for control, with ferocious battles taking place in Ferns in AD 769, 783, and 817. In the last battle, 400 people are said to have been slain. Ferns was not unique in this respect: the annals are full of references to inter-monastic warfare and internecine rivalry, which gives us some insight into the wealth and status of these settlements. Ferns attracted Viking raids in AD 835 and AD 839 – a further indication that it was a settlement of some importance, with riches to plunder.
Order must have been regained because the annals for AD 906 refer to ‘the land of peaceful Fearna… great Fearna of the thousand noble graces’. It is from this period that we have additional evidence for the monastic settlement in the form of several high crosses, cross-slabs, cross fragments, and bases, all dating from the 9th century or later. None of these are in their original locations: most are now to be seen in the grounds of the St Mary’s Abbey or the 13th-century cathedral church of St Edan.
The foundation of this abbey c.1158, dedicated to ‘St Mary the Queen, the Glorious Lady and Virgin’, confirmed the importance of Ferns as a wealthy and populous focal point for religion, politics, and commerce. The abbey’s patron was Diarmait Mac Murchada (d. 1171), a member of the Uí Cheannsalaigh dynasty, who had emerged as king of Leinster. His story is seen as an important part of the history that is taught in Irish schools because his battles with other Irish kings led to his being deposed; seeking help from Henry II of England, he was responsible for the Anglo-Norman invasion that effectively brought nine centuries of Irish kingship to an end.
Before that, Mac Murchada had made Ferns his primary royal residence, reflecting a pattern replicated elsewhere in Ireland at the time, whereby the royal seat and an abbey were collocated at an important and ancient early church site. He invested heavily in the town and established a mint that, along with Clonmacnoise, was a source of the very rare examples of Gaelic Irish coinage produced in pre-Anglo-Norman Ireland.
He bestowed the income from a variety of properties elsewhere in his kingdom on his new abbey, as well as ‘ale or mead from his town of Ferns’. The canons of St Mary’s set about writing the first of three lives of St Aidan, including the claim that successive generations of Uí Cheannsalaigh kings of Leinster were buried at Ferns. The life also mentions three relics of St Aidan that he is said to have bequeathed to his various foundations: a staff (Ferns), a bell (Drumlane), and a house-shaped reliquary (Rossinver). The staff is missing, but the bell is now in Armagh public library and the reliquary is in the collections of the National Museum of Ireland.
Despite its endowments, the abbey struggled financially, and by the time of its dissolution in 1538 it was clearly a small establishment, described as consisting of a church and belfry, dormitory, chapter house, hall, ten cottages, a watermill, and a list of rents/tithes from lands in Wexford. Much of the surviving stonework was taken away in the 18th century, and what survives today is an isolated ruin, with an eye-catching 17m tall belfry (the upper 4.5m being an embellishment of 1846) and the scant remains of its nave and chancel.
Legacies of the later medieval period
In an attempt to find out what St Mary’s might have looked like in the 12th century, DigVentures was commissioned by Ancient Connections to carry out a ground-penetrating radar survey around the standing remains, and this located anomalies that were excavated by the IAFS project during the summer of 2021 and 2022.
The first excavations uncovered the remains of the walling to the south of the church that was at first thought to be the south-western part of the 12th-century cloister. This had been built over a section of the early monastic enclosure ditch, at a point where a causeway indicated a possible entrance to the early monastery. Pottery and dating evidence from the enclosure ditch suggested that it had remained open until that point, and had been deliberately backfilled when the supposed claustral range was constructed in the mid-12th century. It is possible that the placement of the new abbey at the entrance to St Aidan’s foundation was deliberate and symbolic.
The supposed claustral range was found in the right place and on the right alignment for such a feature, but there was no evidence of an ambulatory or arcade, no finely cut or sculpted stone, and no metalled or cobbled surface. Another trench was opened to look for the eastern side of the cloister and this uncovered a building range defined by parallel walls 1.25m in width and 5m apart. The ‘cloister’ in the first trench was therefore reinterpreted as the corner of another building range of similar dimensions – possibly the refectory – while the eastern range might have served as chapter house and dormitory. Together the two ranges enclosed the southern and eastern side of a square cloister garth around 15m by 15m. No firm claustral remains have yet been found, and it is possible that the intended cloister was never built.
Intriguingly, one of the walls of the eastern range cut through a grave containing the remains of an adult female and an accompanying infant, and two further grave cuts were found nearby, all of which pre-date the building. Radiocarbon dating will reveal whether they relate to the early or later medieval monastery.
Another cutting was opened to investigate a double-aisled feature that has variously been interpreted as a hall, a post-medieval house, and even as the residence of Diarmait Mac Murchada, with a circular feature at the western end that looked like a stair turret. It has since been reinterpreted as a kiln chamber, measuring 1.6m in diameter, bonded into the central spine of the double-aisled structure, and of 12th- to 14th-century date. Pottery wasters from the site suggest that it was used to manufacture pottery and tiles.
Reframing the history of Ferns
Thus far, this review has focused on the evidence for the development of Ferns before the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland, which began in May 1169, when the founder of St Mary’s, Diarmait Mac Murchada, requested the help of Henry II of England to regain his kingship after he had been deposed by the High King of Ireland, Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair (Rory O’Connor). From the later period dates the town’s 13th-century castle and cathedral. The book describes these, as well as the remains of the watermill associated with St Mary’s, and the work by the IAFS and Clone Church Conservation Project to record and excavate the landscape around the Romanesque church and graveyard at Clone, located 2.25km south of Ferns. It is very likely that this church, with its cross-slabs and carved stones, was built on the site of another early Christian monastic settlement, also founded by St Aidan, though considerably smaller than Ferns, with three concentric boundary ditches measuring 45m, 130m, and 200m in diameter. Dates obtained from the excavations suggest a slightly earlier date than Ferns, and by the 12th century it may well have served as a pilgrimage site based on the cult of St Aidan.
Writing in the final chapter, Catherine MacPartlin assesses the community impact of the Medieval Ferns project. Previously the Anglo-Norman castle was seen as the main tourist attraction, and community-led events associated with that included battle re-enactments and a medieval gathering and parade. The castle earned Ferns a place on Wexford’s Anglo-Norman trail. Now an equal emphasis is given to the Gaelic past, and because much of the evidence for this lies hidden below ground, local volunteers have been trained to give one-hour guided tours around the town’s medieval sites: the ‘Medieval Ferns Experience’. On the same theme, there is now a permanent display with artistic reconstructions of key buildings, audiovisual displays, excavation finds, and virtual-reality headsets.
On the other hand, much of the activity is generic: music, craft activity, Halloween events, and medieval jousting are fun events but could (and do) take place elsewhere. The castle that had been a playground for generations of children growing up in Ferns is now managed by Heritage Ireland and is only open from mid-May to mid-September (though the local caretaker is so passionate about Ferns and its history that he has been known to offer guided tours outside the official season).
Local residents have created their own stories about the town’s past, too: how the waters of the town’s spring-fed well, sacred to St Aidan, are a cure for all ills, and how there are numerous secret tunnels under the town (possibly monastic waterworks, though none have ever been found). There is the dent in the nose of a stone effigy in the cathedral, said variously to be an image of St Aidan or of Bishop John of St John, which Cromwell’s soldiers tried to destroy until the stone chip flew off and blinded one of them, so they left it alone; and there is a patch of ground where no grass grows because a young girl who played truant from mass and hid in St Mary’s fell from the tower and died on that spot (needless to say the tower is no longer accessible, ‘for health and safety reasons’). On balance, though, the Medieval Ferns project has created new knowledge and given the people of Ferns good reasons to be proud of their home town.
Further reading
Stephen Mandal, Michael Potterton, and Denis Shine (eds), Discovering Medieval Ferns, Co. Wexford (Four Courts Press, ISBN 978-1801510219, €26.95).
