09/06/2026
🏰Duncannon Fort Under Siege: The History of Duncannon Fort with Derek Handley
Join New Ross Library and Derek Handley for Duncannon Fort Under Siege
🗓Date: Tuesday, June 23, 2026
🕖Time: 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Booking essential. Please Register @ https://wexfordcoco.libcal.com/event/4537439
The promontory of Duncannon is the perfect location for a fort whose job is to protect Waterford, New Ross and the whole south east of Ireland from seaborne attack and invasion. The irony of the fort is that ships never came, and that the major military actions it saw were sieges from the land instead.
In this talk Derek Handley, tour guide in Duncannon Fort and Dunbrody Abbey, will give a brief overview of the fort’s history and design. Originally built in the late sixteenth century in anticipation of the Spanish Armada, its ‘bastion design’ made it one of the most modern in Ireland and extremely difficult to take by force without specific knowledge of how to crack the nut that was a bastion fort.
The talk will then focus on the story of the fort during the chaotic 1640s when Ireland was in rebellion and England was engulfed in civil war. The fort changed hands multiple times - from King to Parliament to Confederate Irish rebels and finally back to Parliament in the guise of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army.
