'What round tower?': the 2014 Ferrycarrig restoration project

‘What round tower?’, was the response that the Wexford native and professional stonemason and conservation expert Pat Hickey received from his neighbours in 2014, when he told them that he was restoring the round tower located within the grounds of the Irish National Heritage Park, Ferrycarrig (hereafter the Park). Pat lives only twenty-five minutes’ drive from the tower, but even his neighbours, who live within the hinterland of Wexford town (and thus the Park), know practically nothing, if anything, about that monument. And they should. Not only because it is a replica round tower – 24.5m high and 3.5m diameter – that was constructed between 1857 and 1858 by local tradesmen, but because it was erected by the people of Wexford as a distinctly Irish, enduring and non-sectarian memorial to the hundred-odd men of that county who lost their lives during the Crimean War.