The Town
Youghal's most famous landmark is the clock tower , which bridges the long, curvy main street. A superbly proportioned Georgian structure of warm, plum-coloured stone, it was used as a prison a century ago; more recently it served as a museum, but it's now closed indefinitely. Steps leading off the tower climb the steep hill through little lanes to the top of the town, where the walls and turrets of the old defences still define the shape of the compact harbour. The most charming buildings lie, in the main, on the landward side of North Main Street and in the lanes that run behind it. On North Main Street itself the Red House , built in 1710, is a fine example of domestic architecture, clearly showing the Dutch influence of the original merchant owner. Here, too, are seventeenth-century almshouses, built by Richard Boyle to house Protestant widows. Lanes off to the west of this end of Main Street lead to the Elizabethan Myrtle Grove , known as "Raleigh's House", since it was once part of the extensive estates granted to him by Elizabeth I, one of the oldest unfortified houses in Ireland but, sadly, no longer open to the public. Nearby, you'll find the Collegiate Church of St Mary's , a large, simple, thirteenth-century building, one of the few of such age still in use in Ireland. The building has been greatly altered over the centuries, but still has interesting medieval tombs and effigies. Particularly notable are the thirteenth-century monuments in the south transept (entrance is by a little door to the left as you walk up towards the church, or by the main door when open). Wrecked when the town was sacked by Desmond's men in 1579, they were later restored by Boyle, with the addition of effigies in seventeenth-century costume. Heading out of town towards Waterford, you pass the ruins of North Abbey, a thirteenth-century Dominican priory of which little remains. On the east side of North Main Street is Tyntes Castle , a fifteenth-century tower house that is now sadly dilapidated (and, by the look of it, rapidly deteriorating). Edmund Spenser's widow married a former resident of the house, Robert Tynte. Lanes off this side of the street lead to the quayside . Here it's all very quaint: warehouse buildings warm with the patina of age surround the harbour; yucca palms decorate the walkways, and the cultivated fields of Waterford across the water look very near. There is an interesting walking tour of the town, which sets off from the tourist office (1hr 30min; June-Aug Mon-Sat at 11am; at other times, tours for groups of four or more can be arranged; GBP3/?3.81). Signposted from here too is Fox's Lane Museum (July & Aug Tues-Sat 10am-1pm & 2-6pm, Sun 2-6pm; rest of year open by prior appointment, call 024/91145; GBP2/?2.54), which displays with illuminating clarity and imagination a collection of domestic gadgetry - everything from sausage makers to petrol-fuelled irons and cucumber straighteners - all mapping the dogged march of progress from the nineteenth century.
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