The beach
Ardamine Beach lies south of Courtown in County Wexford, where the strand curves off Courtown’s South Beach. The sand runs long and flat and makes a good shore walk. Follow signed public access and stay back from the water as the tide rises.
Keep children away from tidal pools and channels, including any shallow pool that looks sheltered. For swimming, choose a beach with lifeguards on duty and follow the flags and local notices.
There is no proper car park at the sand, and the beach is boxed in by holiday homes and private ground, so do not block entrances. Come before midday on a summer weekend to avoid a slow crawl for a space.
The mound and the graveyard
Just outside the village stands Árd Ladhran, a perfectly round mound that older maps mark as the Moat of Ardamine. Folklore hands it a remarkable tenant: the medieval Lebor Gabála, the Book of Invasions, names it as the grave of Ladhra, reckoned the first man to die in Ireland, forty days before Noah’s Ark set sail. It has never been excavated, and some think it may cover a passage tomb. Public access to the mound is not confirmed, so view it only from public ground and stay out of the graveyard and neighbouring fields.
The nearby graveyard holds a rough, plain Latin cross, under a metre high and possibly twelfth-century, marking the parish’s old southern boundary and the site of an early church. St Aidan, first bishop of Ferns, is said to have come ashore near here around 600 AD on his way back from St David’s in Wales, though he built his first church a little inland at Kiltennel rather than at Ardamine itself. Seán Etchingham, a figure in the 1916 Rising and a member of the First Dáil, who died at Courtown Harbour in 1923, is buried here.
St John’s church
St John the Evangelist, consecrated in 1862, is the work of George Edmund Street, the Gothic Revival architect better known for Dublin’s Christ Church Cathedral. He built it as a memorial to the Richards family, in rock-faced ‘Opus Incertum’ stone dressed with pale green Knockavocka stone. The Richards had taken the estate in 1818. Their demesne house is gone: the IRA burned it in July 1921, during the War of Independence, and it was never rebuilt. The church and its graveyard are what the estate left behind.
Nearby
Courtown, a few minutes north, has the harbour and the Courtown Lifeboat Station, and Pirates Cove runs adventure golf, bumper boats and arcade games in the summer (check piratescove.ie for hours). The shoreline links into Courtown Woods for an easy coastal walk, with sea thrift and gorse on the banks and waders working the sandbanks in spring and autumn.
Getting there
Ardamine is an easy drive off the N11; the nearest railway station is Gorey, about 10 km north, with trains toward Dublin and Rosslare. Check current bus timetables for services to Wexford town and Courtown. The coast is open to the wind, so bring a layer whatever the month. Time it for a weekday and you can have the beach and Ladhra’s mound more or less to yourself.