Waterford (town)

Waterford town (1991 pop. 41,853), seat of Co. Waterford, S Republic of Ireland, on the Suir River near the head of Waterford Harbour. The port town is a center for the export of fruit, meat, and the famous Waterford crystal. Other industries are fishing, food processing, and the manufacture of footwear and fertilizers. The making of crystal and glass, predominant in the 18th cent., died out in the mid-19th cent. but has since been revived. Established very early as a walled Danish settlement, Waterford was taken in 1170 by Richard, earl of Pembroke, who used Reginald's Tower (built 1003; still standing) as a fort. King John granted the first charter in the 13th cent. In 1618 the charter was withdrawn because the people refused to accept the religious supremacy of the king of England. Waterford was besieged by Oliver Cromwell in 1649 and taken by Henry Ireton in 1650. The area contains remains of 13th-century Franciscan and Dominican foundations that were suppressed in the 16th cent.; there are also Protestant and Roman Catholic cathedrals. Waterford is the seat of the united Protestant dioceses of Cashel, Emly, Waterford, and Lismore and of the Roman Catholic dioceses of Waterford and Lismore. St. John's College is a Protestant theological seminary.

Waterford town (1990 pop. 17,930), New London co., SE Conn., on Long Island Sound; settled c.1653, inc. as a separate town from New London , 1801. Mainly residential, it has a recording and film studio, a major retail center, and light industry; commercial and sport fishing are also of economic importance. The Millstone Point Nuclear Power Station, completed in 1969, serves Waterford's electric needs as well as a larger New England area. An annual conference for playwrights and a summer music festival are held in the town.

Waterford, the commercial centre of the south‐east since the 12th century. Excellent deep berthage and relatively sheltered access encouraged permanent Viking settlement on a promontory site around Reginald's tower in the early 10th century; the present structure, however, is probably of 13th‐century date. Captured by Strongbow in 1170, Waterford flourished for over a century as chief outport for the zones most intensively colonized by the Anglo‐Normans in north‐east Munster and south Leinster. Excellent navigation upstream along the rivers Suir, Nore, and Barrow led to a long history of commercial rivalry with Clonmel, Kilkenny, and especially New Ross. But as a royal borough Waterford nearly always had the upper hand, and its resolute loyalty to the English crown, particularly in the 15th and 16th centuries, earned it valuable privileges.

The rigidy Catholic deportment of Waterford's merchants, nourished by close trading and educational links with France and the Low Countries, destroyed that relationship in the early 17th century. The city became a centre of Confederate Catholic activity throughout the 1640s. After a long siege, however, what a contemporary had described as Roma parva fell to Cromwell's forces in 1650 and its burgher elite were expelled.

Waterford's hinterland remained overwhelmingly Catholic in the following century; thus Protestantization of the city was incomplete. In the great cycle of commercial growth from the mid‐18th to the mid‐19th centuries Catholic and Quaker (see Society of Friends) merchants played the leading part in the key sectors—the New‐foundland provisions trade and fresh food exports to Britain. One such merchant, Edmund Rice, founded the Christian Brothers and opened what became the order's first school in 1802.

Bacon and flour were the foundations of Waterford's prosperity until the end of the 19th century, but collateral industrialization was limited; population did not exceed 25,000 until 1901. Politically Waterford was less polarized than most Irish cities, and was remarkable for resisting the Sinn Féin tidal wave in 1918.

The city's modern growth commenced only after 1945, when old industrial traditions in iron‐founding, meat processing, and glass making were reinvigorated. Of these, crystal glass manufacture has made Waterford a brand name and the centre of a multinational ‘giftsware’ conglomerate. Meanwhile the surge in Irish/continental trade restored the port to its medieval significance.

Bibliography

Clarke, Clark (ed.), Irish Cities (1995)
Nolan, William, and Power, T. P. (eds.), Waterford: History and Society (1992)

David Dickson