Heritage Sites in Woodstown

Viking Settlement

The Viking settlement in Woodstown is a relatively small area, over 600 features such as house-gullies, pits and fireplaces have been found and over 5000 objects, including silver ingots, ships nails, coins from Byzantium and Viking weaponry. This enormous wealth of material shows the site was densely settled and extremely rich. Much of the metal-work seems to belong to the period, 840s to 880s.

Radiocarbon dates from the ditch surrounding Woodstown may imply that the site was originally founded by the local Déise at the time of St Patrick, long before the Vikings appeared in Ireland. Already by that stage, the Déise were established as an outward-looking people, with a strong maritime tradition who had set up colonies for themselves in south-west Wales.

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