Little Island

Little Island in Waterford is a 420-acre islet where the River Suir and Kings Channel meet, not the Cork coast implied by the heading. Vikings called it Dane's Island and built two river forts there before the FitzGeralds took it in 1170 and kept it for nearly eight centuries. A crude sixth-century monk's head and an eighth-century winged angel suggest a monastic settlement long before the Norman keep rose on the same ground. The family feasted in the castle, enlarged it through the nineteenth century, and ran a machine shop, dairy and loose boxes beside the stone walls until they sold it in 1966. Glass houses for flower export replaced the farmyard, but the old tower still stands at the centre, unchanged in shape if not in purpose.