Enniscorthy is a detached three-bay two-storey courthouse, built 1820, on a T-shaped plan centred on single-bay (three-bay deep) double-height projecting breakfront with single-bay single-storey flat-roofed projecting porch; five-bay two-storey rear (east) elevation.

Refenestrated in 1998, and closed in 2004, it reopens this week after Wexford County Council has confirmed that the long-awaited modernisation of Enniscorthy Municipal District Offices in Market Square Enniscorthy is finally to get under way, with staff vacating the Market Square offices later this week and moving to the recently renovated Enniscorthy Courthouse just up the street, for the duration for the contract works. It will be ‘business as usual’ at the Courthouse from 9 am next Tuesday; the Market Square offices closed at 4 pm on Friday.

The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage has the following information; “A courthouse ‘erected at the expense of the county’ (Lewis 1837) representing an important component of the early 19th century built heritage of County Wexford with the architectural value of the composition, one recalling contemporary courthouses in Gorey (1819) and New Ross (1832) and thereby suggesting a shared architect acting on behalf of the Grand Jury, suggested by such attributes as the compact plan form centred on a projecting courtroom.

Having been well maintained, the elementary form and massing survive intact together with substantial quantities of the original or replicated fabric, both to the exterior and to the interior where contemporary joinery; restrained chimneypieces; and decorative plasterwork enrichments, all highlight the artistic potential of a courthouse making a pleasing visual statement in Court Street.

NOTE: A recent monument (2002) describes the history of an earlier building on the site which ‘was used as a temporary hospital for wounded United Irish Insurgents… Crown Forces under the command of [General Gerard Lake (1744-1808)] set it on fire and seventy-six wounded Insurgents lost their lives’.