Waterford City 

Structure:  Latitude:  52º  16' North, Longitude  7º   7' West

The rocks which form the base of the City all belong to the Palaeozoic Group: principally Ordovician Shales, underlying some Sandstone on the North West, and crossed - East of the centre of the City - by an Alluvial bank running N.E./S.W. At the cliffs on the North and South banks of the River Suir, above Rice Bridge, inter-stratification of sharply-folded Ordovician Slates and Sandstone conglomerates may be clearly observed.

Position: Waterford city is situated on the river Suir [pronounced Shure] about seventeen miles from where the river enters the sea. The only thing that distinguishes this first abatement is the inadequacy of the word 'situated'. In design almost fanlike, practically the entire city is built on the south bank of the river. The "Old town", now the business centre, clusters behind the broad quay-front on a low-lying strip of land left behind by a gentle loop of the river at this point. From this, the land rises sharply to the east and opposite to the west while remaining level in between. The eastern slopes are almost entirely occupied by private residential estates, while the western and southwestern prominences are largely given over to local authority housing development. There are corresponding elevations on the north bank eastwards towards Christendom and westwards towards Mount Misery.

  It is from this latter point—high above the Suir, upstream from the river bridge—that the city and its setting may best be observed. Here, the heights on both sides of the Suir persist to the very banks, with the result that the river courses for a short distance between towering cliffs before emerging to sweep in one majestic reach past the city. Where it goes by Waterford, the Suir is as wide as the Thames at Westminster Bridge, the Vistula at Warsaw or the Neva at St. Petersburg; it is three times the width of the Tiber at Rome, the Seine at Paris or the Mansanares at Madrid: and five times the width of the Liffey at O'Connell Bridge. It is not surprising then that it is from the river that Waterford gets its civic character. From our observation point the spacious mile-long quays extend in an unbroken line eastwards. The broad quays of Waterford have attracted attention since they were opened up to the present length 300 years ago by the Corporation. Behind the tall quayside buildings the city's steeples and towers rise in picturesque irregularity presenting a picture typical of the older towns, in which ground contours dictated the layout of the earlier streets. This gradually gives way to the more regular development of later years fringing the city on all sides. Such are the elements forming a city that the natives are reputed to be slow to leave without a struggle. 

  But history credits Waterford men with more attributes than a reluctance to leave their native city. In the middle of the 15th century the citizens were reported to be 'heedy and wary in public affairs, slow in determining matters of weight, and loving to look ere they leap.' The Irish word 'faid-ceannnac' has been applied to them too. This has been translated ‘long-headed’ with more zeal than accuracy; it really means far-sighted.' Charles I found the people of Waterford “endowed with good learning and generous manners." A present day writer found in Waterford "an air of quiet" and "a sense of proportion" and described the people as being "undemonstrative" He added  "they do not lack intelligence or amiability, they just have them implicit." This traditional reticence and absence of flamboyance in the Waterford character has been responsible for the phenomenon perhaps peculiar to Waterford, of the occasional emergence before the citizenry of vociferous prophets having their origin outside the bounds of the city. Their aim has been to insinuate that their superiority over the natives in all matters is in direct ratio to the relative degree of clamour created by each; the which of course has no basis in fact and is merely an optical—or more correctly—an acoustical illusion.

FOUNDATION: OUTLINE OF DEVELOPMENT.
The foundation of Waterford is claimed in some quarters to have taken place late in prehistoric times. Other writers place the event about the middle of the second century. However, it is difficult to go along any distance with either theory on the strength of the supporting evidence quoted. At any rate the antiquity of the place where Waterford now stands cannot be traced with any satisfactory degree of certainty beyond about 850 A.D. when the site was occupied and fortified by Sitric the Dane. The inhabitants of this part of Ireland in pre-Danish times were a pastoral people moving from place to place with their flocks or else given to hunting. They did not build towns, unless we admit as towns the settlements that sometimes sprang up in the neighbourhood of Monasteries. They certainly did not build sea-ports, and it was as a sea-port that Waterford had its beginning.