The Fethard-on-Sea Boycott: Ireland 1957 …The Catholic Church … A Small Village … A Mixed Marriage

In 1957, Sheila Cloney, Protestant wife of a Catholic farmer, fled from her home near the Wexford village of Fethard-on-Sea with her young daughters after refusing to bow to the demands of the local Catholic clergy to educate them as Catholics. In response, the priests launched a boycott of Fethard's Protestant shopkeepers and farmers. Tim Fanning tells the story of one of the ugliest sectarian episodes to occur in the Republic and examines how the Catholic Church's Ne Temere decree on mixed marriages resulted in one small rural community tearing itself apart.