The Irish National Heritage Park is another exceptional interactive experience. Located just outside the town of Wexford, it is an open air museum where you can journey back in time and discover how people lived throughout history, from the Stone Age right up until the Medieval period of Ireland.
The park is divided into three sections; Pre-Historic Ireland, Early Christian Ireland and The Age of Invasions. Each section contains reconstructed dwellings that exhibit how people lived during these time periods. Visitors are able to go inside each structure, making it a really immersive learning experience for kids.
We were able to join the guided tours of the Early Christian and the Age of Invasions, but arrived a little to late for the Pre Historic Tour. The tours are included in the admission fee and we’d highly recommend joining the them, the guides were so informative and we find it’s the best way to learn and absorb the information. Braino admitted that he was surprised at how interesting Irish history is, particularly during the Age of Invasion, which covers the Vikings and Anglo - Normans. The girls were also great during the guide tours, even though we were in a rather large group.
There are also many hands on activities for kids to do throughout the park, like pan for gold, learn how to weave the walls of the ancient structures and carve markings into a rock. You can imagine that the Heritage Park is a very popular school excursion destination.
There is an obstacle course style playground at the end of the Age of Invasions section, next to the castle and round tower. In the castle there is a falconry centre where you can learn about and interact with birds of prey. We didn’t partake in this section as it was a rather substantial additional cost and we were planning to head to the Wexford Races afterwards to check out the last race of the day. We did make it in time to see that last race, Braino even collected a small win. Arriving late in the afternoon meant we also didn’t need to pay the admission fee so it a big win all round.
Overall, I’d say the Irish National Heritage Park is a beautiful open air museum where kids (and adults too) can really immerse themselves in the ancient history of Ireland. Facilities like this are such a great way for kids to learn, more preferable in some ways to a standard indoor museum. We also visited a similar folk park in Takayama, Japan - Hida No Sato.