Gorey
may come from Gabhraighe, a place abounding in goats, which agrees with Joyce; the town and parish were also once known as Kilmichaelogue, church of Mocheallóg
A market town in north Wexford, laid out by the Ram family as a planned town in the early 17th century. It was given a borough charter in 1619 under the name Newborough, but the townspeople never took to it and the old name stayed. Gorey was the centre of several clashes in the 1798 Rebellion, marked by a memorial put up in 1898, and the parents of Jim Bolger, later Prime Minister of New Zealand, emigrated from here in the 1930s.
Standing stones, fulacht fiadh sites, a holy well and ringforts show early settlement, and Norman records of 1296 already refer to a town here. In 1619 Thomas Ram, Bishop of Ferns and Leighlin, obtained a borough charter under the name Newborough, and the Ram family laid the town out and built the Ramsfort estate to the north; its house was burned in 1641 and again in 1798 and rebuilt in the 19th century. Gorey saw several conflicts in 1798. Besides the 18th-century market house, many of the larger buildings date from the mid-19th century, among them the Catholic church of St Michael (1843), the Church of Ireland church (1861) and the railway station (1863).
Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Gorey ↗, rewritten here and adding nothing it does not say; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
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