Waterford may be winning plaudits for the ongoing improvement to its appearance, but there was a time when visitors were less than impressed.
The novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, who visited the city in 1842, could hardly have been more forthright: " as you get into the place, not a soul is there to greet you except the usual society of beggars, and a sailor or two, or a green-coated policeman sauntering down the broad pavement.
"The quays stretch for a considerable distance along the river, poor patched-windowed, mouldy-looking shops forming the basement-storey of most of the houses," he wrote in his Irish Sketch Book.
It was 500 years, he noted, since a poet accompanying Richard II, spoke of "Watreford ou moult vilaine et orde y sont la gente". (Waterford where very plain and dirty are the people). "They don't seem to be much changed now, but remain faithful to their ancient habits", said Thackeray.
Far more positive comments about the ancient habits of Waterford people can be found alongside Thackeray's in an anthology of writing about the city and county from the 18th to the 20th centuries.
Edited by T.N. Fewer, who is also the author of Waterford People: A Biographical Dictionary of Waterford, the book provides fascinating insights into life in the area over a period of 300 years.
Sir John Barrow, an English civil servant who visited six years before Thackeray, wrote about the copper mines five miles from Kilmacthomas, which employed 600 men. But there was little benefit to the people of the area. "I am told that all who work underground are from England, chiefly from Cornwall, the Irish having no taste for it."
An insight into the management of the first Christian Brothers' schools is provided by James Glassford, who was appointed a commissioner to inquire into Irish education from 1824 to 1826.
"Visited the large Roman Catholic School of Mr Rice, conducted by him and twelve others of a Brotherhood for education - a very extensive establishment, and apparently well managed, with good arrangement and discipline."
He was less taken with the Blue School, endowed by a family by the name of Mason and at which girls were to be paid a sum of money if they went on to marry Protestants. "The school-mistress could give little information, none accurate. Found the reading of all the scholars present indifferent, and the specimens of writing very bad."
Mr Fewer, who lives in Callaghane, Co Waterford, was inspired by the work of Thomas Francis Meagher, one of the founders of the Young Irelanders, whose reminiscences provide much information about the history of Waterford.
Mr Fewer says a common theme which struck him as he worked on the project was the use of our rivers for transport. "Traffic on the rivers was a huge thing just 120 years ago and we seem to have abandoned that. It might solve some problems if we went back to it today."
The book features subjects as diverse as the Famine, shipwrecks, summer holidays in Ring and the difference between waiters in Ireland and England.
In 19th century Ireland, wrote one contributor, a waiter's "grand occupation is finding out the business of his master's customers".
Ballylough Books can be contacted at 051-382538, or by e-mail at thomasfewer@hotmail.com The book costs £23.63 (€30).