Confessional box was Irish

Sceala Philosopher Location: NYC

The sacrament of Penance [confession and more recently referred to as the Sacrament of Reconciliation] is the method given by Christ to the Church by which individual men and women may confess sins committed after baptism and have them absolved by a priest. This sacrament is known by many names, including penance, reconciliation and confession. While official Church publications always refer to the sacrament as "Penance", "Reconciliation" or "Penance and Reconciliation", many laypeople continue to use the term "confession" in reference to the sacrament.
For Catholic priests today, the confidentiality of confession is absolute. This strict and total confidentiality is known as the Seal of the Confessional.
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The private confessional box and privacy of confession, a standard feature in the modern Church, started in Ireland.

Penitentials
Penance is repentance of sins as well as the proper name of the Catholic Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation through Confession. The word penance derives from Old French and Latin poenitentia, both of which derive from the same root meaning repentance, the desire to be forgiven. Penance and repentance, similar in their derivation and original sense, have come to symbolize conflicting views of the essence of repentance, arising from the controversy as to the respective merits of "faith" and "good works." Word derivations occur in many languages.

In antiquity, penance had been a public ritual. Penitents were divided into a separate part of the church during liturgical worship, and they came to mass wearing sackcloth and ashes in a process known as exomologesis that often involved some form of general confession.
Louis the Pious doing public penance at Attigny in 822
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Penance and reconciliation was prevailingly a public rite, which included absolution at its conclusion.

Irish Penance
In Ireland a distinctive form of penance developed, where confession was made privately to a priest, under the seal of secrecy, and where penance was given privately and ordinarily performed privately as well. Irish handbooks were made, called “penitentials”, designed as a guide for confessors and as a means of regularising the penance given for each particular sin.
The Irish confession practice eventually spread throughout the continent. St. Columbanus was credited with introducing the medicamenta paentitentiae, the “medicines of penance”, to Gaul at a time when public confession had come to be neglected. Though the process met some resistance, by 1215 the practice had become established as the norm, with the Fourth Lateran Council establishing a canonical statute requiring confession at a minimum of once per year.

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Confessional box was Irish