National Heritage Week

Over the past few years, we have very much enjoyed planning and holding events for National Heritage Week which is a fantastic initiative coordinated by The Heritage Council – here you can find a short synopsis of the events held each year…

National Heritage Week 2022 (August 13th – 21st)

We could not have been happier to welcome people back into Clashmore Heritage Centre again this year for our National Heritage Week event after three whole years of no face-to-face events!

Our programme of events for this year included first a summary (or refresher) about our Townland Survey which we started back in 2020 and on which research is ongoing. Bit by bit we are getting around to all of the landowners and residents of the parish to collect whatever old placenames/fieldnames and features each townland might have, so if we haven’t already spoken to you, then you can expect a phonecall or a knock on the door!

Next we were delighted to welcome our two speakers for the day:

Kilmaloo Icehouse 1937
  1. Ice House History of the Parish by Brian Dunne

We were treated to a fascinating presentation from Brian Dunne, Knockaniska about a recent college project he completed which focused on the history of the three Ice Houses in our parish (most people, including myself, weren’t at all familiar with the story of the 3rd house!). Brian explained in fine detail about their uses, their construction and the ancillary trades associated with these commercial Ice Houses. A truncated version of this informative slide deck can be downloaded from the appendix below.

Clashmore and Kinsalebeg Community Council in conjunction with our Heritage Group were very grateful to receive a grant recently from the Heritage Council* towards the conservation of the Garrananaspick (McKenna’s) Ice House, one of the three 19th century Icehouses in the parish. All three icehouses are located in the vicinity of Kilmaloo Lough (which is now drained) where the ice was originally harvested. Two of them are located in the townland of Garranaspick and the third in the adjoining townland of Kilmaloo West. David Kelly Partnership, Youghal was engaged to undertake a conservation assessment of McKenna’s icehouse in Garranaspick and Western Aerial Survey undertook a drone survey of the area. The results of the Conservation Assessment 2022 can be downloaded in the appendix below.

* This project was funded by The Heritage Council under the Community Heritage Grant Scheme 2022.

2. Salmon Fishing of the Blackwater by Jacinta Kiely

The Sheehans fishing the Blackwater

As part of our ongoing Townland Survey project, Jacinta Kiely has been working over an extended period with various local residents who were involved in the fishing trade in years gone by and this ‘sub-project’ is finally coming to fruition. Every fish weir, quay and river bank has been recorded from Coolbagh Quay down to Youghal Bridge at this point, the results of which are available to view at our Meitheal Logainm page *. Going forward the plan is to carry on mapping the river placenames from Youghal Bridge on as far as the Monatrea side which has already been mapped for the most part. Also the same mapping process will be continued up-river from Coolbagh Quay. You can can find a link to this Placenames of the Blackwater slide deck in the appendix below.

* Our placenames collection on Meitheal Logainm is a ‘work in progress’ and some of the already mapped names still have unknown exact locations, possibly missing translations etc. so please bear this in mind until the project is completed fully.

Appendix

Garrananaspick House Aerial Survey


NATIONAL HERITAGE WEEK 2021 (August 14th – 22nd)
Ballindrumma Rath & Souterrain

22-08-2021:
Yet another National Heritage Week has come to a close and we were delighted to hold an exhibition today at Clashmore Heritage Centre which cast a spotlight on the progress of our Townland Survey Project which we began during 2020. We have to date been working on an initial ten townlands and today we exhibited the first six of these, namely Ballindrumma, Carronadavderg (parish boundaries mean nothing to us! ), Clashmore, Kilmore, Raheen & Prospect Hall.

We had a nice turnout of people wandering through over the morning and as always in-person conversations will always throw up new and interesting information and stories so plenty of items to work on as we plan the next bunch of townlands over the next few months! For anyone who was not able to make it along to our event, you can browse through our Virtual Exhibition below – enjoy!

Prologue:
We have been planning a Placenames Project for the parish for some time and finally we are getting around to doing something about it! This is partly thanks to the encouragement of the #KnowYour5k initiative of the Heritage Council which helped many us of through a tough last couple of months during the pandemic.
There are several existing primary sources for this type of project such as Canon Power’s Placenames of The Decies (1907), The Schools Folklore Collection (1930s), the OSI’s Historic Mapping collection and the Placenames Branch initiative (1960s) but collating all of this material is part of the challenge ahead. Also there are gaps in these sources where certain features may not be mentioned and this is where our planned project will hopefully step in.


So…we are planning to get this project rolling by first inviting local participants to help us to carry out a survey of the Industrial & Agricultural Heritage sites of the area to feed into an event for National Heritage Week 2021 which takes place towards the end of August. The survey will aim to record features in the landscape including (but by no means restricted to) the following: Wells, water pumps, iron gates, creamery stands, stone depots, mill stones, quern stones, forges and smithies, quarries, bridges, mills, lime kilns, ice houses, quays, agricultural machinery etc. (and any place names, field names or family names that might be associated with them).
So can we ask that anyone interested in taking part in this survey could please contact us by Monday, May 3rd via our email address ckheritage@gmail.com or alternatively via our Facebook Page and we will sign you up! We will hold an informational session later in the month to explain how the survey will be carried out and what you can do to help etc.


NATIONAL HERITAGE WEEK 2020*

[* No event due to COVID-19 restrictions]


National Heritage Week 2019

We were delighted to have such a great turnout at our Heritage Event 2019 on Sunday August 25th at Clashmore Heritage Centre and we want to sincerely thank everyone for coming along on the day, especially those that travelled long distances! The running theme for the 2019 event was Pastimes | Past Times which indeed allowed us to put together a broad agenda!

Audience for 2019 Heritage Event

First up on the agenda was a presentation on the “Pastimes & Sporting Activities” which were popular in this locality in the past. This was followed by a wonderful talk by Mary Sheehan, Ballinaclash on her experiences of fishing on the River Blackwater and all about the various characters that crossed her path over the years. Finally we had a talk by Nicholas Graves from An Rinn who spoke at length about Bill Lennon of Clashmore and the part he played in the War of Independence which was also very interesting.

Bill Lennon

We wish to sincerely thank both of our guest speakers on the day. Also we wish to thank all of our narrators who contributed to the “Pastimes” piece and to anyone who contributed photos to that effort. Finally thank you to everyone who helped out with the refreshments during the event! For anyone who wasn’t able to make it on the day, we hope to share some of the footage online for everyone to enjoy – please watch the Clashmore-Kinsalebeg Heritage Group Facebook page for updates on that.

P.S. Here is the video show on the day titled “Pastimes & Sporting Days of Old” – we hope you enjoy it!


National Heritage Week 2018

Every year, National Heritage Week is coordinated by The Heritage Council when local and national events are organised throughout the country to highlight and showcase the wonderful work being done by local heritage groups to preserve and promote our natural, built and cultural heritage.

Event Poster 2018

Here in Clashmore village, our own Heritage group hosted a special event at Clashmore Heritage Centre between 10am and 1pm on Sunday, August 26th 2018 entitled “Clashmore in the 19th Century” which mainly focused on the history of Clashmore Distillery, aswell as some updates on the renovation efforts being planned for this iconic building.  Also in the year that’s in it, there will be some stories from The Great War, in particular about local involvement.

Audience for 2018 Event

Finally Jacinta Kiely from Historic Graves gave us some fantastic updates about the very important survey work being carried out by Historic Graves on three of the graveyards in the parish and we hope that people will be able to help fill in some of the gaps on these.

For any of those who were unable to make it on the day, you can check out the following slideshow which gives a brief synopsis of the various topics presented on the day…


NATIONAL HERITAGE WEEK 2017

This was the first year that our group held an event for National Heritage Week and we were surely just finding our feet first time around!
The theme of Heritage Week 2017 was “Nature as part of our Cultural Heritage” so on the day we had presentations covering the heritage of our ‘Built Environment’ and also the wonderful, hands-on Graveyard Survey project carried out on the ‘St. Mochua’s Graveyard’.

Heritage Week 2017 Poster

Graveyard Survey
The Graveyard Survey of St. Mochua’s had been carried out in 2016 as part of a ‘Historic Graves’ project led by John Tierney and Jacinta Kiely (Eachtra Archaelogical Sevices). This graveyard is a mixed-faith site with Catholic and Anglican burials present covering 18th, 19th and 20th c. burials, the full results of which can be seen here.

A Gravestone ‘rubbing’ at St. Mochuas

This was a community project with many local residents getting involved over two days and with on-the-job training being provided by John Tierney such as gravestone ‘rubbing’ to bring up the elegant motifs on some of the memorials and various tricks as to how to read what seemed like unreadable memorial stones (a good torch was a big advantage!).

On the day, Jacinta Kiely gave a very concise review of this project and spoke about future plans to survey the other graveyards in the area such as those at St. Cronan’s Parish Church,Clashmore & St. Bartholemews, Piltown (these have been surveyed since and are also available at Historic Graves)

Village Streetscape
The second presentation of the day covered the initial ‘Village Streetscape’ project carried out over a number of years to map the built environment of Clashmore Village over an approx. 170-year period between 1850 – Present.

Village Streetscape Snippet

The basis for this ‘Streetscape’ project was initially the 1851 Griffiths Valuation Books which happened to match reasonably accurately to the accompanying valuation map as regards building numberings etc. Later detail was gleaned from various other sources such as Census Records, Newspaper Records and Living Recollections. A large part of this project was the collecting of old photos of various buildings and shopfronts to provide greater context to the environment. The initial Village Streetscape draft is available to view as a HTML file here on the Discover Clashmore website, but it is hoped to map this in a more user-friendly way in the future.