Cigarette box collection found after 82 years

No-one is sure whether it was bored staff or bored Councillors - but 82 years on, a number of empty cigarette boxes and a match box shoved under floorboards in the County Council chambers have been rediscovered.It was workmen undertaking the revamp of the chambers this month who came across the perfectly preserved packets.They were able to 'guesstimate' the age of the packets from two copies of a Council 'List of Applications for Payment' found with them. The list, for the Council"s then Finance Committee, was dated for a meeting to be held on May 19 1927.In a strange quirk of coincidence, one of those named on the list as due a payment from the Council was a James Bennett - and the workcrew who found the documents are employees of Bennett Construction, who are carrying out both the revamp of the Council chambers, and construction of the €40m new Council offices behind the present County Buildings (see our exclusive preview tour on page 6 of this week"s paper).Staff were impressed at the condition of the structure of the County Buildings, which were constructed around the start of the last century, and the way the cigarette packets were so well preserved is testament to the quality of the building itself.Unfortunately: no-one can comment on the quality of the cigarettes. Whoever disposed of the packets back in 1927, had smoked all the contents first.