Westmeath project highlighted in new Heritage Council book

A special Heritage Council publication featuring stories from heritage officers in every county was launched last week to mark 25 years since the Heritage Officer Network was founded.

The booklet, ‘Opening the door to Ireland’s heritage’, details one key heritage project from each local authority from the last three years, which, collectively, highlight the enormous contribution the network has made to the preservation of our heritage over the last quarter of a century.

The booklet tells the story of the Westmeath Field Names Recording Project, which since 2018, has been engaging members of the community in recording the names of fields in their areas, so thet can be documented and interpreted before they are lost.

Field names can reveal a great deal - how people appreciated the physical landscape, its hills and hollows, streams, and bogs. It also tells us about the history of a place and traditions, from holy wells to fairy forts, from old settlements to estates.

The names collected to date have been uploaded to a website and there is also a project website.

The names collected to date have offered interesting details on past agricultural practices and changes in landscape. For example, mónín, meaning little bog, is often recorded.

In some cases, those areas of land have been drained in recent times and there is no evidence of the boggy conditions for which they were named.

In a partnership between the Heritage Council and local authorities, the first heritage officers were appointed in 1999 in Kerry, Sligo and Galway, with the aim of raising awareness of heritage issues within the local authority and among local communities.

Since then, the Heritage Officer Network has become synonymous with the protection and promotion of Ireland’s heritage and for the first time in 2021, every local authority in the country had appointed somebody to the role.

While highlighting the important work they do, the stories in the publication also offer an insight into what could have been lost were it not for the heritage officers.

Mangan’s Clock in the heart of Cork city might have fallen into disrepair. The most historic buildings in Ballyshannon or Listowel might have been left derelict and allowed to crumble. The natural beach and dune habitats along the coast of Wicklow might have become irrevocably degraded and the craftsmanship of dry-stone walling on Inis Oirr might have receded.

Speaking on the launch of the booklet, heritage officer for Westmeath County Council, Melanie McQuade, said: “It is deeply satisfying to see documented in this publication the influence of the Heritage Officer Network in shaping our approach to heritage conservation and protection.

"Although we work as individuals at local authority level, what is clear from these pages is that the real strength of the network is in the collective. These stories cover only a snapshot of recently completed projects from current heritage officers, so when we factor in the hundreds of past projects completed since 1999, it brings into the focus the enormous impact that the Local Authority Heritage Officer Programme has had.”