Heritage Week event hears about placenames and traditional farm buildings

A crowd gathered at the farmyard of Brian and Cathal Daly in Killare on Saturday of last week to view their restored traditional farm buildings and to hear about placenames, bats and more.

Brian Daly and architect Martin Murray outlined the conservation work on the farm buildings by Tom Farrell of Ardagh.

Aine Doyle and Deirdre McDermott were the conservation consultants on the project and are doing a survey of traditional farm buildings in Westmeath. Aine outlined grants available and what to consider if you are planning to conserve or restore a traditional farm building.

Ecologist and Farming for Nature ambassador Donna Mullen talked about farm buildings as a habitat for bats, and Dr Aengus Ó Fionnagain from Glasson gave a talk on field names and place names in the area.

He discussed a number of placenames which describe aspects of the landscape, past and present. He gave an outline analysis of about 2,000 placenames that have been extracted from the Schools Folklore Collection (1937-38) as part of the Westmeath Field Names Recording Project.

So far, 2,700 place and field names have been collected by 130 volunteers in areas such as Ballymore, Boher, Drumraney, Tang, Tubberclair, Finea and elsewhere, Dr O Fionnagain revealed. He thanked Westmeath heritage officer, Melanie McQuade, for her help with the project.