Ardmore Village and Graveyard Trails Launch 2024

The development of these heritage trails are part of a heritage project for Ardmore Tidy Towns, under an EU Horizon project called SECreTour (www.secretourproject.eu). 

 

Ardmore Graveyard Trail can be downloaded >>here<<

Ardmore Village Heritage Trail can be downloaded >>here<<

 

The trails are written by Martha Hannon and John Tierney. We are fortunate in Ardmore to have the encyclopaedic works of the Ardmore Journal, researched and written and edited by James Quain, as well as Siobhán Lincoln’s book Ardmore Memory and Story. We have histories written by Fr Dónal O’Connor representing the lived Christian heritage of this site. We have the deep local knowledge captured in the stories and recent books of Liam Suipéil, Declan in 2020 and Logainmneach agus scéalta ón chosta in 2019 . We have Tommy Mooney’s books which focus on the events of the War of Independence and the Civil War as well as his striking memory of the village and its people throughout the 20th century. All of these works are dependent on the memories of neighbours, people like Paddy Foley, who pass on their knowledge so generously. The role of the County Museum in fostering and helping publish digital and paper versions of many of these works must be acknowledged.

 

As well as these home-grown histories there has also been a series of recent research projects involving Ardmore. I’m thinking here of the recent historical research of Richard Harrington whose analysis of the sieges of 1642 has brought new light to the subject and we look forward to hearing more of his work on the Early medieval monastic settlement here in Ardmore.

 

In 2021 our colleague, Jacinta Kiely produced a Conservation Management Plan for this graveyard, funded by the Community Monuments Fund and supported by Waterford County Council, in particular heritage officer Bernadette Guest. The Management Plan combined worked by Dr Paul MacCotter, Dr Paul Naessens, Dr John Sunderland, Dave Pollock and ourselves. It was during this work when we personally began to apply ourselves to answering some of the questions relating to the heritage of the graveyard, village and parish.

 

We are launching two trails in three different formats today.

First there is the graveyard trail and then second we have the village trail.

Both are available as

1. printed leaflets

2. a pop-up trail with printed information cards out around the village

3. a digital version which can be viewed on a smartphone or read on a computer.

Each point of interest in the trails has an associated web resources for example, which might be a 3D model, a weblog, or a headstone transcription. It is our intention to continue our new research into the key places of the village and parish and to produce an up to date book on the heritage of Ardmore in the next year or so.

Today we are not only launching these heritage trails but we are also recognising the role of a community in preserving its own heritage. Not only are we acknowledging those people who have greatly contributed to our understanding of Ardmore’s past but we are also passing on the heritage baton to our next generation.

 

 

The need to support a local community in passing on its heritage is a key issue for us in this project. The leaflets are a tool designed to share information but also to improve conversations and discussions about heritage.

 

The trails are also a tool for building links between residents and visitors. Each leaflet links to a questionnaire where we ask for feedback from readers. The use of QR codes also gleans anonymised information on our visitors’ place of origin as it is our aim to better understand our tourists and to provide the information they need.

 

For us this is all about meaning. Each point of interest opens a new field of research which we pursue before we write the 80-100 words in the trails. For example, the village trail mentions a mass house on Cliff row - the fact there was a parish church situated there in the time of the penal laws has a particular meaning. Situated close to the original medieval parish church at the holy well in Dysert and overlooking the site of the present parish church of St Declan’s. That sequence of churches informs us of changes from monastic to parochial land organisation as well as representing arm wrestles between the communities of the two Christian faiths represented by the Church of Ireland and the Catholic church.

And sometimes that arm wrestle became very bloody. The search for the lost castle of Ardmore doesn’t solely focus on the sieges of 1642. Rather their strong meaning relates to the success of the Munster Plantation which commenced 60 odd years before that. Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, centred his plantations in Youghal and Ardmore was a key element in his properties. And Boyle learned from the Nine Years War of 1593-1603 that he needed a planters army - he established and funded a militia for over 40 years which finally found its true fulfilment in the second siege of Ardmore. Boyle’s sons led a well trained militia of retired soldiers and their sons who exacted strong revenge here against the Catholic forces of West Waterford in 1642.

 

In conclusion, these leaflets, cards and digital files are tools being used to explore these points of our heritage. Writing the trails stimulates us to learn more about our local parish and then to pass the new information on to visitors and residents. Ardmore Tidy Towns group have been enthusiastic supporters of our approach. As they were when we first started the historic graves project and that grew into over 900 graveyards surveyed in 14 years. We expect the methods we learn here on this project will also extend out to other parishes around the country and that we will build a network of connected communities- researching and sharing their heritage on their own terms.

(People in photograph Billy Harty, Rev Andrew Orr, Martha Hannon, Clr Tommy Cronin, Bernadette Guest, Mayor Jason Murphy, John Tierney, Senator John Cummins, Clr Damien Geoghegan, Liam Suipéil).