A more structured approach is being taken around the country to conserving our heritage. Rosita Bolandsees how some five-year regional plans have been implemented in their areas
What connects a venerated sycamore tree whose branches have hundreds of coins pressed into them, a graveyard seminar, and a hedgerow survey? All three were included in Laois's first county heritage plan, which ran for five years, from 2002 to 2006. Laois, along with counties Sligo and Offaly and Dublin city, were the first four regions in the country to implement heritage plans successfully. There are now 27 local authority regions out of a total of 34 that are in the process of carrying out similar heritage plans.
These days, the question of what "heritage" actually means is one that provokes much more imaginative and inclusive answers. Our heritage was never only about Newgrange, the Rock of Cashel, and an ability to play bodhráns. It's also about the less obvious elements of the built and natural environment, such as hedgerows and former industrial buildings, such as mills.
The first three heritage officers in the State were appointed in 1999. There are now 27 across the country, and they are key in helping to implement their region's heritage plans. Each plan is drawn up in roughly the same way. Individual members of the public and local organisations are all invited to submit ideas, both in writing and through public meetings. The heritage officer then works with the heritage forum - a locally based advisory group - to draw up a draft plan. At that point, they go back to the public to get feedback on the draft and amend it as necessary.
Catherine Casey is heritage officer for Co Laois, and she has seen through the cycle of its first five-year plan. In the five years that Laois ran its plan, 57 projects were carried out, at a total cost of €412,000. As in other regions, funding comes partly from the Heritage Council and partly from the local authority. A second plan for Laois has now been drawn up, and, as before, the idea is to do about six large projects a year in addition to a couple of smaller ones.
"The most popular project we did, and one which all the heritage officers are reporting as being popular country-wide, is the graveyard seminar," Casey reports. "It was hugely popular. We had more queries about graveyards than anything else."
There are many reasons why the care and maintenance of graveyards are so important to a community. There's the historical aspect of genealogy, as well as the importance attached to the preservation of names of old townlands on headstones. "We're trying to encourage people to log family names in a more systematic way: to map where in the graveyard certain family names are clustered, which can tell us much more than just a list of names, for instance. We look at which family names have gone out of the locality. People also want to know how best to clean headstones so they don't damage the carvings. And some headstones and carvings are particular to an area - Laois, for instance, has a lot of cast-iron headstones which date from the late 1800s, which reflect the presence of foundries here."
Aside from the headstones, masonry ruins are also logged. So too are the grasses that grow in the graveyards, some of which are now very rare. "These have been untouched by fertilisers or pesticides, and the land has never been ploughed. Some graveyards attached to monastic sites have medicinal plants, which would have been planted by the monks. Graveyards are actually full of life!"
ANOTHER PROJECT UNDERTAKEN in Laois was a survey of the county's industrial heritage. This involved logging the number of mills - grain, water and wind - that had been built in the county.
"The public are really interested in mills, probably because they are so prominent," Casey explains. "They often defined the townland. What we did was work off old Ordnance Survey maps, first doing a paper survey. Then we employed an architectural historian who specialised in mills, and he went out and visited all the sites we had identified on the paper survey. There were 95 which had some degree of structure, although very few where machinery still survived."
One of the more unusual and very county-specific projects undertaken in Laois was the attempt to save St Fintan's Tree at Clonenagh, outside Mountrath. The old sycamore tree is beside a monastic graveyard, where it is reputed various saints are buried, including St Fintan. Local legend has it that the tree was once the site of a holy well. What's certainly true is that for at least 150 years, people have been hammering coins into the tree's bark.
"We think it was a rag tree originally, and then turned into a money tree," Casey says. "I personally don't know of any other money trees in Ireland. People put coins in for luck, for the granting of a wish, for a prayer. The problem was, the tree got copper poisoning. What we did was tidy up the graveyard, put up a sign explaining the history of the tree, and get a tree surgeon to look at the tree. He fixed it up as best he could. It's sprouting again, although he did tell us he thinks it's dead at the roots - but we'll look after it for as long as it lasts."
Recording local history and social history have proved to be popular projects in most counties. In Co Laois, interested members of the public were invited to attend a workshop on oral history. Most people who were interested came with specific ideas about areas they wanted to research, and were lent mini-disc players to collect recordings.
"There's a Heritage House museum at Abbeyleix, and we had a proposal to record people's memories of education in Abbeyleix, with the idea that it could be incorporated into the museum as a soundscape."
On a separate project, a survey was done on traditional crafts, also using oral history as a way of collecting the information. "We talked to thatchers, blacksmiths, people who had worked with lime water in buildings." They were particularly interested in talking to people who have worked using building methods that are now seldom used, since restoration of old buildings is becoming ever more popular, and knowledge of traditional methods is invaluable to sensitive restoration.
In the first year of the plan, a workshop was run entitled Running a Museum on a Shoestring, which proved extremely popular.
"There are eight locally-run museums in Laois," Casey says, "some of which are privately owned and run, such as the Attanagh Shooting and Fly Fishing Museum, or else run by volunteers in their houses. The workshop was about how to care for collections, how to archive them, and how to store and maintain them."
These were just a few of the many projects carried out over Laois's five-year plan. Others included a feasibility study for a county museum; publishing very popular posters of archaeological sites and monuments in the county; making a heritage trail; and carrying out a survey of the dry canal route on the Mountmellick branch.
BY CONTRAST, CO Mayo's first five-year heritage plan started up last year. Their heritage officer is Deirdre Cunningham. One of the projects they will be undertaking this year is a conservation plan for the two Inishkea islands, which were abandoned after a 1927 tragedy claimed the lives of 14 islanders.
"The islands are a major habitat for barnacle geese, for wintering and breeding," Cunningham explains. "They also have a very rich archaeological heritage. In recent years, there has been increased visitor pressure on the islands: there's no official ferry, but fishermen take people out for day-trips, so we have to put a conservation plan in place."
Also planned is a website that will show the 300-plus shipwrecks that lie off the coast of Co Mayo, including six Spanish Armada ships. "The Department of Environment has an underwater archaeology unit, who will be carrying out a study of all Irish coastal wrecks."
They'll also be doing an inventory of thatched structures in the county; a hedgerow survey; pilot studies of geographic distribution of stonewall styles; an archive of traditional Mayo songs, music and dance; and record testimonies of second World War veterans and other veterans of conflict now living in Co Mayo.
While some projects in all heritage plans involve the use of specialists, others, such as the "Golden Mile" - whereby local people are encouraged to take on the maintenance of a mile of hedgerow, looking after old gates and walls along the route, and ensuring the hedgerows are not cut in the summer - have local communities at their centre. This has the additional benefit of keeping costs down, due to the amount of volunteer work communities put into the projects. And just as importantly, the more the public are involved in heritage projects, the bigger the sense of ownership they have of them and the more interest, pride and awareness the community thus takes in their local surroundings.
Or as Catherine Casey puts it: "The heritage plans wouldn't work without the involvement of the local community."
More information from www.heritagecouncil.ie. Regional heritage plans can be viewed on the relevant county council websites
Grand scheme five-year regional plans
(Starting year) 2002
Offaly, Sligo, Laois, Dublin city
2003
Clare, Kerry, Westmeath
2004
Carlow, Galway (county), Westmeath, north Tipperary, south Tipperary, Roscommon, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown
2005
Wicklow, Kildare, Longford
2006
Cork, Fingal, Limerick, Monaghan, Mayo, Waterford
2007
Kilkenny, Donegal, Louth, Galway (city), Cork (city), Cavan