The Clonsilla and Porterstown Heritage Society are organising the Clonsilla Heritage Festival on 16th/17th September 2023 and a couple of the events are of an IH nature as follows:
Clonsilla & Royal Canal Heritage Walk – 16th September 2023
The Royal Canal / Shackleton’s Mill, plus Royal Canal Photo Exhibition – 16th September 2023
I have created a page listing the Northern Ireland Heritage Days events with an IH connection.
I previously reported that the Naomh Éanna, located in one of the dry docks at Grand Canal Dock, had listed and called for the necessary action to have the boat removed.
RTE reports that the process of having the boat cut up has now commenced.
I previously reported on an act of heritage vandalism by National Highways (the roads agency in Great Britain), which buried a former railway bridge in Cumbria in concrete ‘to protect it’.
The Guardian reports that the local council have refused retrospective planning permission for the action, notwithstanding the offer of a bribe by NH in the amount of £450,000 to allow their work to remain.
Work has commenced on the un-burying of the bridge.
On Wednesday 16th August, I will be doing an interesting test of the new Busconnects option in North East Kildare to get home from a Heritage Week event in Sallins.
The plan is to get the train from Sallins to Hazelhatch (2005 ex Sallins) followed by the W61 from Hazelhatch to Maynooth. It will be an interesting test of whether or not the connectivity works.
I did another review of the Heritage Week events listings and have updated the page for Heritage Week 2023 to reflect additional events.
Irish Rail are in the early stages of relaying the Limerick to Foynes Railway for freight traffic.
I found this video on YouTube of drone footage of the state of the line at the end of July 2023.
Greenore, Co. Louth, is something of an architectural anomaly in Ireland. If you have never visited the town, I’d suggest you do. Not only because it is the only discrete railway town in Ireland,* but because the architecture is straight out of northern England.
The reason for this is that the town was built as a company town by the Dundalk Newry & Greenore Railway (DN&GR) which was financed by the London & North Western Railway.
In recognition of this architectural heritage, there is currently an exhibition in the town which celebrates this.
* Whilst there are concentrations of railway company provided housing in Ireland, including at Rosslare, Co. Wexford (co-incidentally, previously known as Greenore) and Inchicore in Dublin, both areas have expanded beyond the original development and can no longer be architecturally identified as a discrete development.
I am happy to bring the existence of this venue to the attention of others – being a museum devoted to the history of Sion Mills, Co. Tyrone, the former mill village established by the Herdman family.