The Castleisland Community Museum will open its doors tomorrow, Saturday afternoon, July 27th at 3pm at No. 42 Main Street beside Tom McCarthy’s Central Bar.
Based on several examples of similar experiences around the country and on simplicity itself, the new centre has been a few months in the planning with the changes being wrought there from a betting shop being the subject of a Kerry County Council planning application.
That permission fell due early this week clearing the way for the weekend opening.
A totally voluntary group will operate the museum which will initially concentrate on the century long history the area had with what became the Great Southern and Western Railway from 1875 to 1977.
Castle Looming Large
The 1226 founded Norman / Desmond Castle will also loom large in the day-to-day life of the centre and Rob McGuire is putting together centre appropriate excerpts from his extensively researched documentary on the history of the castle and the intertwining characters involved.
Having visited centres in Galway City and in Mount Melleray Abbey near Cappoquin in Waterford and in Clonakilty, I was struck by the simplicity of how so much information about the culture and history of these places could be conveyed to anyone interested and in so short a time.
In Galway I found a room with a dozen chairs, a handful of photographs and information around the limited wall space.
However, the main stream of information was delivered by a wide-screen television which told the nautical story of the Galway Hooker and that of the county’s best known and most honoured writer Pádraic Ó Conaire.
A Lot More to Clonakilty
A little room in the Clonakilty Railway Museum had a similar set up to that in Galway: A handful of chairs and a wide screen on which the history of the town’s association with the railway is told.
But there’s a lot more to Clonakilty as they have a scaled, outdoor recreation of the town in the time of its its long departed fair days – and a remarkable network of model trains running on an appropriately landscaped area.
Taking all of this in from these different places, I thought that Castleisland should have a place like these and it wouldn’t be for a shortage of material if it didn’t.
Driving the Project
It also dawned on me that museums don’t have to be wall-to-wall glass cases stuffed with knick-knacks that nobody knows the back story of anymore.
I mentioned as much to Eamon Fleming former Kerry County Council town planner and author of a book on vernacular architecture and to Cllr. Charlie Farrelly. The latter came back to me within a week with the news that he had the ideal location for what will become Castleisland Community Museum Ltd at 3pm on the coming Saturday afternoon – and he has driven the project forward since.
Bing Crosby Crossed the Threshold
It’s in a house in which my father served his time as a barman and grocer in the late 1940s to Tom and Mai Browne and in a shop which Bing Crosby visited to buy a plug of tobacco. Unfortunately for my father, who adored the American singer, he was on a half day off.
Advice, suggestions and economic support will be sought and welcomed from members of the public and all supporters to date and after will be fully acknowledged when the dust settles.
A Village to Rear a Museum
It takes a village to rear a museum and we have had so much goodwill and promises of information and items of interest that we’re glad it’s happening now – and we’ll see where it goes from here.
We’ve had suggestions of singing evenings, poetry evenings, evenings of quiet discussions and evenings of specialist talks and we’ll take them all on board and we’ll work out opening hours and all that as we go.
There won’t be a fanfare or music or singing or anything like that tomorrow afternoon. It’ll be just a talking shop on this occasion and a chance for us to get used to opening the door. The music and the formalities will follow once we find our feet.
If you’re around tomorrow from 3pm drop in a say hello and look around – it’s that class of place.
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