Shackleton Autumn School 2023 (Part 2)

The Shackleton Autumn School is just two days away as I began to write this week’s Eye on the Past. It has been a particularly busy week, with a huge amount of work finalising arrangements for the arrival of lecturers and visitors from overseas. This year the Autumn School celebrates 23 years in existence, during which time it has grown from strength to strength. The first Autumn School was planned and arranged with the help of Bob Headland who was then working in the Scots Polar Institute in Cambridge. The Polar Institute, based in the university city of Cambridge, was established to further understanding of the polar regions through research and publications and Bob was the Curator of the Institute when I contacted him in 1999. He generously guided my first faltering steps in organising the first Autumn School, named after the Kilkea-born explorer, Ernest Shackleton. Bob has attended every one of the Autumn Schools since then, apart from the Covid period schools which were held on Zoom. Alexandra Shackleton, granddaughter of Ernest Shackleton, attended the second Autumn School in 2001 and has been present every year since then. The success of the Shackleton Autumn School at international level is something that is perhaps not readily appreciated. In truth, the provincial town in the south of the county of Kildare has been established as the location of one of the most popular annual polar events held anywhere in the world. The continued success of the Autumn School which operates as an ‘offspring’ of the Shackleton Museum, is due to the work of a small committee comprising Kevin Kenny of Naas, Mark McClean of Wexford and Seamus Taaffe of Athy. They took on the task of organising the annual school some years ago and with the assistance of the museum staff have improved on the original Autumn School model, making it one of the great events in the Kildare County tourism calendar. At the opening of the Autumn School on the Friday evening of 20th October I will have the great honour of announcing that funding for the redevelopment of the Shackleton Museum is in place and that work on the redevelopment of the museum will commence shortly. That work will on completion give the town a first-class museum designed to attract a lot of visitors from overseas. It is a major coup for Athy and one which I could not have envisaged when founding the Athy Museum Society in 1983. The purpose of the society was to open a local museum highlighting the town’s story, its people and its history. My discovery of Shackleton’s birthplace in nearby Kilkea prompted the telling of his story with a panel or two in that local museum devoted to Shackleton. The Autumn School followed much later and the success of the school prompted the thought of a museum dedicated to the polar explorer given the tourism possibilities that could create. Kildare County Council through it’s then executive Peter Carey, recognising the cultural and tourism opportunities involved, played a major part in securing the Shackleton statue and the cabin in which the polar explorer died. The drive for a dedicated Shackleton Museum would not have been possible without the County Council’s backing and Kildare County Council has now agreed to take over the financing and management of the Shackleton Museum when it reopens. This will ensure the financial stability which the museum will require for the future. The volunteers who have been part of the museum project stretching back over forty years have helped to create a wonderful cultural asset, with the possibility of adding to the commercial well-being of the town through tourism and visitors generally. Shortly the present Board of Directors of the Shackleton Museum will gather for the last time and resign as directors in order to allow Kildare County Council to appoint a new Board. I will be vacating my position as chairman of the Board, happy in the belief and knowledge that the dream I had forty years ago of a museum in Athy will be in good hands when Kildare County Council take over. If I had dreams in the past, I also had nightmares and that of the loss of Whites Castle is my recurring nightmare. The development of Whites Castle as a town/Fitzgerald Museum is my next dream. What better way to make Athy a tourist destination rather than a stopover on the way to Kilkenny or elsewhere than having two museums of different interests, one telling the Shackleton story, the other outlining the story of a historic town with a rich past. I am afraid I don’t have forty years left in me to fulfil that dream. It must however come for Whites Castle can never be allowed to fall into dereliction. The Castle and Crom a Boo bridge are the acknowledged symbols of Athy and must be protected, preserved and eventually used for the benefit of the people of Athy.