The story of Athy's Museum Society and the establishment of the Shackleton Museum

On Friday, 10th October at 11.00 a.m., the Shackleton Museum will officially be opened by the Minister for Rural Community Development and the Gaeltacht Dara Calleary T.D. whose Department provided substantial funding for the redevelopment of the Town Hall. It was in February 1983 that a public meeting, called for the courthouse, resulted in the setting up of Athy’s Museum Society. The vast majority of those who attended that meeting and who paid the membership fee of ten pounds each are no longer with us. It is important that the names of those original members of Athy Museum Society should be recorded and their contribution to the development of our understanding of Athy’s cultural and heritage past be acknowledged. Those persons who came together over forty years ago were Pat Mulhall, Ger Moriarty, Dick Norris, Patsy O’Neill, Mick Rowan, Megan Maguire, Frank English, Pat Doyle, Noreen Ryan, Denis Smyth, Joe May, Thomas Prendergast, Donal Murphy, Michael Wall and Jack Lawler. Following a lecture in the Leinster Arms Hotel on the 21st March 1983, further locals joined the Society including Tommy Keegan, Ken Sale, Dermot Murphy, John Mahon and his family, Claire Behan, Jens Priesler and his wife May. The above are the people who gave their support when it was most needed, for without their support there would have been no heritage town status, no museum in the various venues used over the years and certainly no Shackleton Museum. The contribution of Kildare County Council officials cannot be overlooked. It was Gerry Ward, Kildare County Manager, who in response to my letter replied on the 20th July 1983 confirming that he was prepared to recommend to the Council that a room in the Town Hall be made available to the Museum Society. He proved true to his word for some years later the Town Hall caretaker’s accommodation became free and the Society’s Museum, which up to then was located in a vacant classroom of Mount St. Mary’s, transferred to the Town Hall building. The kindness of the Sisters of Mercy in providing the Mount St. Mary’s room free of charge must be acknowledged. The Museum Society’s involvement in obtaining ‘Heritage Town’ status for Athy is well known, as was the use by the Society and Kildare County Council of the monies then awarded by the Department in the redevelopment of the ground floor of the Town Hall. It was at this stage of the Museum’s development that the Museum Society, a voluntary organisation, gave way to a company limited by guarantee, Athy Heritage Company Limited. It’s Directors were still volunteers. It was those volunteers, who in conjunction with the Shackleton Autumn School, embarked on the next stage of the Museum’s development as the Shackleton Museum. Going through my papers, I was interested to find reports from Patrick Shaffrey, Architect and Town Planner, and another report from Paul Kane, Consulting Engineer regarding Athy’s Town Hall. The Shaffrey Report dated September 1982 showed his concern that the building ‘now presents a rather sorry appearance’ and that ‘the demolition of such a fine building would be a sad and irreplaceable loss to the architectural heritage of Athy and would change radically the appearance of the centre of the town.’ The Kane Structural Report sought by the local branch of An Taisce noted that while the building had deteriorated while occupied by the fire brigade and Athy Urban District Council, it was generally structurally sound with minor problems, all related to the maintenance of the roof. It is quite possible that use of the Town Hall as a Heritage Centre and later on as a Museum saved the Town Hall because Athy Urban District Council had previously discussed its demolition to create more parking spaces in the town centre. Throughout this article, I have consistently referred to the Shackleton Museum, although Kildare County Council now reference the ‘Shackleton Experience’. To me it will always be the Shackleton Museum. Despite this, I must acknowledge the excellent work done by several heads of Kildare County Council in relation to the museum. First amongst those officials was the late Gerry Ward, County Manager, who believed in the Museums Society’s drive for a museum in Athy and who helped whenever he could. Peter Carey, whom I invited to open the Shackleton Autumn School soon after he took up the position of C.E.O. of Kildare County Council, was extremely helpful and facilitated the financing and erection of the Shackleton statue, the purchase of the ship cabin in which Shackleton died, and several other Shackleton artefacts which now form part of the museum’s display material. The current Chief Executive, Sonya Kavanagh, and her senior staff took the opportunity to take over responsibility of financing and running the Shackleton Museum from the volunteers who had held administrative control for over forty years. The journey which started in February 1983 continues today. Sadly, many of the men and women I have mentioned earlier who shared a dream did not live to see this day.

Shackleton Museum receives visitors from the Falkland Islands

The first overseas visitors to arrive at the Shackleton Museum did so last week. These visitors were from the Falkland Islands situated a few hundred miles off the eastern coast of Argentina. Their trip required a flight from Port Stanley, capital of the Falklands to Ascension Island and from there to Brize Norton in the UK. The visitors were four young students, winners of a school essay competition in which they were required to write of the Irish Polar Explorer, Ernest Shackleton. The four young students, Ruby Marsh, Alice May Curtis, Benjamin Goodwin and Theo Young were accompanied by Emma Brook, Falkland College Manager and Sandra Alazia outreach assistant with the Falkland Island Museum. The Shackleton Museum, which is currently being fitted out, was specially opened for the Falkland visitors where they were greeted by the museum curator, Aline Fitzgerald and two directors of the museum board. I was among a number of others who were also invited to give us our first glimpse of what awaits those visiting the museum after its official opening on the 10th of October. As someone who is familiar with the previous history and use of the Town Hall stretching back over 70 years or more I was very impressed with the design and workmanship which has left us with an extraordinary fine interior, a mixture of the old and the new. The impressive early 18th Century building has been transformed internally and restored externally to give a magnificent backdrop to our newly developed Town Plaza. Work on fitting out the museum with exhibits was not completed on the day of our visit and indeed Sven Habermann of Conservation Letterfrack and his team were scheduled to be on site this week and for sometime thereafter to complete the task. However there was sufficient evidence in the exhibits already in place to confirm that Athy’s Shackleton Museum will be of national and international importance. The subject of Shackleton’s life and achievements have gained an importance in the last few decades and with it has brought recognition of Athy’s importance in the telling of his story. I doubt if anyone visiting the museum when it opens will be disappointed with the range of exhibits and participatory media. . The Falklands students and the adults who accompanied them were very impressed by what they saw in the former Town Hall. Thanks must go to the museum curator for making arrangements to allow the overseas visitors and a few others the privilege of seeing at first hand the early development of the world’s most important Ernest Shackleton Museum. The management of the museum is now controlled by a board of five members on behalf of Kildare County Council. The curator, who was appointed some months ago, served in the same position for several years in the 1916 museum in Dublin’s GPO in O’Connell Street. As mentioned earlier the official opening of the museum will take place on October, 10th but I am uncertain as to whether the museum will be open to the public before then. Good luck to everyone involved with the Shackleton Museum which comes to us as a result of a public meeting which set up Athy’s Museum Society forty two years ago. Let’s hope that the acquisition, preservation and subsequent development of White’s Castle as a Fitzgerald and Town Museum does not take as long. I have had some feedback from last week’s Eye on the Past on the adoption of Market Byelaws with a small number of people agreeing with my suggestion as to the best way of protecting and developing the Tuesday market. My suggestion involved the protection of the town’s newly developed Plaza to facilitate its use seven days per week by visitors and locals alike. To do this will involve the expense of acquiring the Abbey grounds but incurring that expense will give Athy the advantage of replacing the lost carparking in Emily Square and meeting the additional carparking required for the Shackleton Museum visitors. I would hope that Kildare County Council would see the advantage of doing so and thereby ensuring adequate Athy centre parking facilities and the preservation of a Tuesday market.

Changes in the Town Hall as the Shackleton Museum develops

I was privileged during the week to have a guided tour of the interior of the future Shackleton Museum. What I saw was very impressive and indicated the quality of workmanship which I am afraid did not appear in the ancient building I was so familiar with over the years. I cannot remember when I first saw the interior of the Town Hall, but it was I believe sometime in the mid-1950s when Paddy Wright, Teddy Kelly and I gained access to an upper floor room, while a dance was in its early stages in the ballroom. Denis Cogan, the former County Architect for Kildare, writing in the Kildare Archaeological Society Journal of 1991, suggested that Athy Town Hall may have been the first of the Palladian style civic style buildings built in Ireland. The original Town Hall was built in the second or third decade of the 18th century. Bishop Pococke on his tour of Ireland in 1752 made reference to the ‘new market house in Athy’. Rocque’s map of Athy prepared for the Earl of Kildare four years after Pococke’s visit to Athy, shows a T shaped building which Denis Cogan believes was an open cross vaulted market house on the ground floor, with a courtroom and assembly rooms overhead. Nicholas Sheaff, Director of the Irish Architectural Archives, in his report of 1984 stated his belief that the square in front of the Town Hall was laid out at the same time as the Town Hall’s construction, with the Town Hall designed as the architectural focus. The style of the building reflected, according to Sheaff, a sophisticated Palladian classicalism on the part of the designer, suggesting that the design came from the offices of Richard Cassels, the leading Irish Palladian architect of the 18th century. The Town Hall has been much altered over the years, with extensions both in front and rear of the original building. The mid-19th century extension to the front of the building was the most important extension and consisted of rubble masonry walls, with tooled limestone string course. In 1913 a further alteration was made to the Town Hall when the earlier extension to the front of the building was raised by a storey, as was the 18th century centre section, making the entire façade three stories high. The much-altered building was again the subject of building work when in 1969 the central part of the ground floor was adopted for use as a fire station. With the building of the new Town Council offices in Rathstewart in 1985 the Town Hall became vacant and fell into a derelict state. Kildare County Council, which had earlier purchased the property from the Duke of Leinster, subsequently restored the building under an AnCO training scheme which was completed in May 1990. One of the oldest elements of the Town Hall is a bell which originally hung from a frame which stood in the roof of the two-storey centre section before it was heightened in the mid-18th century. The bell came from the Church of Ireland Parish Church which stood in the rear square behind the Town Hall before it was demolished following the building of St. Michael’s Church at the top of Offaly Street in 1840. Macra na Feirme, which was established by local men Paddy Kehoe, Stephen Cullinane, Juan Greene, E. Minch and A. Spiers, established its headquarters in the Town Hall room vacated by the Athy Mechanics Institute in 1947. The first library in the town of Athy opened in the Town Hall on 1st December 1927. It was operated by Kildare County Council. A local Library Committee was set up and was intended to comprise the local Parish Priest Canon Mackey, his three curates, Rev. Dunlop of the Church of Ireland and the Reverend Meek of the Presbyterian Church. The six clerics and its fellow committee members, five local Urban District Councillors and the Town Clarke, James Lawler who acted as the library secretary, made up the Committee By the time I became aware of the local building amongst which I played on a daily basis, the Town Hall’s ground floor was still used as a market place. To the rear of the building was a weighing scales, managed by Jim Dempsey who lived in Offaly Street. His offices were still at use until the Fire Brigade moved into the ground floor of the Town Hall There were many uses of the Town Hall over the centuries, including the location of the Free Masons Club in the building over many decades. The Parish School, operated by the Church of Ireland, was reported in 1824 to have 157 pupils on its roll, with an average attendance of 50 boys and 35 girls. Located in the Town Hall the headmaster of the school was James Hunter and the headmistress Lydia Hunter. In February 1917 Athy Hibernian Players put on a play in the Town Hall and the subsequent press reports give the names of those involved whom it is said stood to attention for the singing of ‘A Nation Once Again’. Those named were the first publicly identified Nationalist sympathisers in Athy and many of them figured prominently in the local Sinn Fein Club which was formed in June 1917. On 19th July 1917 Athy’s newly established Sinn Fein Club organised a concert in the Town Hall in aid of the families of those killed in the Easter Rising. The audience was addressed by Arthur Griffith, the founder of Sinn Fein. Another famous visitor to the Town Hall was Charles Stewart Parnell who arrived in Athy in 1880 to chair the parliamentary nomination for the upcoming election. James Leahy, a farmer from Ardscull and one time Chairman of Athy Town Commissioners, was nominated despite Parnell’s early objection as he felt that Leahy: ‘this fat man will be of no use, he will fall asleep in the House’. Having cross examined the prospective candidate, Parnell was apparently satisfied and allowed the nomination to go ahead. Leahy was to have a constant if unspectacular presence in the House of Commons until 1895. The story of Athy’s Town Hall tells us more of the history of the organisations and the people who used the Town Hall over the years. Their story will hopefully be told on another day, but in the meantime we welcome the adoption of the Town Hall for use exclusively as a Shackleton Museum.

Change from Heritage Company to Shackleton Museum

Road closures were the subject of some angry comments on Facebook during the past week. They coincided with the publication of a notice regarding the closure of Offaly Street for a number of weeks to facilitate work on the redevelopment of the Town Hall. However, the comments related to the half day closure of part of the Carlow Road during the running of the Athy Race last Sunday. It is rather a pity that the event which attracted a lot of runners gave rise to these comments. The event was by all accounts very successful and hopefully the organisers will have learned the value of earning and retaining community support by giving appropriate advance notice of race routes, times, etc. As to the lengthy closure to traffic of Offaly Street I can only claim that it’s a sacrifice which will be well rewarded when work on the Shackleton Museum is completed. It is anticipated that the Museum should be ready for opening in the summer of 2025. Within the next few weeks work will start on assembling the glass iceberg shaped extension to the rear of the Town Hall. Before that work commences the ship’s cabin in which the Kilkea-born Polar explorer Ernest Shackleton died, will be brought from Letterfrack, Co. Galway and positioned on the first floor of the Town Hall building. It will be transported in a protective casing which will remain in place until building work in the Town Hall is completed. Another important exhibit which in time will be moved into the building is a full scale replica of the James Caird boat which the three Irishmen, Shackleton, Tom Crean and Tim McCarthy with three other companions travelled over 800 miles across the Weddell Sea in the first stage of a heroic and successful attempt to save the lives of 22 of their companions who were marooned on Elephant Island. On Monday evening, 15th April, the last meeting of the current directors of the Shackleton Museum was held in the Clanard Court Hotel. What had started out 41 years ago as a local Museum Society with ambitions to open a small local museum in Athy has evolved as a museum of national, if not international importance. Many of those volunteers in the early years of the Museum Society have passed on. Amongst them were the late Pat Mulhall, Bertie Doyle, Ken Sales, Noreen Ryan and Tommy Pender who are remembered with gratitude and fondness for the part they played in a magnificent local project. Kildare County Council will hereafter take over the management and control of the Shackleton Museum, thereby ensuring its financial viability and stability which could not be guaranteed long term by volunteers. To all those men and women who have given of their time, expertise and energy to making Athy Heritage Centre and later the Shackleton Museum a rousing success I extend my heartfelt thanks. Side by side with the Shackleton Museum stands the Shackleton Autumn School, now in its 24th year, which has made a huge contribution to the acceptance at international level of the Shackleton interest in Athy. The voluntary committee members who have organised the Autumn School in recent years and made it the most popular annual Polar event anywhere in the world will continue to do so. What is being created amongst the hallowed walls of Athy’s 18th century Town Hall is a reminder to all of us of what can be achieved when ambition, initiative and will to do come together in locals willing to work to improve their own place. I wrote recently of the neglectful, almost derelict state of many buildings on our high street and bemoaned the absence of a local association ready to tackle the resulting problems. The success of the Shackleton Museum demonstrates what can be achieved by local people coming together. Is it too much to hope that people in business in Athy would come together to help rescue, before it is too late, the commercial heart of our proud town? The next meeting of the newly formed Athy’s History Society will be held in the local Community Arts Centre on Thursday, 9th May commencing at 7.30pm. The meeting will elect officers of the society for the coming year and a discussion will take place on the future of both Whites Castle and Woodstock Castle. The appointment of the Bishop of Achonry, Paul Dempsey, as second auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, alongside Bishop Donal Dunne, is wonderful news for Athy where Bishop Dempsey grew up. We can look forward to Athy youngsters being confirmed by a man who as a young boy attended our local schools. He will be following in the footsteps of Cardinal Paul Cullen who was born in Prospect House near Ballitore and who performed confirmations in Athy, although he attended the Quaker School in Ballitore at a time when there were then no schools in Athy such as we have today.

Athy's Town Hall and its redevelopment as Shackleton Museum

The ongoing redevelopment of Athy’s Town Hall seems to have puzzled some local residents who were unaware of the plans for the Shackleton Museum. This lack of knowledge probably owes much to the ever increasing lack of support for print journalism as the story of the museum has featured several times over the years in the local newspapers. Athy’s Town Hall like Whites Castle is an iconic building whose importance as part of the town’s built heritage has not always been appreciated. The Nationalist newspaper reported on the 7th November 1980 that “Athy Urban District Council have passed a motion to demolish the building and replace it with a modern structure”. This had followed the Council members consideration some years earlier of a motion to demolish the Town Hall so as to provide extra car parking facilities in the town centre. Happily, the building which was admittedly in a sad state of semi dereliction at that time was saved following the intervention of the local branch of An Taisce. A subsequent Community Employment Scheme helped restore the building which continued to be used for a time as the town’s Council offices, the local Fire Brigade station and later still as the town library. The local Museum Society, which was founded in 1983, was allowed to occupy in or about 1985 what was once the caretaker’s living quarters in the Town Hall. With the subsequent departure of the Fire Station to newly built facilities at Woodstock Street, the Museum Society took over the entire ground floor of the Town Hall. Further expansion of the Museum then designated as a Heritage Centre followed with the transfer of the Town Library to the magnificent former Dominican Church. The growing national and international success of the Shackleton Autumn School organised by volunteers working from the Heritage Centre sparked the idea of a Museum dedicated to one of the world’s most famous polar explorers Ernest Shackleton who was born in nearby Kilkea. The work which is now being undertaken at the Town Hall is the final stage of several years of planning to give the town of Athy a Museum of national importance. Building work which will last until mid-2025 will give us quite an extraordinary architectural addition to the town’s built heritage. Athy Museum Society first formed in 1983 and which later established Athy Heritage Company Limited to operate the Heritage Centre will be soon dissolved. It is intended to call a public meeting open to all persons interested in Athy’s history and local history generally to formalise the setting up of Athy’s History Society. Details of that meeting, venue and the date will be published shortly. The current members of the Board of Directors of Athy Heritage Company Limited, all of whom are volunteers will, with two exceptions, resign from the Board in the very near future. The new Board of Directors will be nominated by Kildare County Council and thereafter the Shackleton Museum will be effectively operated subject to the control of the County’s Local Authority. There have been many persons who over the years volunteered their time and expertise to the running of the original Museum and the Heritage Centre. It would perhaps be invidious to name names for fear of leaving out anyone who contributed at any time over the last forty years to the museum’s success. However, a heartfelt thanks must go to everybody in Athy and elsewhere who have made a contribution to the ongoing success of the Heritage Centre/Shackleton Museum and the Shackleton Autumn School. With the resignation of all but two of the current Board of Directors, I too will be stepping down as Chairman of the Board. It has taken forty years to get the museum story to this point almost as long as it took to get the outer relief road which opened last year. Writing of one iconic building in our town I have to acknowledge that the most important building in Athy, having regard to its links with past historical events and its location in the heart of the town, is Whites Castle. While it continues in private ownership there is no indication that there are plans in place to protect and conserve the building structure. Having regard to its current condition concern must be expressed at the possibility of losing Athy’s most widely known and distinctive building. I am reminded of the comments made by the Kildare County Council C.E.O. at the recent opening of the new library in Naas when she described the Naas Town Hall as ‘an iconic building at the heart of Naas being given a new use while preserving its history and heritage.’ If there is any other building in the entire county of Kildare fitting that description it is surely Athy’s Whites Castle. I have sought over many years to interest the former Athy Town Council and Kildare County Council in acquiring Whites Castle. Placing it in public ownership offers the best possibility of conserving the building and allowing it to be developed and used for the benefit of the public. Now that local authorities have greater responsibility than ever before for matters of culture and heritage, surely Kildare County Council should now seriously consider what it can do to ensure the future of the 600-year-old building at the heart of our town. The history lecture series in the Community Arts Centre, Woodstock Street recommences on Tuesday, 13th February at 8.00 p.m. with a lecture by Adrian Kane whose book on Trade Unions was recently published. Adrian, who is an officer with S.I.P.T.U., is a native of Athy and has been based and working in Cork for a number of years. His father Paddy was an active community worker during his lifetime here in Athy and one of the founding members of Athy Credit Union. Admission is free to what promises to be a stimulating evening.

The Death of Manager

The news of Margaret Walsh’s sad death was an unexpected blow to her family and friends and those of us associated with the Athy Heritage Centre/Shackleton Museum where Margaret was Manager for the last 19 years or so. I interviewed Margaret and several other candidates for that position, not having met her or known her previously. She was a very private person but at the same time she was someone who endeared herself to the Museum visitors and especially those who came each year to the annual Shackleton Autumn School. That event held over an October weekend since 2001 was I believe in its fourth year when Margaret joined the Heritage Centre. For the years that followed Margaret became the contact person for the Irish and overseas visitors who travelled to Athy for the Autumn School. The high regard those visitors had for Margaret was borne out by many messages of sympathy received from America, Norway and our near neighbour the UK following her death. Margaret, who was ill for the past two years, tried valiantly to keep to the high work standards she had set for herself in previous years. Her work in securing official Museum status for Athy Heritage Centre in 2016 was of the highest quality and enabled the Heritage Centre to move ahead of many other local centres/museums. It is tragic that Margaret passed away the same week as the building contractor moved into Athy’s Town Hall to start the long-awaited development of the Shackleton Museum. Margaret was part of the team that worked so hard over several years to secure the successful transition of the local Heritage Centre to become a museum of national, if not, international importance. The Shackleton Museum when opened will represent the third stage of a development which started with the opening of a one room local museum which was manned voluntarily for three hours every Sunday. Forty years have now passed since that first Sunday opening. The subsequent opening of the Heritage Centre in the Town Hall by Minister Charlie McCreevy in June 1998 followed on the appointment of the Centre’s first Manager in November of the previous year. Mark McLoughlin from Kildare town was the Centre’s first mManager and he remained in that position until January 2001. Margaret O’Riordan was next to take up the roll as Heritage Centre Manager and it was during her tenure that the Shackleton Autumn School was started. Margaret O’Riordan left to join the staff of University College Galway in early 2004 and following interviews the same year Margaret Walsh from Monasterevin took over as Manager. Managing the Heritage Centre with limited funds and very few staff was a difficult job. However, Margaret and her staff together with the Board members, all of whom were and still are volunteers, did an excellent job over many years. The success which is today marked by the multi-million euro redevelopment of the Town Hall building owes much to the work of everyone involved in the Heritage Centre project over many years. Margaret Walsh’s contribution and dedication was acknowledged and recognised by the staff members, Board members, volunteers and Shackleton Autumn School attendees who attended her funeral Mass in Monasterevin and later walked with the funeral cortege to Margaret’s last place of rest with her deceased parents. Margaret was the public face of the Shackleton Autumn School and she built a rapport with the many visitors to the annual October event which was reflected in the many messages of sympathy received from abroad and throughout Ireland following her death. Once such message from Northern Ireland read:- ‘For almost 20 years we have been regular attenders at the Shackleton Autumn School and Margaret was always our friendly gateway to the weekend. She dealt with all our queries and bookings in a calm, efficient, friendly and familiar manner and always made us so welcome when we arrived for the weekend.’ Another annual visitor writing from England wrote to me. ‘The Autumn School will not seem the same without Margaret; she was a special lady.’ Margaret fell ill approximately two years ago but being the private person she was she sought to continue working. Just the day before the last Shackleton Autumn School was to start, she received an urgent call to return to hospital but despite her worsening condition she insisted on attending for work the following day with the opening of the Autumn School. The next day at the school dinner I shared a table with Margaret and there was little hint of what lay ahead as we talked of the Museum redevelopment work which was to start the following week. Margaret would not live to see the commencement of the work. She had played her part as did many others in fulfilling a dream which in time to come will make Athy and the Shackleton Museum an important part of the worldwide polar network. Margaret will be sadly missed by us all. Ar dhéis Dé go raibh a anam.

Work starts next week on the Shackleton Museum

The contractor appointed to undertake the development of the Shackleton Museum will start work within the next week. It is expected that the construction work and the fitting out of the museum will take approximately one and a half years. The internal modifications and external alterations to the Town Hall building will be the third time that the building has undergone changes over the last 300 years. The first market house built in or about 1720 contained on the ground floor level an open arcaded structure intended for use by market dealers during Athy’s market days. The first floor housed the offices of the Borough Council and the courtroom where the Petty Sessions and Quarter Sessions were held. That small courtroom was where Wolfe Tone as a newly qualified barrister attended the Athy Quarter Sessions. It was also the courtroom where the notorious hanging judge, Lord Norbury, sat on a few occasions. The original relatively small Town Hall was extended at a later unknown date to occupy a larger footprint between the houses in the front square and the Church of England church at its rear. Early at the start of the 20th century an additional storey was added to the front of the town hall and a Lawrence photograph taken some time before 1900 shows the town hall façade before it was the subject of that work. The Town Hall, which the members of Athy Urban District Council considered demolishing in the 1970s in order to provide extra car parking in the town centre, survived largely due to the efforts of the local branch of An Taisce. That organisation helped save one of the most important buildings in the town at a time when strange decisions were being taken by local Councils throughout Ireland. Athy is fortunate to have a town centre which is graced by a large open square in front of the 18th century Town Hall. Another quite unusual and architecturally beautiful building is the Courthouse located in the back square. Erected a few years after the devastating famine of the 1840s it served for a very short time as the town’s corn exchange. It now houses the town’s District Court and the quarterly Circuit Court. The Courthouse and the Town Hall, both within a short distance of each other, present a superb reminder of the value and importance of Athy’s built heritage. It is expected that while work on the Town Hall proceeds a start will soon be made on regenerating Emily Square as part of a public realm improvement scheme. What is proposed, is not to my knowledge finally decided. When it comes we must expect a re-designed town plaza which hopefully will add appreciatively to our enjoyment of our town centre. During the week I had an unexpected telephone call from a businessman well known nationally whom I had never met. He questioned me about the commercial life of the town and expressed a view that with the opening of the bypass an opportunity now presents itself for businesses on the main streets to grow. He wanted to know how the local Chamber of Commerce was doing and was surprised to learn that Athy, like other towns in County Kildare, no longer had a local Chamber of Commerce. His surprise at that news later prompted me to question why the local commercial interest in the town do not come together to agree on coordinated action for improving businesses in Athy. The town needs a positive and proactive input from the shopkeepers of the town and there is surely amongst the young shopkeepers of Leinster Street and Duke Street the will, the energy and the initiative to recover Athy’s long lost title of ‘the best market town in Leinster’. The local Lions Club book fair scheduled for the A.R.C.H. (formerly Dreamland ballroom) on next Saturday, 18th November, is yet another praiseworthy initiative by the Club, which recently organised the never to be forgotten concert in St. Michael’s Parish Church. The Lions Club, with a small but energetic membership, has been responsible for organising a number of events which have attracted a lot of support from the local community, while adding enormously to the recreational and cultural life of the town. The success of the Lions Club is a reminder of what the business people of Athy could achieve if they came together to act cooperatively for the benefit of the town. The Book Fair will host a number of book dealers from around the country, with a stock of books of all types from the rare and expensive to the out of print, as well as interesting books of lower value. The Lions Club book shop will have a stall dedicated to the sale of children’s books, while copies of my own books, including Volume IV of Eye on Athy’s Past, will also be on sale that day.

Visit of Mensun Bound and Colin Teague to Athy's Shackleton Museum

The Shackleton Museum in Athy recently played host to two interesting visitors from abroad. Both of them were drawn to the Shackleton exhibit which remains the only permanent exhibition devoted to Shackleton anywhere in the world. First was Colin Teague whom came on behalf of ‘Reach the World’ which is a United States based educational organisation which uses a virtual platform to support educational projects all over the world. One of their current projects is linked to the forthcoming search for Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance. The Endurance was the ship Shackleton used for the planned traverse of the Antarctic in 1914. As many of us will know the ship got trapped in the ice in late December 1914 and Shackleton and his men were to remain marooned on their ship until the following October. In late October 1915 the Endurance was enveloped in ice, later crushed by the ice and ultimately sank. What followed thereafter was the wonderous escape from the Antarctic led by Shackleton without any loss of life. The rescue of Shackleton’s men from Elephant Island was marked by the unveiling of the statue of Shackleton in Emily Square, Athy on the centenary of this event on the 31st of August 2016. With the approaching centenary of Shackleton’s death in January 2022 ‘Reach the World’ sees this as an opportunity to bring Shackleton’s life, adventures and his leadership into the classroom. They have also been inspired by the planned expedition to the Antarctic in February 2022 to locate the wreck of the ship Endurance. The leader of that expedition, ‘Endurance 2022’, Mensun Bound recently made a special trip to see the Shackleton artifacts in our local Museum. A native of the Falkland Islands, Mensun is one of the foremost Marine Archaeologist’s in the world. Among his many projects are the excavation of a 6th Century BC shipwreck near Tuscany and the discovery of the second world war German battleship, Graf Spee, in the River Plate in 1997. In this quest for Endurance he will lead an international team of marine experts, environmental scientist, and engineers who will employ the latest in marine technology to search for and hopefully locate the Endurance. The ‘Endurance 2022’ expedition will depart from South Africa in February of next year and will have a limited window of opportunity of no more than twelve days in the Antarctic’s Weddell Sea to find the Endurance. The environment in which they will be working will be incredibly challenging and they have no guarantee as to its likely success. Mensun himself believes that with the wealth of expertise on his team he is confident that they can find the ship. As part of the expedition they will be linking in with ‘Reach the World’ to talk to students about the Endurance, about Shackleton and also about the heroic age of exploration in the Antarctic. Discussions will include environmental issues in Antarctica and will hopefully open up debate and research into science, geography, history and politics in classrooms all over the world ‘Reach the World’ has created a dedicated web page to allow students to follow the expedition and will cover a variety of topics which are very relevant to today’s students such as social studies, geography, English, biology, maths, and technology. It is an interesting and innovative approach to exploration with the emphasis placed on engaging with educators and children. Colin Teague himself is seeking expressions of interest from primary and secondary schools in Athy and has invited any teachers who are interested in linking their classes into the project to contact him by email at colin@reachtheworld.org. Teachers can also register their class or schools at www.reachtheworld.org. It is hoped that the schools in Athy will become part of this very worthwhile project.