Engaging with communities and unlocking the unique story of the properties within its care lies at the heart of the Irish Heritage Trust’s ten-year history, writes Sandra Andrea O’Connell
Just a few months after the Irish Heritage Trust had been set up in 2006, newly appointed CEO Kevin Baird was shown through a rusty gate into a walled garden that had not been touched in more than 50 years, just behind the formal gardens at Fota House, Cork. ‘I did not know what to expect when the key turned in the gate – it was an extraordinary scene, like the forgotten garden in the novel The Secret Garden’, recalls Baird. Glasshouses had collapsed with trees growing through their skeleton roofs, paths and beds were completely overgrown,and brambles and ivy had taken over.
Mark Ewart visits the studio of Allihies-based artist Rachel Parry who transforms natural matter into mesmerizing art.
Kim Haughton’s portraits, on view now at the National Museum Collins Barracks, reflect on Ireland’s multi-layered society at the end of the first century of this nation state, writes Stephanie McBride
