Wonderful European win for Ceide Fields and our own Mary MacKenna
WHAT a wonderful win for Mayo’s Ceide Fields and Drogheda of course!
The Office of Public Works (OPW) Heritage Site, the Céide Fields, has been awarded the prestigious Carlo Scarpa international landscape award for Gardens in an announcement made in Milan. Every year the Italian Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche awards the International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens – to attract attention to a site which is particularly rich in natural, historical and creative values. The award will be accompanied by an exhibition in Treviso, a book and a TV documentary which forms part of an awareness raising campaign, a fundamental element of the prize. The formal prize-giving ceremony will be held in Italy on 12th May.
The story of Céide Fields, the most extensive Stone Age monument in the world, is truly a fascinating one. In the 1930s Patrick Caulfield, a local school master in North Mayo noticed lines of stones in the ground when cutting turf and realised that they must pre-date the bog. However it wasn’t until 40 years later his son, Professor Seamus Caulfield an archaeologist began excavating the site with his students to look for evidence of the community that lived there 5,000 years ago.
In 1990, the OPW worked with Seamus and the local community to build the award-winning visitor and exhibition centre. The building is designed around a four and a half thousand year old pine tree.
There are now 30,000 plus annual visitors to the Centre but it still remains somewhat of a hidden gem.
‘ This award will propel this wonderful heritage site, which is older than the pyramids, onto the world stage and bring it to a wider audience to enjoy and cherish for future generations,’ Minister Kevin Boxer Moran stated.
So the Drogheda link - Mary MacKenna of course. Mary was the design team leader on the Ceide Fields project and what a job she did on the place.
One of the foremost architects in the OPW, she was also behind a £25 million extension to Leinster House in the late 90s. Mary also worked on the National Famine Memorial in the shadow of Croagh Patrick in Murrisk, Co. Mayo.
From Sunnyside Villas, Mary attended Donacarney National School where her mother Marion was Principal. She then went to St. Louis Convent in Carrickmacross before taking up architectural studies in Bolton Street DIT, gaining her diploma there and her degree from Trinity College.
When she qualified in 1978, she was among the youngest architects in the country.