Society to meet only outdoors for now

AS we emerge from the lockdown enforced through the Covid-19 pandemic, Charleville Heritage Society are looking to the future fully in the knowledge that they will not be able to hold their monthly meetings, as heretofore.

This will call for more imaginative thinking regarding how to keep the interest up in the Society’s activities, as indoor events will not be possible for the foreseeable future. Society chairperson Evelyn O’Keeffe says that this subject was discussed at a recent meeting and it was decided that we would hold a series of outdoor meetings in the form of historical walks, when it is deemed safe to do so.

“We will of course have to observe the social distancing guidelines and we will be asking those who attend to do likewise” said Evelyn.

It is understood that the first of these walks will take place, probably in July, around the circuit of the Town Park, and the history of the park itself will be explained, and that of the places that may seen from the walkway, as people move around it.

Six members of the Society qualified last year to be tour guides after undertaking a course promoted by the Clonmel based Munster Vales tourist body, which took place in the walled towns of Buttevant, Kilmallock and Fethard in Co. Tipperary. Each person on the course was given a segment of a walk in the different towns in order to give them experience of addressing a group as they moved around the different sites.

It is expected that other walks will then be undertaken in different areas of the town and the history of the area will be explained as the group moves along the street or district where the walk is taking place.

Meanwhile, the Society members are still awaiting word from Cork County Council regarding the availability of the upper storey of the Market House (the former Courthouse) for a museum for Charleville. Cllr Ian Doyle is liaising between the Council and the Society, and it is expected that there will be a development in this regard in the not too distant future.

The Society has been given a number of artefacts by local people, who wish to have them preserved, and they also have their collection of story-boards relating the history of the town, and its prominent historical citizens, which will be put on view for the general public to enjoy when they get the permission of the Council to do so.