Enniscrone whale is hanging from a museum ceiling

HAS anyone any idea about dismantling whales from ceilings? If you do, the National Museum of Ireland wants to hear from you.

The unique undertaking, which it is hoped can be carried out later this year, involves the delicate job of dismantling two whale skeletons from the ceiling - one of which comes from Enniscrone.

The Natural History museum, located on Merrion Square in Dublin 2, has put out to tender the project, which is believed to be part of a wider effort to replace an old Victorian roof and provide an extension to its ‘Dead Zoo’ area.

The skeleton of a juvenile humpback whale, stranded on the west Sligo coast in 1893, is one of two skeletons suspended from the ceiling in the museum. The other is that of a fin whale, found in Cork’s Bantry Bay in 1862.

The museum, which first opened in 1857, has been the subject of other renovation projects in recent times. In 2007, it was closed for a period due to the collapse of an old staircase.

It attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, with wide-ranging exhibits documenting various aspects of the country’s natural history.

There are three other National Museum of Ireland locations, which exhibit other parts of our history: the Archeology museum is situated beside Leinster House on Kildare Street in Dublin 2; Decorative Arts and History is at Collins Barracks in Dublin 7; while the museum of Country Life is based at Turlough in county Mayo.