Just some of the large scale wall hangings created by primary school children from across County Fermanagh as part of the Talking Townlands schools programme, where children had the opportunity to explore thier local history and heritage through the study of townlands.
Primary school children from across County Fermanagh have been exploring their local history and heritage through the study of townlands with an innovative and unique learning experience.
Talking Townlands, a schools programme devised and delivered by Fermanagh District Council, brought together over 300 Primary six pupils to discover the origins and meaning of their townlands. The townland is a form of land division unique to Ireland dating back to the 12th century.
With support from visual artist, Genevieve Murphy, pupils brought their townlands and learning to life with the creation of large scale wall hangings to visually reflect the derivations of the specific townland names relating to their school.
The wall hangings were displayed yesterday for the first time at a special celebration event in the Killyhevlin Hotel, Enniskillen. The celebration was attended by children and teachers who participated in the programme, Chairman of Fermanagh District Council, Councillor Thomas O’Reilly, representatives from local history groups and Fermanagh District Councillors. The wall hangings will be on public display at Enniskillen Library from 20-31 March.
Speaking about the education programme, Catherine Scott, Fermanagh County Museum, explains:
"Townland names, like any name, tell us so much about our heritage. More often than not a townland name will reflect an element of that area’s landscape or history, geographical features, family names, trees and plants common to an area, ancient buildings or even stone monuments.
"Children from schools involved were really keen to find out more about their school’s townland name and were particularly taken with researching their home address as well to find out just what their townland means."
There are approximately 64,000 townlands in Ireland, with over 9,000 in Northern Ireland. County Fermanagh has more than one fifth of these, with 2,078 townlands in the county.
"School children from Holy Trinity Primary School, Enniskillen, discovered the townland Cornagrade relates to McGrade’s Eel Weir and the neighbouring townland of Kilmacormick takes its origins from Mc McCormick’s Church. With support from Genevieve, the wall hangings produced by the children reflect townland names from across County Fermanagh in a beautifully visual, innovative and informative way," Catherine added.
Members of the public are invited to visit the townlands exhibition at Enniskillen Library to view the pieces of art work and large scale wall hangings and learn more about townlands and their local heritage. The wall hangings will be returned to participating schools and on permanent public display within the school building from April.
