Wide variety of events in store for Ballintubber Heritage Weekend
Ann Battle cooking breakfast the traditional way at Ballintubber Heritage Festival last year.
A number of events have been lined up for this year’s Ballintubber Heritage Weekend, which is underway this weekend.
This morning, Saturday, archaeologist Mary Timoney will hold a talk on graveyards at 11 a.m.. Then at noon the official opening of the weekend will take place.
Throughout Saturday there will be castle tours, which will provide the opportunity to observe the annual dig, with archaeological finds being displayed in the old schoolhouse.
Street stalls will be in operation from noon until 3 p.m... New to this year’s heritage weekend is the fancy dress dog show.
Sunday begins with the Cemetery Mass at 11.30 p.m.. Traditional grass cutting with a scythe will also take place on Sunday, along with a heritage trail that finishes up in Willsgrove Hall.
A graveyard mapping project will be unveiled after Cemetery Mass. Two large map boards, numbering each of the graves, will be displayed, and will also be published online. The maps are the culmination of five years of work carried out by Castles in Communities, anthropologists and historians.
Gail Murray, secretary of Ballintubber Tidy Towns and Heritage spoke about the work that has gone into the graveyard mapping project. “We’ve linked in with the anthropologists and historians and they are experts in data collection. It’s been a massive project, we’ve seen the drafts of the map board, and it’s all ready to be unveiled,” she said.
The tradition of US students visiting Ballintubber is now in its tenth year, and the Tidy Towns secretary spoke about how they have adapted to the rural Roscommon lifestyle.
“We have 45 students from two colleges in the US, archaeologists, anthropologists, historians – a combination of different faculties. They have been here three weeks, and are here until the first week in August.” So far the students have enjoyed their trip.
Students often trace their roots to Ireland with the help of genealogy experts, with one student even discovering her ancestors were buried in the graveyard at Ballintubber.
Gail encourages everyone to visit Ballintubber this weekend where there will be plenty of entertainment on offer.
