Councillors hunt for a spot to put an archive of Skerries history on public display

Tom Reilly walked briskly down a small staircase, through an art gallery, pushed through a door marked “Private”, and climbed another set of stairs.

The place is a maze, said Reilly, the manager of Ardgillan Castle. “So you move quickly when you know where you’re going.”

He stopped at a door on the first floor, with a sign outside saying “Skerries Historical Society”.

Inside were wall-to-wall archives documenting Skerries’ past. Folder boxes stuffed with old copies of the Skerries News. Grey boxes labelled “Photographs” and “Artefacts”.

Shelves of old record books for the boys’ and girls’ national schools, the Skerries Sailing Club and the Debating Society.

The Skerries Historical Society has been collecting and preserving it all, says local Green Party Councillor Karen Power. “The problem at the moment is there’s nowhere to display this,” she said.

The society is running out of space in the room, Power said at the council’s Balbriggan/Rush-Lusk/Swords Area Committee on 14 March.

She put forward a motion asking if Fingal County Council’s chief executive, AnnMarie Farrelly, could identify a location in the seaside town to set up a history and heritage museum.

Skerries already has several visitor attractions, like Skerries Mill, Ardgillan Castle and Bremore Castle, said Declan Power, a senior executive officer in the council’s Economic, Enterprise, Tourism & Cultural Development Department.

The first step might be to see if it could fit within one of those heritage sites, he said, before they look somewhere new.

Ardgillan Castle, an 18th-century country manor, is a bit out of town though. It sits atop a hilly demesne midway between Skerries and Balbriggan.

Councillors have ideas, they say, for a more suitable home.

Opening up the boxes

From time to time, the Skerries Historical Society has put some artefacts on show in the council-owned castle, says Reilly, as he looks around the room. “But that was a long, long time ago.”

He remembers an exhibition in 2002. “But they hadn’t done anything lately,” he says.

In more recent years, the society has received a lot of requests to see their collection by people living overseas, Power, the Green Party councillor, said on Tuesday evening.

“They’ve been from the UK, Australia, America, and they might have descended from Skerries and would love to come along to look at this,” she said.

But there isn’t any museum they can drop into with it all on show, she says. “It seems such a pity. We’re incredibly lucky in terms of the stuff in there, like photographs, memorabilia, records, meeting notes, but also stories and historical artefacts.”

At the area committee on 14 March, Karen Power asked about any possible new location, any buildings that already exist or are being developed.

“Or if the council needs to look for a particular premises that this could be done on, there is no heritage museum for the likes of these artefacts in Skerries,” she said.

Declan Power, the senior executive officer, said the council is willing to take a look at the collection and see if there is an opportunity to display some of the artefacts, he said.

But he didn’t want to commit to developing a dedicated Skerries heritage museum, he said.

Rather than searching for a new site, a better way might be to see if the collection could fit within current tourist offerings, he said.

Where could the collection go?

Ardgillan Castle currently has no space for permanent exhibitions, said Karen Power, on Tuesday.

The castle uses its exhibition space to promote artists and it wouldn’t be good to disrupt that, she said.

“If you took away that space, you would limit who the castle appeals to, and it gives a lot of people in the town, in Balbriggan and Loughshinny, a chance to exhibit their work,” she said.

A lot of the heritage sites flagged by the council are already at capacity, she said. “That’s amazing, because we do have a tourism draw in Skerries.”

“But despite that, we still have the Skerries Historical Society with a lot of these artefacts in boxes in Ardgillan Castle,” she says.

Ideally, the location would be more central to town than the castle, she says. “And it would have to be a place that is relevant to the heritage of Skerries.”

Skerries’ Carnegie Library, which is being refurbished and extended, may be one location, says Fine Gael Councillor Tom O’Leary.

“But we also have a property on Church Street, which the county council bought as a temporary library, and we’re struggling, looking around to find what we can do with it once the library moves back to the Carnegie building,” he said.

Fingal County Council did not respond to queries asking if it was considering any locations to host the collection.