2016 Awards

Heritage Hero

The 2016 Heritage Hero was awarded to Matt Farrell. Matt Farrell has spent a lifetime involved in community development in Edgeworthstown. He established Edgeworthstown District Development Association and the Edgeworth Society in 1994. Since then the organisation has gone on to acquiring an 1840 Schoolhouse and the local Fair Green from the Edgeworth Estate. Subsequently both were developed into cultural and recreational facilities to serve the local community. He was instrumental in the building of a state of the art Childcare Facility that currently caters for 150 children and provides local employment.

Matt is the driving force behind the Edgeworth Heritage project which involved the establishment of the Edgeworth Heritage trail which takes in Edgeworthstown House and Walled Garden, St. John's Rectory with its Wilde and Goldsmith connections and St.Johns. Graveyard & Church. This took years of hard work in the gathering of research and the conservation and preservation of the graveyard, the Rectory, the Schoolhouse and the Fair Green. It also involved ten years of fundraising selling lotto tickets every Saturday night.

Edgeworthstown is now at the point of making a major breakthrough in the area of cultural tourism and is in discussions with Failte Ireland to launch the project under Ireland's Ancient East brand. In 2015 the work of the Association was recognised by the Co-operation Ireland by being awarded the prize for Best Community Group in Ireland. Most if not all of these achievements can be put down to the work of Matt.

Hidden Heritage Award

Event: The Bucks & the Thrashers
Organiser: The LEAP Project in Easkey Co. Sligo


Runners-up

Event: Dungarvan Shopfront Heritage Trail
Organiser: Dungarvan Shopfront Heritage

Event: Queer Republic of Cork
Organiser: Cork LGBT Archive

Reaching Out Award

Event: The War before the Great War
Organiser: The Irish Workhouse Centre in Portuma, Co. Galway

Runners-up


Event: John Saul Horticulturalist from Castlemartyr to the White House
Organiser: Castlemartyr John Saul Appreciation Society in Co. Cork

Event: Tunnel Vision: Going Underground at Casino Marino
Organiser: Casino Marino

Cool for Kids Award

Event: Footsteps in the Forest
Organiser: Newry, Mourne and Down District Council and Ring of Gullion Landscape Partnership


Runners-up

Event: Discovering Biodiversity in a Community Garden
Organiser: Global Action Plan Ireland

Event: Stick Sunday
Organiser: Down to Earth Forest School in Knocknacarra, Co. Galway