Hennigan’s Heritage Centre

If you ever go to the west of Ireland, one of the most interesting places you could visit is Hennigan’s Heritage Centre in Killasser, between Swinford and Foxford in County Mayo. Shortly after opening in 1998, Hennigan’s Heritage Centre became one of the most interesting tourist attractions in the region. It was developed by Thomas and Catherine Hennigan; Thomas by then had made an enormous contribution to the discovery of archaeological monuments in Killasser and the surrounding area. As well as conceiving, planning and organising the project, he did most of the work himself.

Situated in idyllic unspoilt countryside overlooking Lake Creggaballagh, almost four kilometres from the N26 Swinford/ Foxford road, Hennigan’s Heritage incorporates a vernacular thatched house and an amazing centre with a wide and varied range of exhibits. The house which is typical of those in the region from the 1870s to well into the twentieth century consists of three rooms, a kitchen-living room in the middle and a bedroom at each end, with one window in each. There are two opposite doors at the end of the kitchen farthest from the hearth, with a half-door also in the front. A loft in the kitchen-sitting room was used to provide extra sleeping accommodation if required, or storage space, with access by means of a small ladder. The kitchen has an open hearth fireplace, containing a grate with an ash-pit underneath, ready for a turf fire. A black crane hangs overhead with crooks of various lengths, which were used for holding iron pots and kettles, with a mantelpiece over the fireplace and stone hobs on each side. There is a bed-outshot in the fireside corner, a small rectangular alcove in the back wall of the house, designed to accommodate a double bed and screened from view by a curtain. This room contains kitchen furniture, delph and other paraphernalia typical of the period. Furniture in the bedrooms is sparse and functional. The heritage-centre contains a wide collection of artefacts from rural life as well as from those of various crafts like those of the blacksmith and cobbler. There are also displays showing how people lived from the Stone Age to recent times and walls decorated with murals with various farming activities such as cutting turf, threshing corn, digging potatoes, saving hay and a fair day in Swinford. A school room has exhibits of books, copies and maps from the 1950s.

On September 18, 2008, a room in the centre was dedicated to the seventy-five people who lost their lives in the Maypole mining explosion which took place at Abram close to Wigan in Lancashire on August 18, 1908. Thirteen of those were from County Mayo, including one from Killasser. The ceremony was attended by a large crowd including Councillor Joseph Mellett, Cathaoirleach of Mayo County Council, Mayor Rhona Winkworth from Wigan, Joseph Kennedy, Manchester and Doocastle, the chairperson of Knock Airport Board, and Kevin Bourke, Mayo Emigration Liaison Committee. The room has a mural depicting the disaster, with a specially commissioned mural of the family of James McGrath from Kilgarriff, Charlestown, who lost his life in the disaster and left behind a widow and eight children.

Here at Hennigan’s Heritage Centre visitors can experience how people lived in a frugal self-sufficient community from the middle of the nineteenth century down to the 1950s, when work was hard and luxuries few. Visitors acquire an understanding of what life was like in rural Ireland in the pre-television era, without electricity, running water, central heating, refrigerators, deep-freezers, dishwashers, microwaves and other modern conveniences. A way of life which lasted for centuries disappeared from the 1950s. Visitors to Hennigan’s Heritage Centre have come from far and near and include two American ambassadors to Ireland, Michael J. O’Sullivan and James J. Kenny, whose grandfather came from nearby; German and Austrian Ministers for Agriculture; officials of the European Union; a Nobel Peace winner and a star from Coronation Street. Lech Walesa (1843-), Polish trade unionist, leader of the independent union, Solidarity, which challenged the dominant communist system, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and President of Poland from 1990 to 1995, visited Hennigan’s Heritage Centre on Saturday July 9, 2007, as part of his three day visit to County Mayo as a guest of Rehab. (He was a great friend of Pope John Paul II.) .

In the summer of 2006, popular Coronation Street actress, Anne Kirkbride, who played Deirdre Barlow in the soap, visited Hennigan’s Heritage Centre for a day to experience how her great-grandfather would have lived on an Irish farm in Loughrea prior to his emigration to England. She did it for a programme in the celebrity genealogy series You Don’t Know You’re Born on ITV, which was screened on Tuesday night January 23, 2007. Thomas and Catherine Hennigan’s Heritage Centre was discovered by the programme makers as part of a special trip around Ireland in search of an ideal location for part of the programme. If you ever go to the west of Ireland, there is one place you should go, and that is to Hennigan’s Heritage Centre to experience what life was like in the country during other times.

Bernard O'Hara's latest book entitled Killasser: Heritage of a Mayo Parish is now on sale in the USA and UK as a paperback book at amazon.com, amazon.co.uk or Barnes and Noble

It is also available as an eBook from the Apple iBookstore (for reading on iPad and iPhone), from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (Kindle & Kindle Fire) and from Barnesandnoble.com (Nook tablet and eReader).

An earlier publication, a concise biography of Michael Davitt, entitled Davitt by Bernard O’Hara published in 2006 by Mayo County Council , is now available as Davitt: Irish Patriot and Father of the Land League by Bernard O’Hara, which was published in the USA by Tudor Gate Press (www.tudorgatepress.com) and is available from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. It can be obtained as an eBook from the Apple iBookstore (for reading on iPad and iPhone), from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (Kindle & Kindle Fire) and from Barnesandnoble.com (Nook tablet and eReader).