Castlemary Local Heritage Trail – 6th Class
Sixth class pupils in Scartleigh National School have recently completed a heritage project on their local area. This project is now entered into a county-wide Local Heritage Project run by Cllr Kieran Mc Carthy. In this article Sixth class pupils recount their experiences of partaking in this project.
Scartleigh National School is located in Saleen, a small village between Midleton and Aghada. This area is rich in local history and the locals are proud of their local heritage. We decided to produce a local heritage trail that we could share with our school mates. We based our trail on a privately owned estate called Castlemary. This estate is not open to the general public but the school has permission to walk on the lands.
Our research and fieldwork began in September. This included: interviews; fieldtrips; Internet searches and library visits.
We went on several fieldtrips to the estate and observed great views of Cork Harbour; Whitegate oil refinery and the Round Tower of Cloyne. We closely examined built structures such as Famine walls, a dolmen and Castlemary House (which was burned in 1920).
Overtime we uncovered a vast richness of local heritage. For example Castlemary was home to Cynthia Longfield; a world famous dragonfly expert. We soon became fascinated with this scientist. In order to promote the project we constructed a model of the heritage trail. This was displayed to parents and other classes in the school.
In December we produced a DVD of the trail and the other classes in the school were invited to premieres of this DVD. This was a challenging part of the project but we really enjoyed filming.
We are now working hard to promote our research. We really enjoyed working in small groups on this project.
The trail is now well established for future generations of pupils and we hope that this will keep local interest in heritage alive for many generations to come.
Tadgh Gilroy and Conor LaMere, Sixth class Scartleigh National School.
