Kilbarron Castle
The Heritage Council has donated €5,000 for a conservation study on Kilbarron Castle in Creevy, near Rossnowlagh, home of Franciscan friar, Brother Micheal O Cleirigh, the principal of the Four Masters of Donegal who drafted annals which tell the history of Ireland from the earliest times.
The funding was awarded to Creevy & District Community Development Cooperative Society, just weeks before the first Summer School to honour O Cleirigh who was born at Kilbarron Castle in 1590.
The O Cleirigh Summer School on May 17 at Rossnowlagh will be the first in what organisers hope to establish as an annual event.
Molly Reynolds, who helped secure the Heritage Council grant for the cooperative society and who is also a member of committee organising the Summer School, said: “It’s a long-held belief of mine that something needed to be done to preserve the memory of a local man who gave us so much insight into Irish history.”
In a separate development Donegal electoral area councillors have donated €2,000 from their development fund to the O Cleirigh Summer School to explore its potential development.
A closing dinner for the school and concert at the Sand House Hotel in Rossnowlagh will be preceded by a series of events including a presentation of art-work by schoolchildren of the area.
There will an awards ceremony in the O Cleirigh Hall in the Franciscan Friary for paintings by the children of the imagined image of Micheal O Cleirigh of whom no authentic pictorial record of any kind is retained in historical archives.
There will be a guided tour to Kilbarron Castle remains.
Following a Mass in memory of Micheal O Cleirigh at the Franciscan Friary, events will be held in Rossnowlagh at the La Verna Centre, the O Cleirigh Hall, and a School Club at the Sand House Hotel.
Speakers will include Dr Marc Caball, senior lecturer in UCD School of History and Archives who will talk on gaelic learning; early modern historian Jeffrey Cox who will talk of the Plantation of Ulster; Dr Joseph McMahon, secretary of the Franciscan Province of Ireland, who will discuss Franciscan Life; and Dr John McCafferty, Director of the Micheal O Cleirigh Institute(a partnership between UCD and the Irish Franciscans) who will talk on the Franciscan in Exile.
The key address, a Eanna MacCuinegain Memorial Lecture, will be delivered by Dr Bernadette Cunningham, librarian in the Royal Irish Academy Library, and author of an award-winning book on the Annals of The Four Masters.
The first Micheal O Cleirigh School is a partnership between a local Rossnowlagh organising committee, the Micheal O Cleirigh Institute and the Irish Franciscans.
Information about the School can be found on the Internet www.mocleirigh.ie or on Facebook Micheal O Cleirigh School or from 0873863681.
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