Irish National Heritage Park

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Reconstruction of an Irish hunter-gatherer hut--Mesolithic period Mesolithic Hut.jpg
Reconstruction of an Irish hunter-gatherer hut—Mesolithic period
A reconstructed Neolithic farmstead from ~6,000 years ago Neolithic farmstead and house.jpg
A reconstructed Neolithic farmstead from ~6,000 years ago

The Irish National Heritage Park is an open-air museum near Wexford, Ireland, which tells the story of human settlement in Ireland from the Mesolithic period up to the Norman Invasion in 1169. It was opened to the public in 1987.

Contents

The park contains 16 reconstructed dwellings, including a Mesolithic camp, a Neolithic farmstead, a portal dolmen, a cyst grave, a stone circle, a medieval ringfort, a monastic site, crannóg, and a Viking harbour. It covers 13.7 hectares (34 acres) of parkland, estuary trails, and wetland forest. It is a nonprofit organisation and all of its receipts from admissions, restaurant, and shop sales go back into the maintenance of the park. [1] [2] [3]

Portal Dolmen Reconstructed Dolmen.jpg
Portal Dolmen

Courses and events

The park runs a selection of courses throughout the year ranging from blacksmithing and wood carving, to stone masonry and mounted combat. One of the goals of the park is to bring traditional skills back into the public. [4] The Trials of Tuan are a set of activities for children. [5] The park also offers guided tours led by costumed guides, as well as audio guides or self-guided options. The guided tour lasts about one and a half hours and ends at the reconstructed Viking harbour.

Carrig

Among the sites in the park is an archaeological excavation at one of the first Norman fortifications in Ireland, on the hill of Carrig, overlooking the river Slaney. The park partnered with the IAFS (Irish Archaeology Field School) to excavate and research the site of the fortification. The site contains ringwork, burnt wooden structures, and a later stone castle. A town grew around the castle and existed until the 1300s. [6] [7]

Ringfort Medieval Ringfort.jpg
Ringfort

References

  1. ↑ "Irish National Heritage Park". frommers.com. Retrieved 24 March 2014.
  2. ↑ "Irish National Heritage Park". lonelyplanet.com. Retrieved 24 March 2014.
  3. ↑ "IRISH NATIONAL HERITAGE PARK REVIEW". fodors.com. Retrieved 24 March 2014.
  4. ↑ "courses". The Irish National Heritage Park. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
  5. ↑ "Museums of Ireland". Ireland. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
  6. ↑ Flood, W. H. Grattan (1914). "The Diocesan Manuscripts of Ferns during the Rule of Bishop Sweetman (1745-1786)". Archivium Hibernicum. 3: 113–123. doi:10.2307/25485472. ISSN   0044-8745. JSTOR   25485472.
  7. ↑ Eogan, George (January 1975). "An Eighteenth-Century Find of Four Late Bronze Age Gold Discs near Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland". Metropolitan Museum Journal. 10: 23–34. doi:10.2307/1512697. ISSN   0077-8958. JSTOR   1512697.

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