Step into westmeaths past during heritage week

What’s the best thing about Heritage Week?

For most it’s the chance to get out and explore the wonderful landscape that’s right on our doorstep, as well as the chance to travel back in time and walk in the shoes of our ancestors.

There are so many events to choose from here in Westmeath, such as exploring the big houses at Belvedere and Tullynally, the importance of Mullingar and Moate's industrial past, or taking a stroll through the many great churches and see how they shaped our past and future at Coole, Kilbixy, Killucan, and Mullingar's All Saints Church and the Cathedral of Christ the King.

It might be a case of picking and choosing, so here are our best picks for the week ahead.

The ancient valley of Fore
At this year’s Heritage event in the ancient valley of Fore is Curses and Cures, on Saturday between noon and 4pm, you can travel back in time to medieval Ireland and meet the people that would have wandered through those handsome stones over the last 800 years.
“The village of Fore, without anything added, is brilliant, the abbey ruins, the mausoleum, the old church and graveyard, the seven wonders,” says organiser Una D’Arcy. Add to that our new 3.5km looped walk and amazing people from hundreds of years ago and you have a perfect day out.”
Visitors to Fore this Saturday can meet the Vicious Viking Ragnor and learn what ‘paying through the nose’ in taxes really means! They can get up close and personal to a Norman Knight, Godfrey d’Orsay just back from the Crusades. You will also get to meet St Feichin of course!
Also in attendance on the day is stone carver Fergus Corrigan who will be demonstrating how stone carvers and masons would have worked for hundreds of years, as well as a beekeeper, who will talk about how important the bees are now and were then. Animals will play a big role on the day and making a guest appearance is a beautiful draught horse, whose owner Helen Kelly will talk about their work through the ages and about her work with Ireland’s last remaining native breed of cow, the lovely Moile.
There is a Curses and Cures Zone, where children and their parents can learn all about what was used for the last 10 centuries before the invention of flat 7Up and Sudocream. Horticulturist Octavia Tulloch is coming back again to have a medieval feast with our visitors – but a word of caution: it mostly contains nuts. We are delighted to have traditional and monastic music at the event as well as the Lough Lene Dancers, who represented Leinster in last weekend’s fleadh.

Uisneach
All the way over on the Hill of Uisneach, free guided walks led by archaeologist Dr Roseanne Schot, will explore the remarkable landscape and archaeology of the Hill also on Saturday.
Uisneach is renowned as the sacred centre of ancient Ireland and meeting place of the provinces and is one of a group of premier ‘royal sites’ on Ireland’s Tentative List for proposed UNESCO World Heritage status.
The remains of over two dozen archaeological monuments including a megalithic tomb, burial mounds, standing stones, enclosures and ringforts can still be seen on the Hill today, and traces of many others have been identified beneath the ground surface by archaeological survey. These are testimony to a rich history spanning some 5,000 years, during which time the Hill has been a place for burial, ceremony and great gatherings, as well as a royal settlement. As the centre of the cosmos and domain of gods and goddesses, druids and kings, Uisneach also figures prominently in early Irish mythology and literature.
Mullingar
If you are in Mullingar throughout next week then why not take part in historian Ruth Illingworth’s walks, which cover everything from the town’s industrial and transportation past, to the Cathedral of Christ the King.

- Heritage Week runs from Saturday August 22 - August 30. For a full list of events check out today’s edition of the Westmeath Examiner.