Cathedral Quarter column: Is predestination an option in Letterkenny?
The recent road closure for the unveiling of the Jim Lynch mural and the lighting up of the Lawrence Collection mural adds to the debate about whether the Church Lane could be closed off more often for different events
Anyone who attended the recent unveiling of the Jim Lynch mural and the lighting up of the Lawrence Collection mural in Letterkenny recently can testify that there was a very special atmosphere that evening.
One element which certainly helped to create this buzz was that the Gardai agreed to close off the Church Lane for the duration of the event, which lasted in total around 40 minutes. We were thankful to the Gardai for doing this. The fact that the event was taking place on Thursday evening at 8pm meant that traffic would not be too busy.
It does add to the debate about whether the Church Lane could be closed off more often for different events. In our earlier years, we used to cordon off a section of the Lane for the Street Feast until we were told by the local authority that we had to put in for a full road closure. The cost of a road closure was €500 and we certainly don’t have these resources to do that but others do.
We realise that Church Lane is a main thoroughfare to Conwal Parish Church Lane, St Eunans Cathedral and the various schools, so full pedestrianisation is highly unlikely.
But pedestrianising at certain times is a strong possibility, especially after 6pm when the town centre is a lot quieter. One simple solution, which committee member Shane Toolan suggested, was putting large flower boxes at the bottom of the lane, and removing them when you want the traffic to flow again. Shane saw this practice in one of the European cities where he was running. A very simple but highly effective solution that would work in the Cathedral Quarter.
The 1926 Census
Like thousands of people in Ireland and around the world, we had been anxiously awaiting the National Archives of Ireland to publicly release the 1926 Census online.
We attended a Family Research Day organised by the Donegal Library Service, which took place in the Central Library in Letterkenny, and everyone in the room was equally excited to discover this period in history.
For us in the Cathedral Quarter, it gives us the opportunity to discover more information about the people who lived in the locality and to fill in a lot of the gaps. We found that there were seventy-four people living in twenty-two households on Church Lane. Since the release, we have been putting up the Census records for each of these records on our social media channels.
We also have the Valuations Records, Electoral Records and the 1901 and 1911 Census Records. We now love to dive deeper into all of these records of the people who lived in the locality, if we were given greater resources. This material has the capacity to bring their descendants back to visit the Cathedral Quarter.
Literary Festival Planning
Although our main flagship event, the Literary Festival does not take place until October, we have been making preparations. Our Literary Festival sub-committee has met in the Kitchen area in Blake’s Bar and we will be meeting again soon. I am in daily contact with our Director of Programming, Mary Turley McGrath, who now resides in Dublin as we piece together the programme of events.
There is a pattern to the festival as we have a school's event, a Cultural Evening, our official opening, a Jane Austen event, a Brendan Behan event, a Masterclass, our Writing Competition and the closing event is performed by a local literary figure. We are about to launch our Writing competition, and with funding from Creative Ireland, we are creating ‘Quills and the Quarter’ Visual Portraits. Philip Kennedy, who has been producing the Literary Festival podcast, will be working alongside our Chair, Sean Purser from Wild Atlantic Productions, who will be creating visual portraits of four locally known literary figures who are associated with the Festival.
In a new departure for the Festival, there will also be a Book Fair in the Community Centre on the Sunday for those who travelled for the festivities. While the festival keeps getting bigger, funding remains a problem, and we are making an appeal for local businesses to get involved. Sponsorship is key in keeping the show on the road.