The Irish Workhouse Museum

Shorelines has taken over Portumna. The festival has once again filled the town with lots of thought-provoking, quirky, and just plain enjoyable arty-type stuff. The Irish Workhouse Centre has not been spared and we are delighted to be jam packed with delicious art in all shapes and forms. Once again we are all reminded what a great gallery space the workhouse is, and for those of you who wonder how cultural events fit in with the history of this site, here is some food for thought. The workhouse was originally meant to provide help and support to their immediate localities. They failed massively in this duty of care, but we can now readdress this balance using the same site. Heritage spots like ourselves, can and should be embedded in their local communities, providing something for everyone. Let's not keep making the mistakes of the past. Arts are the succour of the soul. The most heart-rending fact I learnt from tour guiding at the workhouse is that paupers, tho...

-Parliamentary & Civil Records- Not all records relating to Irish Workhouses were generated in-house. In fact, much of what survives today are records created by the government.  A great government record is the 1901 and 1911 Census. This census lists all the inhabitants and staff of the various workhouses. Please note that the paupers are usually listed by initials. We can also use newspapers as a surprisingly full source of information about workhouse inmates and staff alike. If you are lucky you may even find information given about a pauper's family or the conditions leading to their admittance to the workhouse. The Freeman’s Journal, 27 August 1864 for example, refers to a man named Howard, commiserating with his fate and his diet, ‘…the horrid stuff miscalled “bread”, on which he was fed was unlike anything with which the paupers were fed before’. [1] In the case of Portumna Workhouse the most useful set of records are those of the civil death registers...

August is always an exciting month for the Irish Workhouse Centre as we celebrate National Heritage Week . Running from August 18th to 26th, Heritage Week will again be a major focus here. Steve Dolan (Our current Workhouse Master) with Claire Doyle (His beautiful assistant) The aim of National Heritage Week is to preserve our folklore, ancient legends and archive the stories of our past in our minds. It is an event tailored to people of all ages and represents every facet of the Irish identity. This year, the theme of Heritage Week is ‘connections’. We encourage people to get involved and ‘make a connection’ to their heritage. Our heritage belongs to us, and it is important that we preserve and cherish it. We will host ten events over the nine days, will hold ten events off-site, and are providing nine free publications over the nine days.   No centre or museum in the county holds as many events as the Workhouse. Perhaps, some of these events might interest you......

Paw-prints in the brick floor of the Laundry House It all started with a chance sighting of animal footprints in the Laundry House. The print was not the result of dirty paws but rather a set of indentations in a brick. A colleague was quick to point out that the marks reminded him of Roman bricks and tiles. I was unfamiliar with the phenomenon but was delighted to find a whole host of examples on-line. My favourite is an example from Northumberland which dates from the 1st century. This Roman tile has three pig-trotter prints and two faint dog paw-prints. So how did the prints end up in our bricks? The secret lays in the process of brick making.  1st Century Roman Tile-Northumberland Bricks and tiles have a long history of being dried in the sun before they are baked in the ferocious heat of a kiln. This basking in the sun lets a lot of the moisture escape. This may seem like extra work when the clay could just be packed into the kiln and fired, but it is wort...

                                                      The exact window from whence Bridget ended her life The story of Bridget Corbett is one of the saddest to come out of Portumna workhouse. Her experiences call into question just how 'free' a person really was to leave the workhouse if they had any sort of physical impediment. In our current era of trying to increase accessibility, this story is especially sobering. We are lucky to have the details of the case from a newspaper report dated November 1872 which tells us about Bridget's plight.  The elderly widow lay  confined to a bed for  12 months, in extreme discomfort from the effects of rheumatism. On November 10 th of that year Bridget made the first attempt on her own life but was stopped. Not to be deterred,   Mrs Corbett must have had her mind made up a...

600 is a site-specific installation by artist Jenny Wood-Sullivan . The title references the quantity of paupers which could be housed in Portumna workhouse. The use of a number as the installation title immediately highlights Jenny's interest in how paupers were processed in the workhouse system, essentially reducing people to just numbers on a page. With this in mind, it is striking how visually pleasing and gentle the installation appears, with the contemplative art of origami (a Japanese technique of folding paper into a variety of forms) taking centre stage. As the visitor walks through one of the original workhouse rooms, they are witness to a flock of 600 origami birds flying down towards the floor, in a desperate attempt to reach a solitary seed. The viewer does not need to be told that there is not enough food for all. The birds themselves are folded from the pages of an old tome titled The Church and Science by Sir Bertram C. A. Windle , printed in 1917. Wha...

The work of Kieran Tuohy has to be seen to be believed. Perhaps it is the fact that his large sculptures are carved from single pieces of bog-wood,   or that the natural cracks in the petrified timber are as vital to the pieces as Kieran's own hand, or that the striking gleam of bog-wood is just so hard to photograph. Whatever the reason, everyone who visits the Dark Shadows Exhibition comes away ineffably changed. The impact of Dark Shadows is even more incredible given the fact that the Famine, or as many people now call it The Great Hunger , is not new to us. It is one of the nation's most defining events, a cataclysm drummed into us at school and reinforced by having Irish communities around the world. It is not for love of travel alone that the Irish Diaspora is proportionately one of the largest in the world. So to mount an exhibition which solely focuses on The Great Hunger would seem a risky venture. That is, until you are confronted with the sculptures thems...

The difference between the work of women and men in Irish workhouses ·          Embroidery ·          Knitting ·          Making socks, shawls, handkerchiefs & other items of clothing ·          Lace-making ·          Crochet ·          Quilting ·          Netting ·          Flowering   & Sprigging The above list shows the variety of skilled needle-work performed by female paupers.  Note the inclusion of a type of needlework which is largely forgotten today; flowering and sprigging. This entails the embroidering of muslin with small sprays of foliage or floral patterns. Many different patterns could be used and were widely circulate...

Working life in Irish Workhouses Life in Irish workhouses was not a straightforward case of finding work for paupers and making sure they did it. This was because the British Parliament had very set ideas about the employment of the poor. A 1782 Act of Parliament stated that it was concerned with "the better relief and employment of the poor" . This shows that in the minds of politicians, relief and employment went hand in hand. If we fast forward to the 19th century we see that the concept of employing the poor had evolved. As well as a general consensus that paupers should be working within the workhouse walls, the instructions for pauper industry have become more specific. In the British Isles this is most evident in the Irish workhouse rules.   The 1844 Irish Workhouse Rule: Paupers...shall be kept employed according to their capacity & ability ; but no pauper shall work on his own account, or on account of any party other than the Board o...