MUSEUM PLAN FOR TURLOUGH HOUSE

Connaught Telegraph


Multi-million pound project to transform mansion

By TOM GILLESPIE

THE MINISTER for Tourism and Trade, Mr. Enda Kenny is pressing to have portion of the priceless National Museum collection located at Turlough Park House on the outskirts of Castlebar. Mayo County Council purchased the Victorian mansion, set on over 40-acres of land, for £250,000 some year ago. The multi-million pound proposal is to be put to Government and Mr. Kenny has discussed at length the project with his colleague, The Minister Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Mr. Michael D. Higgins.

Initially application had been made to locate the £15m national folk life museum in the country house, once the home of famed "Fighting Fitzgerald. But Mr. Kenny accepts this is not now on the cards.
"That is a huge operation and we are not going to get it", he said.
The position is, he said, that a case is coming before Government for Collins Barracks to be one of the major locations of the National Museum. Interests in Dangan were also seeking the museum. Minister Kenny said:
"Michael D. Higgins has commissioned a specialist report on the museum concept of the future. I want Turlough to be part of that.
"This matter has not been cleared by Government yet but what I am hopeful that we will secure something substantial.
"If we could get a section of the National Museum for Turlough House we could develop from there."
Mr. Kenny said he had offered the property free of charge if the development were to take place. He added:
"The position is that I am talking to Michael D. Higgins. Final decisions have not been made at all. We are not going to get the £15m development but certainly we could get a scaled down version of it."
Mayo County Council, he said, had drafted a blueprint and it has been submitted to Government for consideration. An Official from the Cultural Institute of the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, visited the property at the weekend.

Mr. Johnny Mee, a member of Mayo County Council, said he had been pressing Minister Higgins for some time for progress on the development.

Turlough House, which forms the centrepiece of the park, was designed along High Victorian Ruskinian Gothic lines by Sir Thomas Newenhan Deane. The property had been owned by the Geraldine branch of the FitzGerald Family since Cromwell sent them to "Hell or to Connaught". The present house was built in 1865, close to the ruins of an earlier one.

Connaught Telegraph - News - February 1996

Connaught Telegraph - Sport - February 1996