News

Fingal County Council in association with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade are delighted to be part of the Virtual Africa Day celebration 2020 which provides a great opportunity to showcase African culture and communities living in Fingal

Fingal County Council will immediately commence preparations for the construction of the Broadmeadow Greenway after An Bord Pleanála granted planning permission for the €12m project.

In March 2020 An Post gave every household free postcards for posting to family and friends across the country to help them stay connected during lockdown. With social media etc. sending postcards had gone out of fashion.

So a lesser known research  site to while away an afternoon is TARA or the Trinity Access to Research Archive http://www.tara.tcd.ie/ TARA is an open access repository with restricted access only in unavoidable instances, e.g. where publisher copyright restrictions prevail. One of the many collections is that of Prof. Edwin C. Rae was Professor of the History of Art at the University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana.

Applications for the Restart Grant which will give direct grant aid to micro and small businesses to help them with the costs associated with either staying open or reopening and reemploying workers following COVID-19 closures are being accepted from today, Friday, May 22.

Fingal County Council’s Fingal Voices public consultation app is now publicly available.

Hundreds of sites in Fingal are both archaeological monuments and protected structures. Take Brazil house (as the archaeologist’s recorded it) or Brazeel House (according to the architects).  This was the former residence of the Bolton family, many of whom had distinguished legal careers, including Sir Richard Bolton, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, in the reign of Charles the First.

Contrary to popular belief most of Ireland’s natural forests were cleared before 1600, much of this clearance in prehistoric times. In medieval times there were scattered woods and copses throughout Fingal but forest cover reached a critical low in the 17th century. Much of present day Blanchardstown was covered in woodland known as the Great Scaldwood. There was an organised wolf cull in the Great Scaldwood in 1652.

Fingal has an ancient and varied maritime history from Viking raids and the medieval havens of Howth where the pague arrived, to the pirates of Lambay and the smugglers of Rush and Loughshinny. By the later fourteenth century the mouth of the Liffey had silted up and merchandise had to be landed elsewhere along the coast.

Saturday the 16th May is National Drawing day which brings to mind the importance of illustrations, drawings and paintings of our heritage sites that have survived through the ages. In the 18th century the fashion for drawing antiquities was exemplified by Gabriel Beranger whose paintings of his Rambles thro’ the County of Dublin in 1770s beautifully recorded now long gone castles and monuments in Fingal.