Irish Georgian Society staff and volunteers at the Kildare Heritage Buildings Show at Castletown House: Executive Director Donough Cahill; IGS volunteer Tatiana Smith-St Kitts; Programmes and Communications Coordinator, Zoë Coleman; Kildare County Council Heritage Officer Bridget Loughlin; Assistant Director and Conservation Manager Emmeline Henderson, OPW Minister Kevin 'Boxer' Moran; IGS Membership and Events Coordinator Róisín Lambe

Pictured at the launch of the Kildare Heritage Buildings Show at Castletown House on 15 June: Bridget Loughlin, Heritage Officer KCC; Emmeline Henderson, IGS Assistant Director & Conservation Manager, IGS; Councillor Michael Coleman, Kildare County Council; Donough Cahill, IGS Executive Director; Cathaoirleach Suzanne Doyle, Kildare County Council; Peter Black, Architectural Conservation Officer, Kildare County Council; Camilla McAleese, IGS Vice President; Councillor Venessa Liston; OPW Minister Kevin ‘Boxer’ Moran; John Cahill, OPW Assistant Principal Architect; Michael Wall, IGS Chairperson; and Jacqui Donnelly, Senior Architect, Department of Culture Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

Conor Deasey of Old Chairs & the Irish Horological Craft Forum & OPW Minister Moran

OPW Minister Moran with Ruth Bothwell gilding and artefact conservator

OPW Minister Moran with the OPW Furniture Division

IGS Vice President Camilla McAleese with OPW Minister Moran visiting the OPW decorative plaster workshop stand

IGS Executive Director Donough Cahill, OPW Minister Moran & Kildare County Council Cathaoirleach Suzanne Doyle

Stone waller Jason Barcoe of the Dry Stone Wall Association of Ireland with OPW Minister Moran

Thatcher Joe Leonard with OPW Minister Moran

OPW Minister Moran & Bridget Loughlin, Heritage Officer, Kildare County Council

OPW Minister Moran with IGS Vice President Camilla McAleese, and George Biros and Chris Nolan of Nolan's Group examining an example of brick pointing

OPW Minister Moran with James Grace of Grace Architectural Wood Design

OPW Minister Moran with Liam McCorkell of Glassshaus Studio

Kildare’s Heritage Buildings Show: a weekend of traditional building skills demonstrations, conservation talks and children’s craft workshops

Some photographs of the Irish Georgian Society, Kildare County Council and Office of Public Works exhibition which took place in the farmyard of the OPW’s Castletown.

The event was made possible due to the support of Kildare County Council, the Office of Public Works and Creative Ireland.

OPW Minister Kevin ‘Boxer’ Moran officially launched exhibition on Saturday 15th June 2015, with Kildare County Council Cathaoirleach Suzanne Doyle and Irish Georgian Society Vice-President Camilla McAleese welcoming him the county and exhibition respectively.

Established in 1999, the annual exhibition promotes the need for and availability of traditional building skills in the conservation and care of historic building and provides an opportunity to view some of Ireland’s finest conservation craftspeople demonstrate. The 2019 exhibition showcased sash window repairs, the use of lime-based mortars, decorative plasterwork, traditional ironwork, thatching, stained glass and fanlight conservation, stone carving, dry stonewall construction, soft capping and green wood turning.

This successful collaboration represented a coming together of all sectors of the conservation community, not just the Irish Georgian Society, the OPW, and Kildare County Council’s with their dynamic, Heritage Officer, Bridget Loughlin and Architectural Conservation Officer, Peter Black but also the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, The Heritage Council, the Castletown Foundation, the Dry Stone Wall Association of Ireland, SPAB Ireland, the Irish Horological Craft Forum, the Buildings Limes Forum Ireland, and the many wonderful independent traditional building skills professionals and practitioners who demonstrated at the exhibition and delivered lectures as part of the conservation seminar which ran in tandem with the exhibition.

Over the course of the two-days of the exhibition, 2,000 people attended. Castletown became a one-stop destination for people in need of free, accurate and impartial advice for the care and conservation of their historic buildings. The Society wishes to thank all those who made the show such a worthwhile endeavor.

(Photos by Peter Kwasu)