Class visits for primary or secondary school students are welcome. Please contact us in advance to arrange a visit.

If you have a school project or assignment, we can provide advice on the resources that are available for research on your local area.

We also provide podcasts on various topics relating to the history and culture of Cork.

For younger children, there are wonderful colouring books on the theme of Heritage in County Cork produced by Cork County Council Heritage Unit.

We can help with history projects and assignments

If you would like help with your CBA/Classroom Based Assessment, we have local history books and journals which can be useful.

The following is an example of how we can help with a CBA local history topic:

Example: Castletown-Kinneigh Round Tower, West Cork

To begin, we can look at the following websites to discover the name of the civil parish and the barony that this historic site is located in:

www.townlands.ie                                    

www.logainm.ie

We learn that the round tower is located in the townland of Sleenoge in Kinneigh Civil Parish and it is in the Barony of East Carbery (West Division).

To find out more information about this civil parish, it is useful to view the following resources: The Cork Place Names Archive/Cartlann Logainmníochta Chorcaí. This is an 85-volume collection detailing in-depth the place names of townlands, towns and villages across Cork.

In addition, the book ‘Parish Histories and Place Names of West Cork’ by Bruno O’Donoghue (Tralee: The Kerryman, 1986) is another important resource.

In addition, it is also useful to look at general Irish history and archaeology books from our Irish and Cork Collections on the topic of round towers in Ireland.

While the books in our collections are for reading in the Local Studies Library and are not for loan, it may be possible to request a lending copy of a history book which can be collected from your local library.

Some history books to consult on this topic include the following:

‘Exploring West Cork: a guide to discovering the ancient, sacred and historic sites of West Cork: part 1 an introduction to ancient, sacred and historic West Cork: part 2, illustrated guide to the sites; index to sites’ by Jack Roberts (Skibbereen: Key, 1988)

‘Churches in early medieval Ireland: architecture, ritual and memory’ by Tomás Ó Carragáin (New Haven, Conn/ London: Yale University Press, 2010)

‘The Round Tower of Kinneigh, Co. Cork’ by J. Buckley from the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, Vol. XI. 1905, pages 135-138

‘Archaeological Inventory of County Cork: Volume 1: West Cork: comprising the Baronies of Bear, Bantry, West Carbery (east &west), East Carbery (east & west), Ibane & Barryroe and Kinalmeaky’ compiled by Denis Power with Elixabeth Byrne, Ursula Egan, Sheila Lane and Mary Sleeman

(Dublin: The Stationery Office, 2003)

For further information on local history, folklore and traditions associated with Castletown-Kinneigh it is also useful to consult the Irish Tourist Association (I.T.A.) Topographical and General Survey files from the 1940s which we have in our collections in the Local Studies Library.

We can also look at nineteenth-century descriptions of an area or historic site. Some popular resources include:

‘Lewis’ Cork: a topographical dictionary of the parishes, towns and villages of the City and County of Cork’ by Samuel Lewis, introduction by Tim Cadogan (Cork: Collins Press, 1998)

Samuel Lewis’ accounts of his travels around many parishes and villages of Cork were originally published in 1837.

‘The Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland: adapted to the new poor-law franchise, municipal and ecclesiastical arrangements, and compiled with a special reference to the lines of railroad and canal communication as existing in 1844-45, illustrated by a series of maps, and other plates, and presenting the results, in detail, of the census of 1841, compared with that of 1831’

(Dublin and London: Fullarton, 1845)

In addition, local history publications and local historical society journals are an excellent resource for the study of a particular area or historic site.