THE Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Mr. John Gormley, TD officially launched the joint Monaghan County Council and National Roads Authority exhibition on ‘Life and Death in Monaghan’ at the restored Carrickmacross Workhouse on Friday last, May 23.

The exhibition is based on the results of the advance archaeological excavations undertaken by the NRA on the N2 Carrickmacross to Aclint Realignment in Co. Monaghan in 2003. The relevant archaeological investigations were completed before road construction began, allowing adequate time and resources to be given to thoroughly recording and understanding the discoveries now on display in the Workhouse.

At the exhibition launch, Minister Gormley said,

“It is fascinating to think that, at the heart of the exhibition, there is evidence of a much earlier building, a Stone Age dwelling house that was in use over 3,500 years ago.”

The Minister added that

“while it is sometimes challenging to transform what some regard as dusty history into vibrant life I think that challenge has been well met in Carrickmacross. This exhibition allows people of all ages to gain a sense of what it was like to live in the far distant past, what people did, how they felt, what they ate and how they were buried.”

The NRA has worked closely with Monaghan Co. Museum since 2003 to put together the exhibition which combines reconstructions, colourful images and exciting texts and scale models. The bypass excavations uncovered three sites of great significance to Irish archaeology. A site at Monanny shows the arrival in Carrickmacross of the ‘first farmers’ nearly 6,000 years ago.

The exhibition also details the arrival of Christianity with a small family cemetery at Cloghvalley Upper, dating from circa 650 A.D. It tells a series of human stories through diseases, burial rites and stone lined graves.

Minister Gormley said that the Carrickmacross exhibition formed an impressive mosaic of the lifecycle of the Carrickmacross area across the ages. He added that the exhibition captures the shifting threads of everyday life and death in the county over six millennia. Complimenting the exhibition organisers he concluded by saying that the Carrickmacross exhibition is a fine example of how rich in local history and archaeology we are in this country.