Our Local Heritage

Ballon National School

When we heard about the Irish Independent competition called "Our Local Heritage"
we had a good look around our area.

We took a walking tour of Ballon and got information about the historic places.

The rest is in our booklet and it's a gem of information. Proceeds from the sale
will go to K.H.A

Read the book and send some to your friends - they'll be impressed.

It was officially launched on Thursday 9th June, 2005 and here are
some of the images.

 

Our headmaster Noel Heffernan introduced the Guest of Honour and it was he and teacher Anna Cosgrave who guided the pupils with the project.

Helen McInerney - RTE journalist and broadcaster - officially launched the
booklet and praised the pupils and the teachers for putting
together such an informative
and well presented booklet.

Amy Murphy explained how the pupils went about their research
and putting the booklet together

Caroline Byrne, chairperson of KHA, told of their work in
raising funds and thanked the Heritage students
for their generous support.

 

John Smyth as contributor to The Chronicle - the village's annual publication
of interesting local features and articles saw that there was talent enough in
the school to take over the production in the future.
He said that a competition would be run for the school to produce an article
for the next edition with an award of €200

Fr. Whelan said how pleased he was with the quality of the
worked and hoped as some future date they could find
out more about the aircraftman mentioned in
the article on The Old Graveyard.

 

Shown here are some of the students who participated in the project

Ciara Brennan, Sarah Nolan and Margie Feeney presented
Helen with some flowers

We got great support from our parents and many of our sponsors.
And afterwards we all had tea and biscuits sitting out in our summer
best 'til late into the evening.

And lastly here are a few pictured taken around the Slippy Stone.

Noel Heffernan with Pat Lalor and half of the pupils at the Stone.

Anna Cosgrove, Pat Lalor and the other half of the pupils
at the Stone.

Pat Lalor took us to the Stone in the trailer pulled by one of his many
restored vintage Ferguson tractors.

Here we are holding a reproduction of one of the many urns - fictile vessels -
found on Ballon Hill.

Thanks everyone.