Gaelic Heritage Centre Near Completion

by | 30 Nov 2006 | Events

The building at ionad Naomh Moluag is on schedule with completion due in the second week of December. The shop and the cafe area will be open as soon as possible in the new year.

Heritage centre construction September 2006

September 2006

Since Cait McCullagh, Museum Development Officer, had to leave in June due to family commitments the committee have been extremely busy trying to ensure that the building will be ready for the appointed date.

The Heritage Centre has been named Ionad Naomh Moluag by the MacGregor family who donated the land. Three specialists are job sharing the post of Museum Development Officer: Catherine Gillies – Project manager, Jackie Skeldon  Documentation and Lynne Vesco – Museum designer. Their recent work has been the MacDougall Collection which can be seen at present in the Oban War and Peace Museum.

The full time post will be re-advertised in time for the new Museum development officer to take up the post when the museum has opened. Despite reorganisation and packing up, the Centre has been open all summer and has received an amazing number of visitors. Many thanks to those volunteers who have manned the empty museum.

Many thanks too are due to Barbara MacDougall and Betty Culver who have been working with Jackie on documentation during the summer. We welcome any new volunteers. All help is much appreciated – even if it’s only the occasional hour.

Margaret Carasik, who lives in Minnesota and whose ancestors are MacDougalls, has kindly promised to donate money for the total cost of the etchings of the windows for the museum. The money will be provided by the macdougallmccallumfoundation.org in memory of their grandparents. All windows will depict scenes evocative of Lismore. The etchings have been designed by the children of Lismore Primary School.

Report and images: Pauline Dowling

November 2006