The Mount Temple Holy Trinity Graveyard Group formally launched the first of four heritage videos in recent times to coincide with National Biodiversity Week.
"The group compiled and completed a comprehensive heritage audit of all sites in the Mount Temple, Baylin and Moydrum areas two years ago. Following this, we were delighted to receive some funding last year from Creative Ireland and Westmeath County Council to create good quality videos of a number of these sites. Subsequently in order to upload these videos and to be inclusive of all heritage in these townlands we created a Facebook page called Mount Temple Baylin Heritage Group (MTB ).
"In creating the videos we were so fortunate to engage the professional services of Eoin Sullivan, archaeologist and video production company Bailey & Blake who took on the brief with great enthusiasm and energy. Both Baylin and Mount Temple National Schools have always been of great assistance to us no matter what project we undertook and this time they kindly arranged for a number of their students to help with the production of a video on Carn Park Bog in Baylin," Chairman of the Mount Temple Holy Trinity Graveyard Group, Town Mayor, Cllr. Frankie Keena, stated.
The Town Mayor noted the essence of the heritage video, which will be used as an educational tool for school going children in the locality.
"The morning for shooting was beautiful and the bog looked amazing as we walked out onto the boardwalk. The students were met by Therese Kelly from the NPWS who gave an excellent briefing about the rich heritage and biodiversity of this bog. Therese is extremely knowledgeable on this subject matter and has an excellent skill in engaging with the students. It was lovely to see the students so focused and interested.
"The beauty of this educational video is that it is universal and can be used in any school as a tool to brief students about the heritage and biodiversity in our bogs. It is also a marvellous promotional video of Westmeath’s beauty that can be used by Destination Athlone to attract tourists to the area.
"This is the first of four videos that we have created and over the next number of months we will be launching them. It was planned to launch them collectively at an event last month but due to COVID-19 restrictions we changed our plans," Cllr. Keena continued.
In conclusion, Cllr. Keena sincerely thanked the members of the Mount Temple Holy Trinity Graveyard Group for all their work in making this exciting project become a reality.
