Our Mission: Natural, Cultural, Maritime, and Built Heritage
What a fantastic day we had at the recent Tomhaggard Clean Coast Coastal Connection Festival on June 21st! The sun shone down on a brilliant community gathering centered around celebrating, understanding, and protecting our beautiful coastal environment. Our group was thrilled to have a stall to showcase Kilmore Quay’s unique identity natural, cultural, maritime, and built heritage. Our stall was carefully designed to highlight how each of these elements intersects, proving that protecting our environment also means safeguarding our history and community traditions.
Safeguarding Our Dunes: KQCG’s Sign
To address the immediate threats to our natural heritage, we displayed KQCG’s “Ballyteige Burrow Needs You” educational sign. We are campaigning to advocate for clear, engaging signs to remind the public of vital actions required to shield our fragile dune ecosystems. Visitors learned about the critical role of marram grass roots in anchoring the sand and discovered how seemingly harmless activities like climbing, jumping, or sliding down steep dune faces can cause irreversible erosion. We also broke down the essential science of dune health by explaining that a thriving, resilient coast requires a delicate balance of sand, native species, and open space and a selection of the Ballyteige Bioblitz entries collected on iNaturalist (citizen science app you can download here
Wexford Thatch: Honoring Our Unique Built Heritage
Our display transitioned from environmental science into our rich cultural and built heritage by highlighting the unique architectural traditions of Kilmore Quay. We also featured detailed boards on the history of Wexford Thatch, showcasing how generations of local people used perishable, wild materials harvested from the land to build long-lasting, beautiful homes.
Keeping Maritime and Local History Afloat
Maritime heritage also formed another major pillar of our stall. We shared fascinating insights into local coastal trades and landmarks, including the centuries-old rabbit warrens of Kilmore Quay, the engineering history of the Sluice Cottage polder water mechanisms, and the enduring legacy of the village harbor and lifeboat community. Visitors also marvelled at the geological wonders of St. Patrick’s Bridge, a massive Ice Age moraine that stands as a permanent monument to our coastline’s ancient past and maritime folklore. Part of this section was a segment of John Power’s maritime exhibition, a tribute to the RNLI.
Engaging the Next Generation of Guardians
We wanted our stall to be an interactive space for the whole family, combining heritage education with hands-on fun. Young conservationists tested their tracking skills with our “Sand Dune Safari” game, explored native wildlife habitats, and took part in a playful puffin diving trivia challenge to win prizes.
By sparking the curiosity of the next generation, we hope to foster a lifelong love for the coast and ensure that the preservation work we do today will be carried on far into the future.
The absolute highlight of the day was our Scallop Shell Pledge Tree, an initiative that brought all of our themes together into a collective promise. Crafted from locally foraged beach driftwood, we invited festival-goers to pick a personal commitment to the environment written on a real scallop shell and hang it from the branches. By the time the festival wrapped up, more than 66 individual pledges were swaying in the coastal breeze, ranging from simple daily promises to leave no trace to broader commitments to respect our dunes and wildlife.
A massive thank you to everyone who stopped by, shared a story, and pledged to help keep our natural, cultural, maritime, and built heritage thriving for generations to come.
Heritage includes an understanding of the land itself, and it is the choices as to how it is used, respected, formed, occupied, owned, that have dominated so much of the thread and difficult stitches in the long sleeve of Irish history. (former President Michael D. Higgins)
