SOON THE NATIONAL 1798 VISITOR CENTRE AT ENNISCORTHY WILL CEASE TO SERVE AS AN HISTORICAL PLACE. DAN WALSH PRODUCES THIS REFLECTION AND RECORDS THE HISTORY BEHIND THE PROJECT OVER THE PAST 20 YEARS.

Last Friday I made my way to the National 1798 Visitor Centre for a special Heritage Week tour, but it was with a heavy heart that I departed as it marked the end of an era as a part of the history and heritage that is the 1798 rebellion story.
I was at the Arnold’s Cross modern day historical transformation on June 5th 1998, a day of celebration and achievement, pride and euphoria, as An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, T.D., officiated at the official opening of Enniscorthy’s newest landmark and magnet for the multitudes who remembered Wexford and 1798.
The early years of the Centre, during and in the times that followed the massive bicentenary countywide, and beyond, commemorations, the packed coaches were coming to Enniscorthy, but as the new millennium progressed the attraction of the Centre began to decline.
The visitors became fewer, and like the old Castle Museum some years earlier, the locals paid one visit and never went back to see if there were any changes!
Using modern technology it brought a new reflection on the great battles of Vinegar Hill, Oulart Hill, Ross, the Three Rocks at Barntown, and many other places, and it also embraced the Presbyterian tradition and involvement of the Crown Forces.
It may not have been popular with the traditionalists, but it opened up the debate on Ireland and Wexford and they way we were two centuries before.
The National 1798 Visitor Centre is on the move to another part of town and Vinegar Hill will be keeping a watchful eye on its new chapter in the town’s history, but in fairness, it had failed as a business and became unsustainable in its function, and that is not a criticism, but a casualty of changing times.

Theobald Wolfe Tone is the dark figure in the Chess game display at the National 1798 Visitor Centre. Who knows where the next move will take them?

The concept of the Centre was initiated at a meeting of the Board of Directors on Comoradh ’98 in 1991, and the late Cllr Andy Doyle and Town Clerk, Donal Minnock, spearheaded the project and oversaw the purchase of the old Christian Brothers monastery.
A framework document was developed by the local librarians and historians under the chairmanship of Nicholas Furlong, and Wexford native, Matthew O’Connor, Managing Director of the National Building Agency, prepared a design and layout for the building, which included the old monastery building, which came into the possession of the brother’s in 1894.
The Friends of ’98, headed by Rich Howlin, were charged with raising £1m needed to draw down £1.6m, which had been secured from the European Regional Development Fund.
The Wexford Senate was used to raise the £1m, and the names of every senator was engraved on the walls of the new National 1798 Visitor Centre, and the paint is as fresh today as it was when first applied…well, almost – the smell has disappeared!
Tenders were advertised in March 1997; construction work commenced in May; the building programme was completed in December, and the interprative design created by Event, a Dublin-based company, was completed over three months.
The audio-visual presentation placed the story of 1798 in an international context and was admired as a fascinating journey to modern democracy. Some sources highlighted the National 1798 Visitor Centre at Enniscorthy as “one of the finest visitor centres in Europe.”
The Centre will close its doors at the end of September, so there is still time for one last visit! It will start a new life as a distillery and visitor centre afterwards.
Meanwhile, the troops are leaving; the guns will be silent; the landscape stays the same, but the lively little fish swimming below the ‘Bridge of Democracy’ will have to find a new maritime environment. End of an era for all of us.