Pat O’Donovan who has won a National Heritage Council award for his virtual tour of Knockfierna.
A virtual tour of Limerick’s Knockfierna – a site steeped in both folklore and history, presented by Pat O’Donovan has scooped the county award for Limerick at the National Heritage Council awards.
‘An audio-visual tour of Knockfierna’ was one of 33 entries from Limerick and 850 nationwide.
The awards run in conjunction with National Heritage Week in August was open to entrants who successfully uploaded a completed project on the Heritage Week website.
Projects had to clearly promote at least one aspect of natural, cultural or built heritage, and have a clear educational value by helping people to engage with and find out more about heritage.
Reflecting the approach to National Heritage Week 2020, this year, awards were made under six categories. For the first time, the categories included a county award, celebrating the best project submitted in each county.
The heritage of Knockfierna has been lovingly restored by Pat O’Donovan over the last 35 years and today is one of the most visited heritage sites in Limerick and Ireland.
In his award winning ‘An audio-visual tour of Knockfierna’ which extends to about 30 minutes, Pat shows viewers the sites around the pinnacle of Knockfierna and explains their significance. It is a walking tour on Knockfierna and explains the significance of all the sires on Knockfierna as he walks through the hill on a beautiful August day. Pat outlines a very detailed history of the hill on the tour.
It is the first major award that Knockfierna has received and is testimony to the transformation the heritage side has undergone since O’Donovan bought a parcel of land on the hill three and a half decades ago.
Over the years Pat and a very small active committee of local people developed the old famine walkways, reopened the old famine trackways through the hill which is now a five mile walkway with panoramic of the river Shannon, Limerick city, the Galtee mountains and as far as the Paps near Rathmore.
The Virtual tour of Knockfierna by Pat O’Donovan can be viewed on line.
The winners were announced last week at virtual event hosted by the Heritage Council and presented by RTÉ’s Ann Cassin.