For this year’s Heritage Week Deena and I organised a weir building workshop based on my personal life experiences of working on the repair and the fishing of the traditional Waterford Harbour Head Weir. 

I decided to build a life-size model of the structure at Moran’s Poles, and put my previous teaching experience in the ETB and SETU to some good use in developing an interactive and hands-on activity-based workshop.

Later, a local boatman Tomás Sullivan contacted me to say that he could bring a number of the participants out to look at the weirs, through the support of the Local Authorities Water Programme.  Had I known earlier I might not have invested so much of my time into the life-sized replica structure. But it certainly made the day extra special.

Another positive of the day is that the Heritage Council sent a filmmaker (Peter) to record the event. It’s now available on youtube as seen below