About the Project
The Irish Sporting Heritage Project is compiling an inventory of Ireland’s built sporting heritage, existing and historical, over the last 150 years. It will identify sports of all traditions and social classes across the island. No such inventory currently exists yet redevelopment and changes to land usage are destroying a rich nineteenth and twentieth century legacy.
The site of the first All-Ireland Hurling Final in Offaly became the home of a Tesco supermarket in 2008. Landsdowne Road in Dublin is under significant redevelopment and the site in Ormeau Park in Belfast where North of Ireland Cricket Club played is now a housing estate. It is vitally important to record the disappearing and disappeared sites where sports have been played.
The project will produce an online searchable database for use by the general public. Users will be able to search the database by sport and by county.
Project Aims
• To record Ireland’s built sporting heritage existing and historical.
• To acknowledge architectural innovation in design from previous eras.
• To celebrate sporting sites as important social spaces in the history of the island.
• To identify the sports of all traditions and social classes.
• To record all types of sporting associations: work place clubs, private clubs, school
sports, professional and amateur teams, and parish, town, county and national
clubs.
• To embrace those places where sporting legends were made and to record the
spaces where they have been commemorated.
• To promote an understanding that sport has and will continue to play a central role
in the history of Ireland and its people.
