World Within Walls Community Day

World Within Walls Community Day ran at the Monaghan County Museum last Saturday. This day was the launch of the community outreach strands of the World Within Walls project which is funded by the Health Service Executive. We were delighted with the turn out.

World within Walls is a project which aims to remember the histories of St. Davnet’s former psychiatric hospital in Monaghan town. The project is funded by the HSE and is being delivered by Stair: An Irish Public History under the guidance of the HSE steering committee. The committee is comprised of former senior staff, representatives from the local historical society, mental health practitioners and representation from the National Archives of Ireland.

Talks were given by members of the Stair team about the various aspects of the project. Dr. Anne Mac Lellan’s talk on her research so far at St. Davnet’s was particularly well received by the crowd attending. Anne told of how the patients were separated by gender and the different roles they were given, the women mostly worked in the laundry and sewed, whereas the men often worked on the farmland. As well as being given work to do the patients were provided with amusements of varying kinds from Christy Mistrals in 1872 to the cinema and trips to Blackrock in the 1900s.

Anne also touched on the strikes which took place at the asylum most notably the 1919 strike which was lead by Peadar O’Donnell. It is said  he declared the asylum in Monaghan town a ‘Soviet’ and raised the Red Flag.

There were lots of questions from the audience but also, as the team had hoped there was a lot of information sharing. There is a great wealth of knowledge in the community about St. Davnet’s and we are delighted that so many people have signed up to become involved in the oral history project.

The oral history project will be an opportunity to tap into the human stories that exist in the community. It is important to capture this unwritten history before it fades away. It will also give an alternative perspective on the story of St. Davnet’s as many of the records housed in the archives are clinical in nature and do not go far enough to capture the lived experiences of the staff and patients.

The craft actives on the day were also very well received. Many people young and old turned their hand to some glass painting and our garden of beautiful unique flowers has begun to bloom. There are 850 flowering plants in Ireland which was the average number of patients housed at St. Davnet’s at anyone time. If you know a group that would like to get involved in making flowers for the project we would love to hear from you. We would love to reach our goal of having 850 flowers to display at the 2015 exhibition on the history of St. Davnet’s.

If you couldn't make the day and have information or a story you would like to share please do get in touch with the team through stdavnets.www@hse.ie. You can also loan objects or images for inclusion in the 2015 exhibition by contacting Monaghan County Museum.