Upgrade works to begin on Famine Memorial Garden in Letterkenny

The Famine Memorial Garden in Letterkenny will get a makeover.

The amenity is located just off High Road and resting between Letterkenny Garda Station and the Donegal County Museum.

The garden will be closed for eight weeks to facilitate the works, which are to begin on January 29.

A memorial stone in the facility tells how it is dedicated to the ‘memory of those laid to rest here who died in Letterkenny Workhouse during the Famine years’.

The old workhouse opened in 1845 - the Porter’s Lodge front entrance to which houses the museum - and was built to cater for 900 paupers.

However, the Great Famine saw those numbers swell dramatically with 1,309 people admitted in 1847.

Families were separated on admittance to the workhouse with people divided into their respective groups and sent to specific areas. They were forbidden to meet while living there, save for attendance at Mass each Sunday.

People who died were buried in unmarked plots in the adjacent land. In the 1970s, while work was being carried out at New Line Road, a large mound grave was uncovered and remains were reinterred at Leck Cemetery.

The stone memorial in the Famine Memorial Garden commemorates these people.

The closure of the building, which was a manufacturing plant until 1968, saw it fall into disrepair and the site was cleared to allow for the construction of the new Letterkenny Garda Station in 1988.