A CORK historical society is set to launch its new website this evening, giving people a chance to contribute to the heritage of the area.
The Inniscarra Historical Society will officially launch its new website at the Ballyanly/Inniscarra Community Centre at 8pm on Tuesday, August 18.
People are encouraged to come between 7pm and 8pm with old photographs, documents and records relating to Inniscarra and County Cork.
The society will have portable scanners, allowing people to digitise their family and local history while taking their original documents and photos home.
Frank Donaldson, one of the three founding members of the society, said the aim was to ensure local stories do not disappear with time.
“If stories and history aren’t shared, they can so easily be forgotten,” he said.
Donaldson and his wife Anne have lived in Inniscarra for more than 40 years.
The riverside in Coolyduff, Inniscarra (Photo by Frank Donaldson)After college, he worked for the regional tourist board in Cork for over 33 years.
He later spent about a decade working as a tourism and heritage consultant and served as a national Tidy Towns adjudicator.
“I’m so grateful to Tidy Towns; it brought me to towns and villages all over Ireland that I would have never got to otherwise,” he said.
The Inniscarra Historical Society was established in 2017 and has since grown to around 60 or 70 members.
In less than a decade, it has published five journals, with a new edition produced every two years.
Each journal contains around 20 to 25 articles covering aspects of local history.
“Things have really gone from strength to strength,” Donaldson said.
One standout piece of Inniscarra history is about a sword recovered during the construction of the Inniscarra dam on the River Lee in the 1950s.
The construction of Inniscarra Dam in 1955 (Inniscarra Historical Society/ESB Archives)The sword was found during work on the Lee Hydroelectric Scheme, when local digger Finbarr Healy spotted something strange sticking out of the ground while excavating by the river.
Healy initially thought the object might be the remains of a fish and did not immediately stop his machinery to have a closer look.
The badly corroded weapon was eventually identified as a sword and was passed to Cork Public Museum before being handed over to the National Museum of Ireland.
The National Museum records it as a 16th century Irish sword and notes a possible connection with the army of Hugh O’Neill, which made its way towards the Battle of Kinsale in 1601.
O’Neill’s forces travelled through the Inniscarra area during their march towards Kinsale, and the sword has historically been associated with that battle.
The museum record describes a double-edged sword with a broad, tapering blade and a distinctive inlaid mark, with most of its hilt missing.
But for years afterwards it seemed to be lost and couldn't be located.
Anne Donaldson who traced the sword to its present location (Inniscarra Historical Society/Photo by Frank Donaldson)An enquiry to the National Museum in 2020 failed to find the sword.
A further enquiry made by Frank and Anne Donaldson in January 2026 finally established that the historic weapon had been found and is being held in the museum’s Arts and Industry Collection in Dublin.
Donaldson’s discovery adds another chapter to the story of a weapon that had spent decades out of public view.
For the Inniscarra Historical Society, the sword also shows why preserving and recording local heritage matters.
Their new website is intended to help build that record by bringing together photos and documents from the community itself.
The event launch takes place at 8pm in the Ellis Room upstairs in the Ballyanly/Inniscarra Community Centre on Tuesday, August 18, and will be lead by John Sheehan of the Department of Archaeology, University College Cork.
You can find their website: here
Everything from irishpost.com and the print edition is available on the Irish Post App — plus more! Download it for Android or Apple IOS devices today
