Beyond 2022 Research Showcase and Lecture: Burning of the Custom House
25 May 2021
About this Event
To mark the centenary of the burning of the Custom House during the War of Independence, the Beyond 2022 project is hosting a free online showcase and lecture relating to the Grand Jury and the Custom House.
People, Place and Power: Grand Jury Records and Local History
This free showcase will take place on 25 May from 2:30pm-5pm. It will be led by Professor Virginia Crossman (Oxford Brookes), discussing the significance of the Grand Jury records for historical research. It will reveal how the Grand Jury’s decisions impacted directly on daily life, enforcing the law at local level, collecting taxation and deciding where it would be spent.
The showcase also includes a virtual visit to the reading rooms of three local archive services in Counties Donegal, Offaly and Wicklow, highlighting some of the fascinating records available. These virtual tours will be led by Niamh Brennan (Donegal Archives), Lisa Shortall (Offaly Archives), Catherine Wright (Wicklow County Archives and Genealogy Service), and David Brown (Beyond 2022).
‘Burning the Books’
The centenary research showcase concludes with an evening lecture from 7pm-8:30pm by Richard Ovenden, librarian at the Bodleian, University of Oxford.
The free online lecture explores the deliberate destruction of knowledge held in libraries and archives across the world, from ancient Alexandria to contemporary Sarajevo, from smashed Assyrian tablets in Iraq to the destroyed immigration documents of the United Kingdom’s Windrush generation.
He also looks at attempts to prevent and mitigate attacks on knowledge, exploring the efforts of librarians and archivists to preserve information, often risking their own lives in the process.
Following the lecture, Richard will be joined in conversation by Helen Shenton, librarian and archivist at Trinity College Dublin.
