Tourism, Heritage and Conservation in the Irish Midlands: The Workhouse Centre, Portumna

Abstract

This chapter explores the interconnected relationship between heritage, tourism and conservation through an analysis of a particular Irish case study: the Workhouse Centre in Portumna, Co. Galway. The chapter assesses recent efforts to protect as much of the original nineteenth-century workhouse structure as possible and to provide conservation training and education to locals, while at the same time contribute meaningfully to the tourism and heritage offer within the town and across the region. Although the chapter also examines the manner in which the complicated history of the workhouse is told, the efforts at community and rural regeneration throughout a period of national retrenchment and austerity is given particular attention.