Children may be the future of Waterford's Lady Lane

After years of dereliction, the future looks bright for 18 Lady Lane.

At the April Metropolitan meeting of Waterford City and County Council, executive members revealed plans to renovate the historic building into a unique experience space for children, fittingly named Tír na nÓg. 

A collaboration between Waterford Museum of Treasures and Waterford City and County Council, the project aims to "create a fun, playful, engaging, exciting, stimulating, and thought-provoking experience that captures children’s imagination by creating hands-on explorative experiences". 

"With over 30 years’ experience in developing museums, the sad reality remains that a large cohort of the population do not consider museums or art galleries as places for them. A huge proportion of the population from all walks of life simply do not feel comfortable in cultural institutions. 

"This is partly because they themselves were, as children, never brought to a museum or gallery. It could also be down to the fact that many people think museums and galleries are for intellectuals or tourists and not for them."

Senior architect Maurice Conway said of 18 Lady Lane: "It's one of the oldest townhouses in the city. It has very, very fine ceilings, some of the finest outside of Dublin, which we didn't know about until we acquired the building."

When asked by Mayor Jody Power about the costs, Mr Conway replied the estimated cost of refurbishment of the building was "around €8 million".

Director of Services Michael Quinn emphasised: "I don't think a museum is a correct description, I think this is going to be a childhood experience, interaction with children in an educational form."

Concern

Councillors praised the idea, but also expressed apprehension that the building, located in the city centre, would not be developed into accommodation. 

Cllrs Jim Griffin, Frank Quinlan and Donal Barry expressed concern about the proposal. 

Mr Conway responded: "The building doesn't really lend itself to a higher number of residential units. It has large set rooms, and because that's very important we try to keep that together.

"We considered the use of short-stay apartments that would use larger rooms, that's still an option.

"We've been working away there constantly and we want to bring this building back into use."

Mr Quinn said: "The first thing we considered was; was it suitable for residential accommodation. As Maurice has explained, the proportions of the rooms are inconsistent with quality modern residential units."

He added: "We will engage in a lot more detail with you as the ideas become more crystalised."