Join our curator Helen O’Carroll to explore the history of the Ashe Memorial Hall, home of the Kerry County Museum. The building has a fascinating story, which is outlined in Helen’s short online talk (duration: 10 minutes). Currently, the Museum is accessed by our visitors via the front steps. Here at the Ashe Memorial Hall, we have been thinking about how we can improve access to the building. This is not entirely straightforward because the Ashe Hall is a listed building, so any consideration of improvements must keep the historic fabric at the forefront. The place to start then is with the building’s history and its location. And the interesting thing is that the issue of accessibility is at the heart of this story. Built in 1928 as the county council headquarters, and incorporating a dancehall/theatre/cinema, the Ashe Hall has always been a public building. Before that, though, the site on which it was built was very much a private space open only to the elite.