The €5 million project to turn the 300-year-old market building in Athy into the world’s first Shackleton Museum has started.

Ernest Shackleton was born near Athy in 1874 and went on to become a celebrated Antarctic explorer. His leadership in guiding his crew 720 nautical miles to safety in lifeboats when his ship The Endurance was crushed by ice is one of the exploits leading to him becoming a celebrated role model.

The Shackleton Museum has had full national museum status since 2016, so it will be able to display priceless artifacts including the newly restored Shackleton’s Cabin from his final ship the Quest. Sir Earnest Shackleton died in the cabin on the 5th January 1922 at South Georgia in the South Atlantic Ocean.

The Matterport Project will create a series of 3D virtual tours captured at various points during the redevelopment of the historic Athy Market House. These tours will provide a permanent record of the completed project which can be used for marketing, entertainment, and educational purposes.

The first of the tours showing the museum before the work commenced is available to view on the home page of the website shackletonmuseum.com.
In recent months all the displays were removed and put into storage. Calx, a specialist in the restoration of historic buildings have been carefully removing some of the modern plaster to reveal the original stone and brickwork underneath.

The next second 3D virtual tour has now been captured, preserving how the underlying structure of the building now looks.

Further Matterport Virtual tours are planned at key stages in this fine example of contemporary best practice in the sensitive restoration of an historic building.

The Matterport Project was officially launched at the Shackleton Museum on Friday 21 July by local resident Oliver Murray of Contemporary Photography who has created the 3D tours.

Staff from the museum, committee members, and other interested parties were treated to a demonstration of the technology at work, and later at a reception in Frank O’Brien’s the resulting 3D virtual tours were displayed.

The project to capture the 3D virtual tours is being supported by the American Matterport Corporation which was represented by Stuart Raymond from the London office.

Philip Hanrahan director of the Irish Matterport distributors Hitechniques Limited who are supporting the project was also present.

Those signing up to the Shackleton Museum Matterport Project Newsletter at contemporaryphotography.ie/shackleton-newsletter will receive occasional updates on the progress of the project.

Contemporary Photography is run by Athy resident Oliver Murray who is also the Matterport Specialist at Hitechniques Limited, Ireland’s Matterport distributors.