"Amach to the Fields" - 21 doors, 21 townlands and 21 stories - is a unique project in Co Leitrim which aims to reconnect people to the land by telling stories about its history, folklore, the people who live and have lived there and much more.
An old door taken from a local house or farmyard has been erected in each of 21 townlands with a recording made for each one by the local landowner.
The location of each door is listed by its co-ordinates on the www.leitrimtownlands.com website and when you get to each one you call a phone number which is written on the door to hear stories about the land around you.
One door even has two chairs and a table where you can sit and listen, taking in your surroundings.
'Many more stories'
Edwina Guckian is curator of the project and she says there has been a fantastic reaction to it in Leitrim and beyond.
The doors are up for the month of October and she says it has got to the stage now where some visitors do not even have to call the phone numbers because the farmer might see them coming and go to chat to them.
"A massive amount of stories was gathered in the course of research for the project," she says, "and there are really special ones among them that many local people weren't aware of.
"There's one wonderful man, J.P. McGann who is almost 90 and who told us a story about two famine graveyards in the townland of Drumlara called the Black Garden which people didn't know about and there are many more stories like this".
'Good things we should preserve'
Ms Guckian worked along with Natalia Beylis and John Matthews on the project. They met through the Save Leitrim group which campaigns to bring awareness of problems associated with commercial forestry in the county.
Ms Beylis, who has a door at her land at Drumnadubber, said they wanted to do something positive to highlight all the good that is in Leitrim.
"The good things that we should preserve, value and cherish - the good land, the good people, the good history and the good stories," she said.
'Couple of close shaves'
Farmer Mícheál Geoghegan has a door on his land at Aughacashel, which is in his family since the 1880s.
On the recording he talks about the meaning of the townland name, the field of the fort, and the different ruins found there.
He also tells stories of his grandfather who fought in the War of Independence and "who had a couple of close shaves" in the area.
He is concerned that the way Leitrim has been afforested means that some townlands and their stories are being lost because there are no longer families living there.
A project like this is important, he says, because it will help to preserve the local history and folklore which has been handed down from generation to generation.
Next generation
In the townland of Lionnanuras, Mary McVeigh and her daughter Teresa, did the recording for their door and tell how the area was full of people at one time but they are now the last family living there.
There were 17 households at the time of Griffith's Valuation in the mid 1800s, Teresa says, while Mary remembers growing up with people all around the area.
Ms Guckian compares the project to the Schools Folklore project of 1935 and hopes that www.leitrimtownlands.com will ultimately contain a census of stories from every townland in Leitrim.
She says they want to awaken people to the value of where they live and hope the next generation that is given this land realises that it is "very very special".
While the current project has doors erected at 21 different townlands there is no intention of stopping at that.
Ms Guckian says there are 1,489 townlands in Leitrim and "we fully intend to collect all the stories from all of those and get the whole community of Leitrim involved and see the value of what they live in - there is so much more than just money to the value of land".
