The Hill of Armagh will play its role in welcoming visitors for Georgian Day. The Georgian buildings of the Library and No 5 Vicars’ Hill, the former Registry, will be open on Saturday 29 November 2014 to encourage visitors to step back in time.
Visitors will have the opportunity to see inside the Library which was built in 1771 as a university library, and inside the 1772 Registry, which held precious documents and records. Both buildings were part of Archbishop Robinson’s plans for Georgian Armagh.
Library staff and volunteers will be on duty to talk with visitors to let them learn more about the Library’s treasures, and on Georgian Day they will have additional help from Armagh Council’s Living History Interpreters. The character of the Revd Alexander Ross, Chaplain to Archbishop Robinson, will be found reading in the Library, while the Registrar, the Revd Lawrence Price, will be busily writing in the former Registry.
The walking tours arranged by the Living History section of Armagh Council will be led through the city streets to end on the Hill of Armagh, where the two Robinson buildings, St Patrick’s Church of Ireland Cathedral and ‘4 Vicars’ restaurant, will be ready to greet visitors.
The Library’s Keeper, the Very Revd Gregory Dunstan, said, “The Public Library and the Registry are among the earliest of Robinson’s projects for Armagh, the one for the City, the other for the Church. Devoted respectively to learning and administration, they reflect his idea of what the life of an eighteenth century city should be. Both are now open to all, two gems from our past, part of our future.”
