Ilen Marine school will sail the last timber-built trading ship to London in April

Ilen Marine School was formed in 2000 and is based in the Limerick Enterprise Development Partnership building in Roxboro with a national and international theatre of operations. Picture above was taken after the Ilen returned in 2018. Picture: Dermot Lynch.

Ilen Marine school will sail the last timber-built trading ship to London in April

By I Love Limerick correspondent Ava O’Donoghue

Throughout the years, the school has worked on different projects such as the rebuilding of the wooden ‘The Ilen’ in 2018 and traditional Gandelows that have reached the waters of Venice.

advertisement

advertisement

advertisement

Ilen Marine School, a charitable school and network for wooden boat building in Limerick, is set to sail the last timber-built ship, The Ilen, from Limerick to London this April.

Ilen Marine School was formed in 2000 and is based in the Limerick Enterprise Development Partnership building in Roxboro, with a national and international theatre of operations.

Though it originally began as an exploratory programme, over time the reputation of the school grew, and donors came forward to support the work of the marine school.

“We are anyone who can handle a sail or a shipwright’s maul, or who wishes to learn or would prefer to let others do so,” say the school’s leaders.

“Our approach to teaching and learning is to let it happen. We are confident that the elemental forces of materials and environment can nurture and release the deep buried treasure of people’s inner selves.

“The work undertaken by the Ilen School is the expression in our own time of Limerick’s and Ireland’s impressive remnants of boat building and boat handling traditions. We hope to give them contemporary forms that will enable them to live on.”

The school offers a Kingship educational programme that uses art, education, and culture to celebrate Limerick as a medieval and contemporary town.

The Kingship programme allows students to discover Limericks’ medieval and ancient underpinnings in an imaginative and visual way. The school offers these explorative methodologies through mediums such as sketching exercises, talks with historians and walks through the locality.

Limerick to London

Ilen and her “gallant” crew, all else unchanged, will sail in April eastwards in the essence of that time-honoured maxim “The land divides. The sea unites.” pic.twitter.com/SzG9C4YpLv

— Ilen Marine School (@ilenproject) February 28, 2022

Throughout the years, the school has worked on different projects such as the rebuilding of The Ilen ship in 2018 and traditional Gandelows that have reached the waters of Venice.

The marine school hosts a series of Kingship voyages, programmes that represent both local and universal traditions, especially marine customs that the formerly walled-Limerick shares with all former walled towns in Ireland and beyond.

One of these cities is London, to where in April 2022 from Limerick’s riverpoint. The school hopes to have The Ilen arrive at St. Katherine’s Docks in London at the beginning of May and intends to remain there until May 14.

The Ilen Marine School is open to everyone and is volunteer-based. The school values itself as an inclusive invitation to engage in a community-based network of learning.

For more information on the Ilen Marine School, go HERE 

For more history stories go HERE