Arkil acted as contractor for Cork County Council in the restoration project to restore the ambush site of Michael Collins for the upcoming Centenary commemoration of his death in 1922.The project included Arkil resurfacing and altering the road width along with other site works to make the area more visitor friendly including more car park spaces for visitor.
Arkil were honored and delighted to act as main contractor for the restoration works at Beal na Blath, Cork in preparation for the 100 year centenary commemoration of the death of Michael Collins.
Working closely with architects and engineers from Cork County Council and architects from private entities and with the numerous subcontractors involved, we were able to deliver the finished product while working on a very tight timescale to be ready for commemoration day on the 22nd of August.
This once in a lifetime project sought to bring this national historic site into the 21st century incorporating traffic calming measures by reducing the speed limit and carriageway widths which were also resurfaced, providing ample car parking spaces and making safer access to the iconic monument for all ages by way of an inclined boardwalk style footpath. The outstanding feature of the project is the 32 Valentia stone slabs, cut and placed to specific design requirements, which guide the visitor along the footpath to locations, engraved in the footpath, where Michael Collins had visited on that fateful day leading up to the place where he eventually fell. These locations etched in the footpath are matched in real time with notches in the Valentia stone allowing sunlight to fall across these locations at the exact time he passed through. A landscaped green area with planted trees and shrubs , separate the footpath from the roadway. The footpath is built on the original roadway as it would have been in 1922, with the existing roadway built to accommodate visitors and commemoration events. This along with upgraded information boards allow the next generation of visitor to contemplate on the tragic events that happened here a century ago.