About Abarta Heritage

Read on to learn about Abarta Heritage, our origins and mission and meet the team!

About Abarta Heritage

Read on to learn about Abarta Heritage, our origins and mission and meet the team!

Who are Abarta Heritage?

Abarta Heritage are an award-winning Tipperary-based company, and we are passionate about empowering communities and helping to communicate Ireland’s story to visitors, and helping people to take an active role in researching, protecting and presenting their local heritage. Our team have over 100 years combined experience in archaeology and heritage.

Since we founded our company in 2012, we have been trusted with some of Ireland’s biggest flagship community heritage projects, like Adopt a Monument and the Irish Walled Towns Network, and we have worked with national bodies, such as the Heritage Council, the Office of Public Works and Transport Infrastructure Ireland, and a large number of local authorities all around the island of Ireland, as well as large EU Projects that connect Ireland to Europe. We carry out a variety of work, from project management, training and mentoring to research, innovative interpretation services and sustainable tourism planning. We also strive to connect visitors to Ireland to our wonderful heritage sites, with well researched information that they can count on. Such as in our range of audio guides and audiobooks.

We focus on digging deep to research and discover the truly meaningful stories, and we specialise in creating positive and robust frameworks for collaboration between stakeholders, local government and national bodies. Our guarantee is simple, that we will always strive that our work is thorough, innovative, practical, inspiring and delivered to the highest possible standards. Our values and integrity are brought to the fore in everything we do. Whether you are trusting us to provide you with the best information on places to visit in Ireland, or whether you are looking to work with us on your heritage projects, you can rely on Abarta Heritage.

We are Ireland’s most trusted heritage experts, and we work on flagship heritage projects for national bodies like the Heritage Council, Office of Public Works and Transport Infrastructure Ireland, as well as working with 26 city and county councils across the island of Ireland and large EU Projects that connect Ireland to Europe. Here are some of our clients:

Abarta Heritage Clients

Our Origin Story

Our company’s story began in 2012, and like many good tales, it had a difficult beginning. Both Neil and Róisín had worked for years in archaeology. For context, Ireland has some of the strictest laws in Europe governing the protection of our archaeological heritage. Part of that meant that a developer (including local authorities or even the state when road building was concerned), was responsible for the investigation and excavation of any sites that would be impacted by the planned construction. Throughout the boom this meant there was lots of work for archaeologists, but when Ireland’s economy collapsed, all construction ground to a halt, and thousands of archaeologists found themselves out of work.

In the aftermath, Neil spent a year identifying and surveying Indigenous Australian sites in Western Australia, and Róisín worked at the Rock of Cashel as a guide. Neil missed Ireland (and Róisín) too much to stay in the sun for long, and returned back to work as a guide at Trim Castle, while Róisín trained tour guides at Dublinia. The experience of communicating the stories of the past to visitors began to become a passion for both Róisín and Neil, and the kernel of an idea began to form.

Both Neil and Róisín absolutely loved visiting heritage sites, but often found that unless it was a large OPW site with tour guides, there was often little, or no, information available when you got there. So we looked at ways that we could take the technical information from the archaeological and historical research, and communicate it to visitors. The idea for audio guides came to Róisín, and we originally focused our efforts on that, launching initially as Abarta Audio Guides before changing to Abarta Heritage when we found ourselves working on lots of different sorts of projects, from tour guide training, to audits and community archaeology. Today we keep those values of storytelling, accessibility and community empowerment at the heart of everything we do.

Discover more about Abarta Heritage’s mission, meet the team and find the origin of our name

Our Mission

The Abarta Heritage Team

What’s in a name? The Story of Abarta

Please share our story!