Our Story
For well over a century the Reading Rooms has belonged, in every way that matters, to the people of Castlebridge. The task now is to make that ownership clean and lasting.
The Reading Rooms began in the 19th century as a place for the men of the village to read, meet and pass an evening — books and newspapers, a game of snooker, a hand of cards. The building was rented from the Nunn family, the local merchant family, for a nominal rent. It was a modest institution with an outsized role: for generations it was where village life gathered indoors.
In 1973 Guinness Ireland took over the Nunns' company, W.B. Nunn & Co., and with it the connection to the village. After the community carried out structural repairs, the Reading Rooms was reopened in April 1976 by Dr Martin O'Donoghue. Then, in 1980, Guinness Ireland gifted the building — together with the village Community Centre, in the same deed — to "the people of Castlebridge." Four local trustees were named to hold it on the community's behalf.
Through the 1980s and 90s the village looked after the building itself: a new slate roof, external replastering, new windows, oil-fired central heating. This community effort is why the Reading Rooms is structurally sound today, decades on. The barriers to reopening have never been about the bricks.
The building has been closed since around 2019. The last of the four trustees named in 1980 passed away in 2022, and with them clean local ownership slipped into limbo. The 1980 deed is already in the community's possession; what is needed now is to trace the trustees' representatives and re-establish ownership under a proper community body — so the building can be insured, restored with heritage funding, and used again.
Rather than let the building drift, the community has come together to take it on. Through a series of public meetings, Castlebridge has agreed a way forward and nominated a group of volunteers — Trustees and a Setup Committee — to form a community trust and carry the work. This is a collective effort: no one person owns it, and the building's future use is for the whole village to decide together.
The record