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heritage · Sunday 2 August 2026 · Various 
Wish You Were Here: Carrickmacross - Greetings from the Past
At Carrickmacross Civic Centre · Riverside Road, Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan
At Carrickmacross Civic Centre · Riverside Road, Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan
“Wish You Were Here: Carrickmacross - Greetings from the Past” is a Monaghan County Museum exhibition of historical postcards and photographs, on show at Carrickmacross Civic Centre until the end of August 2026. Curated by the museum’s Liam Bradley as part of a new community outreach programme, it opened on Wednesday, 15 April 2026 and draws on images spanning more than a century of the town’s streets, shopfronts, market days and family life, most of them never displayed publicly before.
The exhibition is built from postcards and photographs of Carrickmacross gathered from local collections, tracing the town through market days, early transport, shopfronts and ordinary family life from the Victorian era onward. Two sections go deeper than the general survey: one on “Drama in Carrickmacross,” using photographs of local amateur drama groups and performers dating back to 1901 to trace the town’s theatrical tradition, and another following Dr Carmel McKenna, a Carrickmacross-born physician whose medical career took her to Canada. At its launch, Cathaoirleach P.J. O’Hanlon described the exhibition as a celebration of Carrickmacross’s identity and the people who built the town, and council chief executive Robert Burns framed it as part of the museum’s push to make county heritage accessible outside the museum’s own building in Monaghan town, hence the choice of the Civic Centre rather than the Peace Campus galleries.
Carrickmacross Civic Centre is on Riverside Road, close to the town’s Market Square and Main Street. The town sits on the N2, about 45 minutes from Dublin and 20 minutes from Dundalk, and is served by Bus Éireann’s Dublin to Monaghan and Donegal route, with a stop close to the town centre.
Carrickmacross is south Monaghan’s biggest town, known for its lace-making tradition and its Georgian square, both of which turn up more than once in the exhibition’s own photographs. There is more to see in Carrickmacross and across Co. Monaghan.
Heading to Carrickmacross Civic Centre in Carrickmacross? Monaghan has plenty more to see. Read the Carrickmacross area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.