Oscar-winning Hollywood icon Jeremy Irons has given his time free of charge to help a heritage centre produce a series of short films detailing harrowing, true stories of the Great Famine in Skibbereen, Co Cork.

WITH our backs to the Town Hall we set off down Main Street, keeping to the left pavement. Skibbereen is, arguably, the most ‘typical’ of West Cork market towns, little changed in the last century.