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Community groups and local participants are at the heart of Homes for Everyone, a new exhibition opening at Newry and Mourne Museum on 19 November 2026. Exploring more than 150 years of social housing across Newry & Mourne, it tells how generations found not just houses, but places to belong.
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own experiences of social housing.
Historic photographs and objects sit alongside a film and oral history testimony from participants, bringing personal experiences into the story of local housing. From nineteenth-century charitable schemes to post-war council estates and modern developments, the exhibition asks: what does it mean to have a decent place to call home?
The exhibition begins before council housing existed. In Bessbrook, employers provided workers’ homes, while charitable initiatives supported people who might otherwise have faced the workhouse. The Sheils’ Almshouses, established in Killough in 1868, offered accommodation regardless of religious background. These schemes raised enduring questions: who should provide housing, and what makes a community thrive?
The story of Newry’s twentieth-century transformation is central to the exhibition. Town Surveyor Charles Blaney helped tackle poor living conditions, improve sanitation and oversee new housing, transforming everyday life for local families and laying foundations for modern social housing.
under construction. Newry & Mourne Museum Collection.
After the Second World War, new estates expanded Newry and created new communities. Families left overcrowded accommodation for homes with indoor plumbing, gardens and modern conveniences. Temporary prefabricated bungalows, built through emergency housing programmes, also offered many families a new beginning. The exhibition also explores housing’s role in campaigns for civil rights and equality during the 1960s and early 1970s. Estates such as Derrybeg and Rooney’s Meadow developed strong identities while experiencing the wider changes of the Troubles.
Homes for Everyone connects this history with housing issues today, including affordability, homelessness, sustainability, shared housing and community integration. Local experiences encourage visitors to reflect on housing’s influence on opportunity, wellbeing and community life.
Supported by PEACEPLUS, a programme managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB), the project placed community groups and participants from across Newry, Mourne and Down at the centre of a six-month research and creative programme in 2026. Their memories, photographs and reflections helped shape Homes for Everyone. Artist and filmmaker Kevin Cameron facilitated the programme and recorded participants’ stories, which feature in the film and oral history testimony included in the exhibition.
Participants describe leaving condemned houses for modern council homes, raising families in new estates, living through social change and, in many cases, becoming homeowners – as well as the thrill of running water, electricity and flushing toilets! Their contributions remind us that housing history is about people, families and communities as much as buildings and policies. Their first-hand accounts show how housing shaped identities and forged lasting community bonds.
Photographs from the Cecil Newman Collection, the Hugh Irvine Collection and Newry and Mourne Museum’s social history collection reveal familiar streets, estates and neighbourhoods across the decades.
From workers’ cottages and almshouses to modern developments, Homes for Everyone offers a chance to reflect on progress and the challenges that remain. Buildings may change, but the desire for a safe, secure and dignified home remains universal.
Homes for Everyone opens at Newry and Mourne Museum on 19 November 2026. Admission is free, and all are welcome. The Museum is currently offering free tours of the main exhibition galleries on Wednesdays at 2.00 pm. These must be booked in advance by calling our Education Officer at 0330 137 4422.
Newry and Mourne Museum is open Tuesday – Saturday 10.00 am – 4.30 pm. Please call 0330 137 4422 or email museums@nmandd.org for further information.
Discover more stories on the museum blog. Explore the local area’s history and take a closer look at objects in the collection: www.visitmournegullionstrangford.com/museums/blog
Make Newry and Mourne Museum your next discovery. Visit their website to explore the museum and plan your visit: www.visitmournegullionstrangford.com
