The year 1849 was a year of portents. Some, such as the reappearance of the potato blight in May or the record number of evictions (13,384), were harbingers of the suffering and social upheavals to come. Two events in that year, however, both of which took place in County Kilkenny, marked an equally noteworthy but … Read more
Bray Town Hall, built in Tudor Revival style at the top of Main Street, was commissioned by the eleventh earl of Meath’s son and heir, Reginald Brabazon, Lord Ardee, who had lived abroad and who seems to have been anxious to show interest in the town where his father was lord of the manor and … Read more
On the night of 16 August 1920 ‘wild scenes were witnessed’ in Temple-more as the North-amptonshire Regiment carried out reprisals following the killing of RIC District Inspector Wilson by the IRA. According to a local press report, ‘soldiers joined in the outbreak . . . volleys were fired, houses attacked, shops looted, the town hall … Read more
And the Red Poppies Dance RTÉ1 11 November 2008 by John Gibney According to the late Frank Harte, the winners write the history and the losers write the songs. In the vexing case of Ireland’s relationship with the First World War this has a particular resonance. The broadly republican ethos of independent Ireland, rooted as … Read more
On the Saturday following the truce of 11 July 1921, my father, Richard Mulcahy, IRA chief-of-staff, went with my mother Min to the Gresham Hotel in O’Connell Street for afternoon tea. It was his first public appearance, having been on the run for the previous eighteen months. The well-known painter Leo Whelan was sitting close … Read more