One night in summer 1865, Andrew Byrne returned to his hotel room in New York a little the worse for wear after a night of drinking with friends. Drowsy with wine, he blew out the light without turning off the gas, which filled the room as he slept heavily. Fortuitously, a fanlight over his door … Read more
Youghal, Co. Cork, was one of the most significant maritime centres of medieval Ireland, commanding important trading routes to northern and western Europe. Like other urban centres of the time, it was surrounded by walls punctuated by defensive towers and heavily guarded gates. In time, the town expanded southwards and a new ‘base’ or outer … Read more
Richard Crosbie organised three manned balloon flights in Dublin in 1785, and made a final flight from Limerick in 1786. He is rightly celebrated as Ireland’s first aeronaut, and today there is a memorial to him in Ranelagh Gardens, where his first flight took place. Crosbie was born near Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow, c. 1756, descended … Read more
Oliver Cromwell’s government sponsored two congregations of Protestant Dissenters in Dublin between 1649 and 1660. One of them met at Wood Street and the other at ‘Saint Nicholas-within-the-walls’, close to Christ Church Cathedral. Both of these communities flourished from the mid-seventeenth century until well into the nineteenth. For more than 140 years the ministers at … Read more
Cork experienced its first recorded encounter with the Vikings in 820, when its great monastery was attacked. Yet the annals record only three further raids on Cork by Vikings from overseas in the following three and a half centuries. The first record we have of a Viking settlement at Cork dates from 846, when Irish annals report that Ólchobhar … Read more