Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 9 January 2020
Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,
Cork Independent, 9 January 2020
Remembering 1920: Attacks on RIC Barracks Begin
The first week of January 1920 witnessed another scaling up of agitation by the general headquarters of the Irish Republican Army. Following the failure of the Independence petition at the Paris Peace Conference. the continued banning of non-violent republican organisations and the outlawing of Dáil Éireann, offensive action was officially sanctioned against crown forces. In the counties of Cork, Limerick, Cork, Tipperary, Kerry, Clare, and Dublin attacks on police patrols escalated.
From January 1920 arms raids of Royal Irish Constabulary Barracks began. Those barracks in rural areas were the first to be targeted as many of them were not overly defended. Successful arms raids and the taking of mail for intelligence purposes gave many local IRA units purpose without real exposure to injury and death. Historian Dr Joost Augusteijn in the Atlas of the Irish Revolution details that by the summer of 1920, almost one third of all RIC barracks had been evacuated. By the end of 1920 a total of 553 Barracks were destroyed. Many of the attacks have been written about at length by local historians across the country and the events remembered as appropriate throughout the decades and live on in folk memory.
Regional newspapers such as the Cork Examiner wrote at length on countrywide events in its crammed editorial sections. Journalists had to submit their work to the national censor’s office for fear of offence against the Defence of the Realm Act (1914 and its extensions). Whilst turning each page of the Cork Examiner from 1916 to the end of 1920 for research for this column from 1916 to the end of 1920, there is an apparent loosening up of what Republican activity stories could be published. It is clear that more and more information on IRA activity was published throughout 1920. That is despite the threat in September 1919 when the Cork Examiner suffered under the Crown’s censorship for advertising the Dáil Éireann Loan Scheme. However, agitation and harassment were felt by both sides through the IRA and through Crown officials.
Between Friday 2 January and Sunday 4 January 1920, the Cork Examiner records that four County Cork police barracks were raided by members of the IRA – Carrignavar, Carrigtwohill, Kilmurry, and Inchigeela.
In the early hours of Friday morning 2 January 1920 revolver shots were fired all long range through the upper part of the window of the police barracks at Carrignavar. An additional precaution against attacks on this police barracks had been taken before the attack. Sheet-iron plate inside the ground floor windows was erected to three-quarter length it. The shots from outside were well-directed as they hit the unprotected upper quarter of the window and some the bullets lodged in the wall of the room. None of the occupants of the barrack were injured and nothing was taken.
In Carrigtwohill early on Saturday evening, 3 January 1920 the sergeant and two constables were on patrol duty. In the late afternoon, about 5pm men on bicycles began to arrive in the village. The police took little notice of the early arrivals, thinking they were men who, through one cause or another, were kept out later than they had estimated, and were, therefore without lights. But when men in twos and threes came along the road at only short distances apart, the police became suspicious, and, on the sergeant’s order, they endeavoured to hold up one man. The young man was not to be trapped by this sudden and unexpected challenge and took off on his bike but fell off shortly afterwards. He took heel and outpaced his pursuers.
However, the police were convinced that something out of the ordinary was about to happen and they immediately returned to barracks. This was about 9.30pm and they telephoned another Barracks in Midleton with a warning. They tried to ring up a Queenstown but they found that the lines had been cut. Shortly after the attack on the barracks began as well. It was mainly from the back. Behind the barracks there was a wall about five feet high, and beside it is a hay shed. Concealed behind these the raiding party opened fire. That was shortly after 10pm and a continuous fusillade was kept up until 2.30am. It was only when the Barrack’s ammunition was exhausted that the raiding party ventured to approach the barracks. The attackers then blew away with gelignite one end of the barracks. They rushed in through the breech and took the police prisoners captive and handcuffed them. Some of the raiders were disguised, others were not but all had revolvers. They then searched the entire place, and took away rifles, ammunition and accoutrements.
On Saturday night, 3 January 1920, a party of armed men attacked the police barrack at Kilmurry. The barrack comprised five policemen and the building was an ordinary-sized house. At 11pm the noises of rifle fire filled the air. This firing continued for some time. The police returned the fire, and after an interchange of shots, the attacking party were beaten off.
The Constabulary barracks at Inchigeela was raided on Sunday 4 January 1920 by a party of armed men. The Inchigeela incident took place between 9.30pm and 1am. Dr Gould, the medical officer of the Inchigeela Dispensary District, who had been attending a patient on the Ballingeary side, was held up at a barricade in his motor car just outside the village. Eleven men of the Ballingeary IRA Company formed a scouting party whilst six armed with revolvers and shotguns took on the local barracks. Dr Gould was informed that he could not proceed for a period of two hours and was directed to a nearby cottage. The barracks was raided for arms and mail by the six members of the company. It was also targeted twice more in the ensuing weeks – 7 March 1920 and 23 May 1920.
Missed one of the 51 columns last year, which focussed on life in Cork in 1919, check out the indices on my website, www.corkheritage.ie.
Captions:
1030a. Main Street, Carrigtwohill, c.1920 with the prominent RIC Barracks building just right of centre (source: Cork City Museum)
1030b. 1030b. Location map of RIC Barracks, Carrigtwohill, c.1910 (source: Cork City Library)
1030b. Present day view of former site of Carrigtwohill RIC Barracks; the barracks remained a ruin till the 1960s and in time the site was redeveloped (picture: Kieran McCarthy)
Kieran’s Ward Funds 2020
Cllr Kieran McCarthy is calling on any community groups based in the south east ward of Cork City, which includes areas such as Ballinlough, Ballintemple, Blackrock, Mahon, Douglas, Donnybrook, Maryborough, Rochestown, Mount Oval and Moneygourney with an interest in sharing in his 2020 ward funding to apply for his funds. A total of E.11,000 is available to community groups through Cllr Kieran McCarthy’s Cork City Council ward funds. Due to the annual take-up of the ward funds, in general grants can vary from e.100 to e.300 to groups.
Application should be made via letter (Richmond Villa, Douglas Road) or email to Kieran at kieran_mccarthy@corkcity.ie by Friday 7 February 2020. This email should give the name of the organisation, contact name, contact address, contact email, contact telephone number, details of the organisation, and what will the ward grant will be used for?
Please Note:
– Ward funds will be prioritised to community groups based in the south east ward of Cork City who build community capacity, educate, build civic awareness and projects, which connect the young and old.
– Cllr McCarthy especially welcomes proposals where the funding will be used to run a community event that benefits the wider community. In addition, he is seeking to fund projects that give people new skill sets. That could include anything from part funding of coaching training for sports projects to groups interested in bringing forward enterprise programmes to encourage entrepreneurship to the ward.
– Cllr McCarthy is also particularly interested in funding community projects such as community environment projects such as tree planting, community concerts, and projects those that promote the rich history and environment within the south east ward.
Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 2 January 2020
Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,
Cork Independent, 2 January 2020
Remembering 1920: Preparing for Local Elections
A new day and year, 1 January 1920, coincided with a bringing a sense of hope and renewal at the start of a new decade. But excitement and worry existed over the pending restructuring of the local government structure in Ireland. Proportional representation was to be tested in the 1920 local elections. The “First past the Post” system of voting in the local elections ended and proportional representation introduced a system of the single transferable vote for multi-member electoral areas.
In the 1918 general elections the Sinn Féin party obtained a large margin of Irish seats in Westminster. Many seats achieved by Sinn Féin were not overtly challenged, and the elections utilised the “first past the post” system. Sinn Féin in all contested seats gained marginally less than fifty per cent of the vote. The Local Government (Ireland) Act 1919, facilitated by the British Government, promoted proportional representation as a method to lessen the strong support for Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin itself did not oppose the new system and saw it as way of moving local authorities away from swearing allegiance to the King to Dáil Éireann. Controlling local councils politically was deemed another step further to obtaining more political freedom from Westminster.
However, at a local and neighbourhood level proportional representation was a game-changer in the chance it gave candidates to be elected especially if one was transfer friendly. Proportional representations also aimed at giving representation to “all classes in proportion to their strength”. The 5 January 1920 was the deadline for nominations by interested candidates in Cork City. The Cork Examiner lists that in the city of Cork 160 candidates (with only one female, Miss Anne Sutton representing Sinn Féin and Transport Workers) were nominated for 56 vacancies in the Borough Council. The term of office was to be three years.
Over half of the outgoing members of Cork Corporation – 20 of 51 – were putting their names forward again as were the usual political interests in the guise of Sinn Féin and Transport Workers, Labour, Constitutional Nationalists, Ratepayers and commercial, and Independents. General debates/ hustings were held across the City and it was noted on more than one occasion that the varied interests involved made it difficult to forecast a result. A large proportion of the candidates had also not previously ran in local elections – mainly because it was six years since the previous local elections. However, political groups put forward as many good candidates as they could field. For example, there were 33 standing for the Nationalist ticket whilst 37 Independents put their names forward. The Cork and District Labour Council nominated 12 candidates.
Twenty-two candidates were proposed by the Cork Rate Payer’s Association. In its manifesto they noted that it more difficult to manage the affairs of an ordinary business concern than it was six years previously. War, the shortage of labour and investment plagued cities, towns and rural regions across the country. It was hoped that proportional representation would sweep progressive and business-savvy candidates into the city’s council chamber. In particular, the election aimed to capture and give a voice to those who pay rates should be entitled to be represented in the administration of municipal affairs. Such candidates would also have knowledge of controlling expenditure and to act impartially and independently in managing corporate business.
At a meeting of the Cork Ratepayers and Citizen’s Association on 1 January 1920, Sir John Scott presided with William Dorgan, solicitor, the honorary secretary. Mr Dorgan highlighted that he got substantial support financially from many ratepayers who were unable to attend their meetings. He hoped that they had a strong list of candidates who all sought to have a voice on where the city’s rates would be spent and the future striking of them. In late 1919, the rates stood at 10s 7 ¼ d in the pound. The candidates also expressed a worry about the paying back of a bank overdraft and the consideration of upping the rates even more. Housing for the working classes were also on their priority list.
Under the new division of the city’s wards the electorate was divided into seven areas – Central (10 vacancies, 37 candidates), North East (10 vacancies, 26 candidates), City Hall (6 vacancies, 18 candidates), College and Evergreen Area (11 vacancies, 30 candidates), Sunday’s Well and Blarney Street (7 vacancies, 23 candidates), Shandon (6 vacancies, 13 candidates), and Blackpool (6 vacancies, 18 candidates). The creation of the new ward boundaries complicated the situation between candidates as some outgoing councillors now had new districts to contend with. Voting lists were busy with names especially the Central Area, which had ten vacancies and 37 candidates. The area was an amalgamation of the west ward and the old city centre wards. Sinn Féin put forward a full list in every area (e.g. in Shandon, 11 candidates for the 11 seats) bar only having eight candidates for the ten seats in the North-East.
The polling day was to be on 15 January 1920 with the counting to take place in City Hall (more on this in the new few weeks). City Hall staff were to be trained in the new proportional representation model.
Happy new year to all readers of the column.
Caption:
1029a. Old Cork City Hall, c.1920 (picture: Cork City Library)
Evening Echo, Shalom Park, 29 December 2019
“Evening Echo” Lighting Installation at Shalom Park, 29 December 2019
“Evening Echo” Lighting Installation at Shalom Park
Sunset – Sunday 29th December 2019
Shalom Park
Lighting Sequence:
9th Lamp on : 4:21pm
Sunset : 4:31pm
9th Lamp off : 5:01pm
Evening Echo is a public artwork by New Zealand artist Maddie Leach. It is sited on old gasometer land gifted by Bord Gáis to Cork City Council in the late 1980s. This site was subsequently re-dedicated as Shalom Park in 1989. The park sits in the centre of the old Cork neighbourhood known locally as ‘Jewtown’. This neighbourhood is also home to the National Sculpture Factory.
Evening Echo is an art project generated as an artist’s response to the particularities of place and locality. Now in its ninth year, the project continues to gather support from the Cork Hebrew Congregation,Cork City Council, National Sculpture Family, Bord Gáis and its local community.
The project is manifested in a sequence of custom-built lamps, a remote timing system, a highly controlled sense of duration, a list of future dates, an annual announcement in Cork’s Evening Echo newspaper and a promissory agreement. Evening Echo is fleetingly activated on an annual cycle, maintaining a delicate but persistent visibility in the park and re-activating its connection to Cork’s Jewish history. Intended to exist in perpetuity, the project maintains a delicate position between optimism for its future existence and the possibility of its own discontinuance.
This year the last night of Hanukkah is Sunday the 29th December and offers the only opportunity to see the tall ‘ninth lamp’ alights until next year. The cycle begins 10 minutes before sunset, which occurs this year at 4.31pm, and continues for 30 minutes after sunset when the ninth lamp is extinguished.
The Evening Echo project is an important annual marker that acknowledges the significant impact that the Jewish Community had in Cork. Moreover this artwork, illustrates the precarious balance and possible disappearance of any small community existing within a changing city. Evening Echo continues as a lasting memory of the Jewish community in Cork city, and remains as a comment on the transient nature of communities and the impacts that inward and outward migration brings to the character of all cities.
Cork City Council wishes to acknowledge the essential role played by the Rosehill family of Cork in support of this artwork.
The event will be live-streamed by the Cork City Council on
https://m.facebook.com/corkcitycouncilofficial/
The Blessing of a Candle
The Blessing of a Candle
Cllr Kieran McCarthy
Sturdy on a table top and lit by youngest fair,
a candle is blessed with hope and love, and much festive cheer,
Set in a wooden centre piece galore,
it speaks in Christian mercy and a distant past of emotional lore,
With each commencing second, memories come and go,
like flickering lights on the nearest Christmas tree all lit in traditional glow,
With each passing minute, the flame bounces side to side in drafty household breeze,
its light conjuring feelings of peace and warmth amidst familiar blissful degrees,
With each lapsing hour, the residue of wax visibly melts away,
whilst the light blue centered heart is laced with a spiritual healing at play,
With each ending day, how lucky are those who love and laugh around its glow-filledness,
whilst outside, the cold beats against the nearest window in the bleak winter barreness,
Fear and nightmare drift away in the emulating light,
both threaten this season in almighty wintry flight,
Sturdy on a table top and lit by youngest fair,
a candle is blessed with hope and love, and much festive cheer.
Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 19 December 2019
Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,
Cork Independent, 19 December 2019
Gems From West Cork
My new book, 50 Gems of West Cork (Amberley Publishing, 2019) book explores 50 well-known gems of that beautiful region. Below is an abstract from two of my favourite sites – Bantry House and Bantry Bay.
Gem 30, A Chequered Past – Bantry House:
The elegant Bantry House defines the character of the adjacent local town. The house inspired the town’s development and the pier and vice-versa. The Archaeological Inventory of West Cork presents research excavations carried out in 2001 in an area directly west of the present house. Here the remains of a site were discovered of a deserted Gaelic medieval village and a seventeenth-century English settlement. Excavations revealed the foundations of the gable end of a mid-seventeenth-century house. This was in turn overlain by a more substantial and better-built rectangular structure, interpreted as a timber-built English administrative building. A palisade trench, dug late in the sixteenth or early in the eighteenth century, immediately pre-dated this building. According to the excavator, this had presumably created a stockade foundation around the early plantation settlement. Sixteenth-century cultivation ridges were also uncovered. These had cut into the foundations of a fifteenth/ sixteenth-century Gaelic domestic structure.
The area seems to have been abandoned in the middle of the seventeenth century and all available cartographic and documentary evidence indicated that no subsequent building or landscaping had taken place. The narrative of the old sites fell out of memory.
The earliest records for the next phase of the site date from circa 1690 and describe land deals between Richard White and the Earl of Anglesey, which established the basis of the Bantry House Estate. The records, which are in the archives of the library of University College Cork, include information about the ownership of land and property on the family’s Bantry, Glengarriff, Castletownbere and Macroom estates. The Whites built a detached five-bay two-storey country house over a basement, circa 1710.
In 1816, Richard White was created first Earl of Bantry. Prior to his marriage, he toured extensively on the continent, making sketches of landscapes, vistas, houses and furnishings, which he later used as inspiration in expanding and refurbishing Bantry House. The White family throughout the nineteenth century intermarried with other well-known landed families including the Herberts of Muckross House, Killarney, and the Guinness family of Dublin. Inspired by his travels and contacts, in 1820 Richard invested in the construction of new six bay two bow ended additions to the old country house as well as adding elaborate landscaped gardens complete with outbuildings, stables and gate lodges. In 1845 new bow-ended wings were also added.
William White, the 4th and last Earl of Bantry, died in 1891. Ownership of the estate then passed to his nephew, Edward Leigh, who assumed the additional name of White in 1897. His daughter, Clodagh, inherited Bantry House and estates on the death of her father in 1920, and in 1927, she married Geoffrey Shellswell, who assumed the additional name of White. Clodagh Shellswell-White died in 1978 and the ownership of the house and estate passed on to her son, Egerton Shellswell-White. Today the house and gardens still belong to the White Family and are open to the public to explore and engage with.
Gem 31, An Expedition into the Past – Stories from Bantry Bay:
Information panels on Bantry’s town square champion Ireland’s nationalist past and define the layout of the square and which history a visitor engages with first. The panels describe the collective memory of the campaign of Theobald Wolfe Tone in the interests of the United Irishmen and their quest for independence of this country. He journeyed to Paris at the beginning of the year 1796 to court the French to help with rebellion against the British in Ireland. There he met General Hoche, the brilliant French commander. On 16 December a fleet of 44 vessels and 15,000 men under General Hoche and Admiral Morard-de-Galles set sail from Brest.
The expedition was ill-fated from the start; for it was but a day at sea when the frigate Fraternite carrying Hoche and Morard-de-Galles, got separated from its companions and never reached the Irish shore. A dense fog arose, and Bouvet, the Admiral-in-Command, found he had only eighteen sailing ships in his company. Two days later, however, he had 33, and he steered direct for Cape Clear Island. Land was sighted on the 21 December, and though a rough easterly breeze was blowing, 16 vessels succeeded in reaching Bantry Bay. Twenty ships remained outside battling hopelessly against the gale and were eventually driven off the coast. A landing was impossible and Wolfe Tone, aboard the gunship Indompitable spent his cold Christmas on the Bay. On the night of 25 December an order came from Bouvet to quit the assault and put to sea. It was decided to land in the Shannon Estuary, but rough weather was increasing. The squadron put to sea and returned to France. It was the 27 December and the end of the Bantry Bay Expedition. Of the 48 ships that left Brest on 16 December 1796, only 36 returned to France. The rest were either captured by the English Navy or wrecked.
The ship La Surveillante was considered unseaworthy for the return journey and was scuttled by its crew in Bantry Bay. Its crew and all 600 cavalry and troops on board were transferred safely to other French ships in the fleet. According to the National Wreck Inventory, the three masted La Surveillante was built in Lorient in 1778 and carried 32 guns. The vessel had successful naval engagements with British warships during the period of the American War of Independence (1775–82). The wreck of La Surveillante was discovered in 1981 during seabed clearance operations following the Betelgeuse oil tanker disaster. One of La Surveillante’s anchors was trawled up by fishermen and put on display in Bantry. In 1987 two 12-pound cannons were raised from the wreck, and in 1997 the ship’s bell was lifted, which is now currently on display in Bantry Armada Centre, at Bantry House.
Happy Christmas to all readers of the column.
Missed one of the 51 columns this year, check out the indices at Kieran’s heritage website, www.corkheritage.ie
Kieran’s three 2019 books – 50 Gems of West Cork, The Little Book of Cork Harbour and Championing Cork: Cork Chamber of Commerce, 1819-2019 are now available in Cork bookshops.
Captions:
1028a. Bantry House, present day (picture: Kieran McCarthy)
1028b. Bantry Bay, present day (picture: Kieran McCarthy)
