Irish War of Independence

Cork Fella Comes to County Wicklow

Above – Trafalgar Road, leading down to the harbour, Greystones, c1900. This seaside town is in Co Wicklow, and the connection with West Cork is that our ‘Big Fella’ – Michael Collins – had intended to set up home there once he had married Catherine (Kitty) Kiernan. Collins was staying in the Grand Hotel when he proposed to Kitty. That building is better known to us as the La Touche (photo below from the National Library of Ireland).

Above: la Touche, mid 20th century. Today, the hotel has been transformed into modern apartments (below). The fine original central building has been retained and upgraded:

Michael Collins and Kitty Kiernan have been described as ‘star-crossed lovers’. The pair were first introduced by Michael’s cousin, Gearoid O’Sullivan, who was friendly at the time with Kathy’s sister, Maud. Kitty was also close to Harry Boland, who served as President of the Irish Republican Brotherhood from 1919 to 1920. Boland was a good friend of Collins.

Harry Boland (left), Michael Collins (centre) and Éamon de Valera (NLI public domain c1920). Collins and Kiernan announced their engagement in 1921 and planned to marry the following year, but the political upheavals of the time kept delaying the wedding. During this turbulent period, Collins had ‘grown quite fond of Greystones’, often spending time in the house of his aunt, Maisie O’Brien Twohig – Dysart, Kimberly Road. Ironically, this property backed on to the RIC station.

(Upper) Dysart – home of Michael Collins’ Aunt Maisie. (Lower) former RIC barracks and present-day Garda station, immediately adjacent to Dysart.

(Above) Kitty Kiernan. Collins and Kitty had planned to live in Brooklands, on Trafalgar Road, Greystones (below), after their marriage.

Michael Collins, Arthur Griffith and Robert Barton were delegates to the Treaty Negotiations that ended the Irish War of Independence in December 1921. Before he left Greystones, it is recorded that Collins visited Fr Ignatius of the Congregation of the Passion:

. . . The facts are these: he [Collins] was staying at the Grand Hotel, Greystones, while I was giving a mission there. It was coming near the close of the Mission. Michael was very busy in Dublin, worked and worried almost beyond endurance. He got to Greystones one night very late and very tired. It was the eve of his departure to London, re the Pact. He got up the next morning as early as 5.30 am and came to the Church, and made a glorious General Confession and received Holy Communion. He said to me after Confession, “Say the Mass for Ireland, and God bless you, Father”. He crossed an hour or so later to London . . .


Patrick J Doyle PP, BMH.WS0807, pp 39-40, 90-91

(Above) St Brigid’s Church, Greystones. Fatefully, Collins was shot in West Cork on 22 August 1922. Collins “. . . One of the World’s greatest figures . . . Knightliest Soul of the Land . . .” was mourned by the nation, and – of course – by Kitty.

(Above) headlines in the Boston Post on the morning of 23 August 1922.

The de Valeras – Éamon and Sinéad (above, in 1910) – took a house in Greystones soon after the 1916 rising, situated on Kinlen Road in the Burnaby Estate. The house was built at the turn of the 20th century by Patrick Joseph (PJ) Kinlen, who lived there for a time himself. PJ built much of the Burnaby estate and Kinlen Road was named after him. They named the house Craigliath – it is now known as Edenmore (below).

A reason for the popularity of Greystones in the early 20th century was its relative proximity to the centre of Dublin, and the railway line which gave access to the city. If any readers have travelled on this line – which goes down the east coast as far as Wexford – you will know that the section between Bray and Greystones is one of the most adventurous railway journeys in the world! Engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, it clings to the precipitous cliffs and ran on trestle-bridges and through a series of tunnels: there have been many incidents during its history, and the line has had to be reconstructed a few times to avoid the effects of erosion. (With thanks to the Greystones Guide for the image below):

A popular story tells how Éamon de Valera was travelling home from Harcourt Street to Greystones on the night of 17 May 1918. When the train reached Bray, the driver saw that “two detectives” (although some versions say it was a number of constables) had boarded the train a few carriages behind.

 . . . [The driver] felt sure that the intention was to arrest de Valera that night in Greystones. He said that they would slow down the train coming into Greystones before they arrived at the station at a certain point, which they indicated to de Valera, and they advised him to jump out of the carriage on the off-side, and that he could easily get away, and afterwards they would put on speed . . .

However, de Valera chose not to accept this offer, and when the train arrived at Greystones, he was apprehended and arrested. The Irish Independent adds a few further details:

. . . Dev “. . . was taken to the waiting room under a heavy guard, and after being searched, was placed in a motor car and driven to Kingstown, where he was handed over to the military and placed on board the transport … for England” . . .


Irish Independent, 20 May 1918

(Above: Greystones Station – late 19h Century). Personally, I am unsurprised that de Valera did not accept the train driver’s offer. Jumping from a moving train is not a recommended course of action – especially when the terrain of that section of railway-line is so hazardous. De Valera was imprisoned in England but escaped and then went to America: his wife did not see him for three years. During this time Michael Collins visited her often in Greystones to bring her news and also to provide funds. Later she reportedly told her husband that she was ‘quite in love with Collins’. He grumpily responded: “…That’ll do. There are enough people in love with Michael Collins…” (Below – lantern slide of Greystones Harbour, 1900):

Of course, de Valera lived to tell his tale – he died on 29 August 1975, aged 92, having achieved the status of Taoiseach and President of Ireland – whereas Michael Collins did not: he was shot at Béal na Bláth, County Cork, at the age of 31. It is fair to say that he undoubtedly achieved the perhaps more fulfilling status of National Hero.

Greystones Harbour in 1911. With many thanks to the excellent Greystones Guide for invaluable free access to pictures and information.

Drying Gelignite By The Fire: Extraordinary, Ordinary Women of West Cork

Karen Minihan has spent the last two years seeking out the forgotten stories of West Cork women who played an active role in the founding our our state. She has compiled thirteen of these stories into a compelling book – Extraordinary, Ordinary Women: Untold Stories from the Founding of the State. This book has opened my eyes to the courage and commitment of young (and not so young) women who took on dangerous roles in the War of Independence and the Civil War. Most did so as members of Cumann na mBan (the Women’s Company – the word Cumann actually means friendship), founded as an auxiliary to the IRA. This RTE piece is a good introduction to what the Cumann was all about, and includes an interview with Leslie Price, one of the women quoted in this book. Cumann na mBan, famously, was particularly well organised in West Cork and these women did everything to support the war against British occupation. 

Karen (centre) with her mother and Conor Nelligan, Cork County Heritage Officer at the book launch

The book was launched on Friday at Uillinn (West Cork Arts centre) in Skibbereen, with a talk by Maura Leane (below), Professor of Applied Social Studies at UCC. She said:

Reading through the stories, I felt like I was watching an old, grainy, movie reel. Scenes were spooling out in my mind, providing beguiling insights into the history of the countryside around us, and into the activities that dominated the lives of many people living here, between 1915 and 1923, a time when West Cork, along with the rest of the country, was an active war zone. . . .It subtly shifts the spotlight of history, to pick out scenes that conjure up time and place, a local landscape, the atmosphere, and most importantly, a set of women characters. Characters, who have remained in the shadows, while attention was paid to the male heroes whose stories dominate our understanding of the period.

The stories are of women who were full of courage, spirit, skill and cleverness. The war would have been impossible without them – they scouted, carried dispatches, concealed and transported arms, nursed wounded men, raised money, sent essential supplies (like cigarettes!) to prisoners, passed on intelligence, cooked, sewed (many, many haversacks) and laundered for men on the run. They learned to handle firearms and to do first aid. They looked after the farms while their brothers were off with their Flying Columns. They cycled for miles through dark country roads to raise alarms or deliver messages. 

May Hickey lived in Skeaghnore – that’s her above in later life, not looking at all like the daring young woman revealed in her stories. They had a secret room where they hid men on the run – theirs being a ‘safe house’. May found herself many an evening cleaning rifles from the stashes she maintained in various hedges and ditches in the area. Also, “gelignite, tonite and detonators were given to me on various occasions to keep dry and often I was ordered to dry gelignite near the fire which was damp after the remainder being used for explosive purposes.” 

Helena Hegarty was the Matron of the Schull workhouse (above and below, as it is now). Incredibly courageous, she used her place of work to harbour IRA men and tend to the wounded. She even kept a British spy in the workhouse under lock and key for several weeks. She trained other women in first aid, and set up field hospitals. According to one account “she carried out her duties conscientiously and fearlessly.”

Having been given advance notice that the workhouse would be burned, she got out all the inmates and anything that could be saved. Because the British Military barracks in Schull was being attacked at the same time, she and her charges were under rifle and machine gun fire as they sheltered on the roads outside the workhouse. A recurring motif in the book is that few people knew of the heroism of the women who are portrayed. Below is Schull main street today – Helena Hegarty, warm and gentle and loved by all, ran a shop about where Brosnan’s Centra is now, after she was put out of work by the burning of the workhouse. She was known as Auntie by a generation of Schull children and their parents, who had no idea what she had done.

And in return the women were harassed by the Black and Tans and the RIC. Some women were roughed up and their hair was cut – it was called ‘bobbing’ and was a potent mark of punishment, used by all sides. They were threatened with having their house burned – they lived in fear but carried on. It took its toll – after Mary Ellen McLean’s brother, Michael John, was killed by the Black and Tans with appalling cruelty, she was ‘never the same.’ The memorial to her brother in Lowertown, (below), now occupies the spot where her post office was once the hub of intelligence for the region.

Most upsetting to us, as we look back from our present vantage point, is that their roles were undervalued. While heaped with praise both in the Bureau of Military History accounts of their deeds and in the Pension applications, they were routinely denied pensions by the (all-male) board, had their service downplayed and, where they were awarded a pension, were assigned to the lowest grade – E level. (Read more about that here.) Helena Hegarty was one such woman, awarded an E grade pension, despite the emphatic support by local IRA commanders for the work she had done

Karen includes the case of Bridget Noble, murdered by the IRA because she was a observed to be entering the RIC barracks. She had previously been bobbed and had lodged a complaint against the men who forced this on her, thus earning the ‘informer’ label. A thoroughly researched book by Sean Boyne (see his talk to the West Cork History Festival) has documented this case of the ‘disappeared’ woman of the Beara Peninsula.

A Cumann na mBan pin – note the centrality of the rifle

At the launch, Maura Leane summed up Karen’s work thus:

By inviting us as readers to engage with Bridget’s story, Karen pulls us, uncompromisingly, into the trauma and the violence and the highly emotive reality of this period of war, in our own localities. And when this period was over, and everyone had to start the journey of living together again, side by side, and in common cause, this trauma had to be set aside. The memories had to be put away, the stories had to be left untold. And so, this time was rendered silent. And this is why Karen’s work here, is so important. Because what Karen has done is to gently and skilfully evoke voices and emotions from this troubled time. She has storied these voices and brought forth war time memories, in all their complexity and in all their nuances. And most importantly of all, she has brought into relief the feelings and the emotional resonance that is embedded in accounts of the past.

Sullivan’s Toy Shop was once the home and business of Rose O’Connell, one of the extraordinary, ordinary women

At the launch, Karen enacted a short play based on the chapter on Rose O’Connell. Poignantly, the shop where the action took place could be seen from the room, and some of her descendants were at the event. Karen’s book is available at all good West Cork Bookstores but if you’re not lucky enough to live here you can order it from Schull’s wonderful Worm Books (thewormbookshop@gmail.com). 

A Signal Success in Irish Engineering – Part 8: Brow Head

It’s surprising that it’s taken us eight episodes of this series to reach Brow Head, as it is one of the nearest to us, and one of the best preserved – albeit a ruin. It’s not far from the last one we explored: Cloghane, on Mizen Head. In fact, at 3.8km apart, these two towers are the closest of any in the whole system of signal towers around much of the coast of Ireland: 81 towers, each one generally in sight of two others.

Above – views north-west across to Cloghane, Mizen Head, from Brow Head. The lower photo is taken with a long lens. Cloghane is 3.8km away from Brow Head: it doesn’t sound very far but, as you can see from the centre picture here, it’s remarkable that telescopes were good enough, in the early 19th century, to make out visual signals in any great detail. Weather conditions were obviously an important factor in this. Below, the tower at Knock, Lowertown, near Schull, is some 19km away to the east. When we visited the vestigial Ballyroon signal tower, on the Sheep’s Head to the north, we could also clearly see across to Brow Head – a distance of about 17km.

Brow Head – the headland itself – has been the subject of a previous post on Roaringwater Journal. It has a remarkably diverse history: not only is it the site of the Napoleonic-era signal tower, but of industrial and scientific activity. There are the substantial remains of a nineteenth century copper mine (photo above): I noted that the Mine Captain here was Hugh Harris from Cornwall – and wondered if he was a relation – until I read that he was dismissed as ...an incompetent authority…! Most interesting, perhaps, are the ruins of a signalling station set up by Guglielmo Marconi – established in 1901.

This photograph was taken in 1914. It shows the Marconi installation still in use: the signal tower is visible in the background, on the left. On the far right is a building which I take to be the electricity generating station, powering the telegraph. During the Emergency (1939 – 1945), a lookout emplacement was built to the south of the Marconi station: many of these were built around the coast, the majority sharing a site with a Napoleonic-era tower. Have a look here for more information on these comparatively recent structures.

For this excellent drone picture of the Brow Head site, taken in 2017, I am most indebted to Jennifer & James Hamilton, mvdirona.com. Jennifer and James are intrepid adventurers, travelling around the world on their Nordhavn52 vessel. It’s well worth going to their website to see what they get up to: it makes our own travels in the West of Ireland seem a little humdrum… On the right of the photo is the 1804 signal tower; on the left is the Marconi station with – just in front of it – all that is left of the 1939-45 lookout post. On the right in the foreground is the generating station shown in the present day photo, below. Note, also, in all these images can be seen the four-block supporting base for the Marconi transmission mast.

What happened to these buildings? Here’s an account I received from a RWJ correspondent (very many thanks, Rachel), after I had published an earlier post on them in 2014 – it is based on contemporary newspaper articles during the Irish War of Independence:

. . . Brow Head was destroyed on the 21st August 1920 at 12:45 – 1am, having been raided less than 2 weeks earlier on the 9th August. All reports mention the use of fire; only some mention the use of bombs. Explosives had, however, been stolen during the earlier raid on Brow Head (they were used for fog-signalling). Due to delays in reporting, some articles suggest different dates for these events but I’m fairly sure the 9th and 21st of August are the correct ones. 9th August: Armed and masked men raid the station and take stores of explosives, ammunition, and rifles. There are conflicting reports over whether any wireless equipment was taken during this raid. 21st August: Reports that all buildings at Brow Head (war signal station, post office, coastguard) destroyed, either by fire, or fire and bombs depending on the article. Some reports say 40 men were involved, some 70, some 150, some 150-200. These men had masks and were armed with revolvers to cover the three or four guards, they were described as young and courteous. The raid is said to have taken 5 hours; all Post Office equipment was taken away, as well as other stores. Other wireless equipment was smashed. The raiders helped the guards move their furniture/belongings out before setting fire to the buildings . . .

Rachel Barrett

So far we haven’t said much about the 1804 signal tower itself. Although ruined, it is a good example, reasonably stable, and has survived two centuries of severe Atlantic gales remarkably well. All the elements are recognisable: projecting bartizans, slate hung external walls for improved weatherproofing, an intact roof and distinct internal features – and a little enigmatic graffitti. Compare all these with the other towers in our series so far (there are links at the end).

If you set out to visit the Brow Head site on a good day, you can’t do better than to park at Galley Cove – at the bottom of the long, steep access road (and beside the Marconi commemoration board and sculpture by Susan O’Toole) – and then walk up. You will enjoy continuously changing spectacular views in all directions, and you will begin to see the signal tower above you as you approach the brow of Brow Head.

West Cork based artist Brian Lalor visited the Brow Head site with the Mizen Field Club in 1984. His sketch of the buildings is an interesting record as it appears to show, on the left, the 1939-45 lookout post intact (below). Very little remains now, 37 years later (lower). I wonder what led to this particular piece of destruction?

I’ll finish off with another sketch view of the Brow Head signal tower: this is by Peter Clarke, who runs the excellent Hikelines site. Many thanks, Peter.

The previous posts in this series can be found through these links:

Part 1: Kedge Point, Co Cork

Part 2: Ballyroon Mountain, Co Cork

Part 3: Old Head of Kinsale, Co Cork

Part 4: Robert’s Head, Co Cork

Part 5: Downeen, Co Cork

Part 6: Dunnycove

Part 7: Cloghane, Mizen Head

Ballyfin – Part 2: Decline and Revival

Last week Roaringwater Journal visited Ballyfin Demesne: I sketched out the early history of the house and Finola looked at the magnificent grounds. Today I’m bringing the story up to date. We got as far as the gracious Victorian and Edwardian days, when the Coote family were in residence, as they had been since 1813. The photo above dates from 1903 and shows a jaunting car waiting at the entrance to the house (Magan Collection): perhaps those days were not quite as settled as the halcyon period when the children of Sir Charles Coote were painted so fancifully in the early nineteenth century (artist: George Hayter – with the addition of a whippet painted by Edwin Lanseer!). The painting (below) is now a centrepiece in the Gold Room at Ballyfin.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, there were clouds on the horizon for the Anglo Irish families and their big houses, although life at Ballyfin seemed to maintain a continuum up until the commencement of the Great War. Generations of Cootes are remembered as having been good landlords and employers: on Sir Charles’ death in 1864 the most important members of staff were ‘handsomely rewarded’ in his will, while in the early 20th century the 12th Baronet, Sir Algernon Coote, paid the highest wages in the county – and ‘provided a comfortable house’ – to all outside labourers. In 1920, Sir Algernon died and was succeeded by his eldest son, Ralph,  the 13th Baronet. In the atmosphere of the Irish War of Independence, Ralph could no longer see a future in remaining at Ballyfin: ‘ . . . nothing would ever be the same again . . . ‘

A sad picture of Ballyfin – the house now abandoned and awaiting its fate in 1926

Sensibly – and most fortunately for today’s owners, Sir Ralph determined that the demesne should not be broken up and dispersed. He insisted that it should be marketed as one lot:

‘ . . . I have no intention whatever of dividing the demesne, the price is £10,000 . . . The figure is final and you need not bother to waste any time with anyone trying to reduce it. I would let the place fall down first . . . ‘

It was precisely one hundred years after the 9th Baronet had rebuilt Ballyfin to re-establish a permanent residence there.

So it was that, in 1930, Ballyfin set out on a new path in its development – as a school owned and run by the Patrician Brothers – a Roman Catholic teaching brotherhood. The only significant alterations to the house were the creation of a College Chapel in the old Dining Room (above), a dormitory across the north front of the first floor, and improved services. The immediate grounds were retained to provide productive gardens and the yards were filled with livestock.

Reports of life at the school from those who have memories of it are generally very positive, particularly because of the idyllic surroundings and features of the estate.  While the Patricians did their best to ensure that Ballyfin catered for the needs of a large secondary school and also strove to keep the entire demesne intact, in the end economic pressures and decades of slow decline took their toll. The Brothers closed the College in September, 2001, after 74 years of stewardship: once vacated, Ballyfin House was considered  by the Irish Georgian Society to be foremost amongst Ireland’s endangered buildings. It needed a saviour to rescue it. Fortunately, three appeared.

Above – an example of the declining fabric of Ballyfin during the twentieth century: Richard Turner’s iconic iron conservatory seems beyond repair, yet the reincarnation of the estate that commenced in 2004 has magnificently returned this architectural gem to prime condition, along with the rest of the house and Demesne. The conservatory was completely dismantled and – piece by piece – the ironwork was restored, then reassembled. Then a complete reglazing took place (practically every pane is a different size): in the days of the school the boys had found the glass an irresistible target!

In 2002, a Chicago based couple, Fred and Kay Krehbiel, became the new owners of Ballyfin and invited Jim Reynolds – one of Ireland’s leading landscape designers (who incidentally shared an archaeology education with Finola!) – to join them as shareholder and managing director on a project that was ‘ . . . a fundamental desire to recreate, primarily through restoration, the great hospitable tradition. the luxury and the atmosphere of the Irish country house . . . ‘ Ballyfin encompassed everything they had been searching for: ‘ . . . a great endangered house in a beautiful landscape that needed rescuing . . . ‘

The source of much of the history of the demesne recorded here is the impressive volume by Kevin V Mulligan, to which I referred last week. This extract is a good summary of the ethos and achievement of those who drove the project:

‘ . . . The primary aim of the new owners and Jim Reynolds has been to re-establish the integrity of the house and everything within the demesne walls – its historic buildings, gardens and parklands, and by opening the house to guests, to fulfil the hospitable intentions of the Irish country house. Since 2004 an extensive programme of restoration works has brought the house closest to its state following completion almost two centuries ago. It has taken eight years to achieve this, longer in fact than it had taken to complete the house in the first instance . . . ‘

This photo compendium indicates the high quality of the restoration and the attention paid to every detail, including the recovery and hanging of many of the original portraits showing the owners of the estate during its history.

Ballyfin today reflects one piece of the complicated jigsaw puzzle that is the history of Ireland. It paints a picture of way of life now in the past.  In today’s incarnation as a first class, small hotel it offers a distilled and polished experience of the best of contemporary Irish hospitality.