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Irish Examiner
3 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Will there be another 'Battle of Rochestown' for €1.5m well-set Woodview?
THERE is deep Civil War history, sweeping harbour views and a hobby farm all wrapped up in Woodview, a one-off home in an enviable, sentinel position at the end of a cul de sac land and at the top of a wooded glen at Cork's Upper Rochestown. Views from Woodview It's changing of the guard time now after the best part of half a century at Woodview, the family home high on a hill for decades of the late Richard (Dick or Richie) O'Brien and his wife Elizabeth, where they reared a family of five and where the income from the cattle hobby farmer Richard kept put the couple's children through the costly college years. Farm functions too... 'The builder told me I wouldn't last a night out here, it was so dark and isolated,' laughs city born (Ballinlough) Elizabeth all these happy years later, albeit admitting 'back then there wasn't a light at night it was pitch black.' Outstanding in its fields In the years since, house development has come all the way out from Douglas to Rochestown, while visible across the waters of Cork harbour now is Litle Island, Carrigrennan and homes inched along the hills east of Cork city from Glounthaune, while shipping plying a route to and from the city quay also hoves into view, day and night. This is a quite fateful spot too in Irish Civil War terms as bitter battles (skirmish is too small a description) in the Battle of Rochestown of the Battle of Douglas took place in the woods here back in August 1922, with Free State troops landing an amphibian assault from Passage West to retake Cork city and other Munster anti-Treaty strongholds from Republican IRA forces. It was one of three timed Bank Holiday landings to banish rebel Cork, the other were at Youghal and Union Hall: here, the pro-treaty forces prevailed, taking the high land above Douglas later Cork city, with dozens injured and as many as 17 killed between both sides: Elizabeth O'Brien recalls finding unspent cartridges on the lands now bordering Woodview. Bullet-proof future location The O'Briens family story is one of a love of land, and farming, as Richard (who died in 2019) grew up in Kilmurry/Lissarda, studied Agricultural Science in UCC in the early 1970s and ended up playing key roles in the milling sector among some of Cork's oldest milling families, including for owners of Protestant and Huguenot stock, eventually becoming MD of the 1930s-founded Southern Mills, now Southern Milling, the largest milling company in the south of Ireland. While running mills was Dick O'Brien's day job, hobby and cattle farming was a passions and every day some or all of his three daughters and two sons raised here would be pressed into overalls, and into service, feeding and cleaning and farming at the O'Brien family homestead. Bright lights The home, substantial, two-storey and extended in the mid-1980s to its present 250 sq m size, was designed by architect Tony Dennehy and built by Forde & Meaney, is set at the end of the loveliest leafy farm lane between stone ditches alive with greenery. The private entrance is by a slatted shed and the family's nine acres of grazing also near the top of an old, grassy market road which runs from Upper Rochestown/Meadowlands down to the main Passage West road, the scene of Civil War hostilities back in the day, some of the bitterest fought outside of Dublin. Since the O'Briens came to the area, Meadowlands has filled in with up to two dozen one-off detached homes (inc ten in a circle cluster built on serviced sites) along the cul de sac road which they still bookend with the O'Briens' proudly-titled 'hobby farm. Kitchen by House of Coolmore Making the decision to 'right-size,' but to stay relatively locally in Rochestown, Elizabeth O'Brien has given the sale of Woodview and its eight acres (greenbelt for now and on the high hill between Rochestown and Passage West) to auctioneer Anthony O'Regan of Keane Mahony Smith, who guides the immaculately kept 2,500 sq ft family home at €1.5m, saying next owners can do as little, or as much, with it as they wish. Woodview is comfortable inside Some of the neighbours are into horses, and future interest in Woodview is likely to come from some of that ilk, animals and space lovers, perhaps into horses, perhaps cattle or even rare breeds. Rare breeds? When the Irish Examiner visited Woodview last weekend, visible to the east was the 35m high ferris wheel and its 24 spinning gondalas at Fota Wildlife Park, finishing its panoramic rounds above the 100 acre park and its zebras, ostriches and giraffes for now, on Sunday June 8. VERDICT: Free Staters and ferris wheels? Whatever next for Woodview?
Irish Times
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Civil War was won using local knowledge and very good political and military leadership, new book argues.
In April 1923 the Irish Civil War was effectively over. The anti-Treaty IRA's commander-in-chief Liam Lynch, who had sought to prolong the war long after it was a lost cause, was shot dead in the Knockmealdown Mountains on April 10th. Some days earlier most of the anti-Treaty executive had been rounded up and incarcerated. A secret National Army missive from the time concluded that it was the 'beginning of the end as far as the irregular campaign is concerned'. It is an established historical fact that the Free State could not have won the Civil War without British aid. It was two British 18 pounder guns that started the war when they were fired on the anti-Treaty garrison occupying the Four Courts in June 1922. Serving Irish colonel and author Dr Gareth Prendergast discovered details in Winston Churchill's gargantuan archive about the scale of British military aid to the pro-Treaty side. READ MORE A note dated September 2nd, 1922 details the inventory sent to the Provisional Government (it wasn't the Free State Government until December 1922) down to the last bullet, 4,745,848 to be precise along with 27,400 rifles, 6,606 revolvers, 246 Lewis machine guns and nine 18 pounder guns with 2,160 shells. In addition, the Free State forces were given nearly 15,000 rifles which belonged to the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). Even that was not enough with the Free State side demanding 10,000 more rifles in February 1923 complaining that many of the RIC weapons they received were 'very much used' and they were down to a bare inventory. Churchill, as secretary of state for the colonies, was in charge of ensuring the Anglo-Irish Treaty was implemented. Supplying the National Army from the mountains of surplus equipment left after the first World War was a much cheaper and more politically palatable way of enforcing the Treaty than the alternative which he contemplated in the aftermath of the assassination of the former head of the British army, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson MP, in June 1922. Then Churchill was seized with a 'feverish impetuosity', according to accounts while erroneously blaming the anti-Treaty side for the assassination. He contemplated shelling the Four Courts from Royal Navy guns. He was talked down from his high dudgeon by General Sir Nevil Macready, the officer commanding British forces in Ireland, who recognised that restarting the War of Independence would only suck his country into a morass from which it had extracted itself with great reputational damage. Freedom, though, isn't free. With the war moving towards its inevitable conclusion, the British thought it prudent on April 16th, 1923 to send what might be considered in modern parlance as a 'gentle reminder' to its Free State equivalent that it owed it money for two Rolls Royce armoured cars and a pair of Vickers guns and equipment. The sum involved £5,301,19,10d is the equivalent today of €435,000. The invoice was sent by Lord Devonshire, Churchill's successor as secretary of state for the colonies, who assumed the role in October 1922. He reminded the Irish governor-general Tim Healy that the cars had been delivered in October of the previous year by 'special arrangement' and on the basis they would be paid for in cash. Rolls Royce armoured cars were a valuable addition to the National Army's arsenal. They were ideal for urban environments as the anti-Treaty IRA's small arms fire were ineffective against them. One, the Slievenamon, accompanied Michael Collins on his fateful last trip which ended at Beal na Bláth. It was rescued, refurbished in 2011 and put on display at the Curragh Military Museum. There is no evidence that the invoice was ever paid, according to Prendergast whose book Clear, Hold, Build: How the Free State won the Irish Civil War is an examination of how the National Army successfully defeated the anti-Treaty IRA in just 11 months. The received historical wisdom is that the Pro-Treaty side won the war because of British support and the National Army's ability to very quickly recruit ex-first World War servicemen to the cause. Prendergast posits that it is not as simple as that and that the Civil War was won by very good political and military leadership. History is replete with examples where dominant powers lose despite superior manpower and equipment mostly because, without the support of the people, they are bound to fail. Though the military doctrine of counter-insurgency of clear, hold, build wasn't properly formed at the time, he believed the National Army adopted an exemplar of it by clearing areas of anti-Treaty fighters, holding those areas against counterattacks and at the same time building a consensus in favour of the Irish Free State. This was achieved despite the evident brutality of much of the Free State government's actions which included the execution of 81 Republican prisoners. The National Army succeeded where the British had failed in turning the rebels out of their strongholds because, unlike the British, they knew the terrain, the hideouts and the people involved. The anti-Treaty IRA had alienated the people by its destruction of vital infrastructure most notably roads and railways; the National Army won the confidence of the people by repairing the damage. The book has attracted a lot of interest in the US military which is still developing its counterinsurgency strategy after its disaster in Iraq when it won an easy military victory, declared mission accomplished only to be a hit by an insurgency which lasted years. None other than General David Petraeus, who orchestrated the 'surge' in Iraq in 2007 that was deemed a success after years of chaos has endorsed the book as an 'exceptionally readable case study'.
Irish Times
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Mary MacSwiney by Leeann Lane: A revealing, well-researched and compelling biography of this patriot
Mary MacSwiney Author : Leeann Lane ISBN-13 : 9781739086381 Publisher : UCD Press Guideline Price : €30 In September 1922, amid the Irish Civil War, Sinn Féin leader Éamon de Valera bared his soul to his confidante, the Cork Sinn Féin TD Mary MacSwiney . He told her he was struggling because 'Reason rather than faith has been my master ... I have felt for some time that this doctrine of mine ill fitted me to be leader of the republican party'. MacSwiney retorted that 'Faith and Unreason are not synonymous terms. I plead guilty to the former. I resent the latter.' She praised those who understood 'the Spiritual and psychological aspects of the struggle ... men who BELIEVED in the Republic ... Theirs was the Faith that moves mountains.' MacSwiney was a titan of that school of faith and this book does justice to the depth of her belief. As a TD, suffragette, educator and tireless republican activist, she was a lot more than the sister of Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork who died in October 1920 after a 74-day hunger strike in Brixton prison, though Lane underlines the centrality of that event to Mary's life, career and ultimate disillusionment with her peers. Her uncompromising stance led to her being caricatured as unhinged by her erstwhile comrades. This was unsurprising given the prevailing cultural ethos and fear of loud, assertive and politically charged women; what this book provides, in admirable detail, is a layered overview of what drove her and the perception of her. READ MORE The book draws on a wealth of valuable source material, including MacSwiney's collection of papers in the UCD archives. Born in London in 1872 to an English mother, a teacher, and a Cork father, Mary was the eldest of seven children. The family returned to Cork in 1879 where her father started a tobacco business that failed. Education for members of this tight-knit family was a priority (Mary received a BA from UCC in 1912) as was cultural nationalism and for Mary, the Munster Women's Franchise League. She became a teacher in St Angela's Ursuline College but was dismissed from that position in April 1916 due to her central position in Cork's Cumann na mBan (CnB). Terence was one of the founders of the Cork branch of the Irish Volunteers, but Cork's failure to rise in 1916 in tandem with Dublin was to remain a sore point and some of Mary's snobberies were reflected in her comment to Cork CnB members that it was only 'the scum of Dublin, Larkin's crowd' who fought, an early indication of her penchant for invective. Nonetheless, she threw herself into prisoner welfare work and opened her own school, St Ita's in Cork, to 'eradicate the slave mind from Ireland'. While deeply committed to Catholicism, she was prepared to challenge religious authority. Her fractiousness was also reflected in post-1916 splits in CnB, some of whose members in Cork saw her as overbearing, one contemporary recalling her being 'very annoyed at her wishes being questioned'. As a republican activist during that period, she was heavily influenced by Terence and it was his hunger strike during the War of Independence that led to the life she had lived until then being 'viscerally sundered', a trauma illuminated in powerful detail. Lane draws on the memoirs of Mary's sister and fellow activist Annie, who recalled of Brixton prison, 'none of us will ever forget the horror of that place'. This was political and personal for Mary and in London, she displayed the vigorous energy, resilience, talent for propaganda and rhetoric and disregard for barriers that were the hallmark of her career. She harried officialdom - prison governors, politicians, medical officers and churchmen - and good use is made of British Home Office files to document Terence's demise (in his coffin his body appeared 'like that of a child of twelve') and capture her wrath. If he were let die, Mary told the home secretary, 'we shall hold you personally responsible for murder'. One medical officer found her to be 'troublesome ... unpleasant and disorderly.' She was successful in ensuring Terence's hunger strike 'reached the world' and this was not unrelated to the shame still felt about Cork's passivity in 1916. Her profile and volubility stood in contrast to Terence's wife Muriel, who struggled with her mental health, and who Mary believed 'had not the inner stoicism of the MacSwineys'. With the death of Terence, unwillingness to compromise and determination to honour and vindicate his sacrifice defined Mary to an overwhelming degree and the emotional weight of the loss was channelled into spreading the republican gospel. She criss-crossed the United States from December 1920 to August 1921, where she had a powerful impact and honed her speaking skills, taking precedence over Muriel, who also travelled. There is fascinating detail here on the scale of this tour of 58 cities involving more than 300 meetings, fundraising, confronting infighting among Irish-American groups and the struggle to get access to senior American politicians ('Americans like to be flattered and I don't flatter them,' she wrote). She was also elected a Sinn Féin TD in her absence. One of the values of this book is the extensive documenting of her relationship with de Valera; their letters reveal an intimacy but also her frustration at her lack of involvement in the moves towards a ceasefire and negotiation. She told him in July 1921 she was 'longing for a peep at the inside negotiations', but the Anglo-Irish Treaty, negotiated without de Valera, shattered, in her words, 'the cause for which Brixton was endured'. Mary became the most vociferous opponent of the Treaty. She spoke for more than 2½ hours against it during the Dáil debates . Her speech was, as Lane notes, fanatical; if all the Irish were exterminated, she declared, 'the blades of grass dyed with their blood, will rise, like the dragons' teeth of old, into armed men'. Her words rested on the assertion that Terence's deathbed scene was 'the like of which has never been known in the world before'. She did not care if her constituents were pro-Treaty because she would only adhere to, as she told CnB members, 'the sacred question of principle'. This was also a period that marked a ferocious reaction to her from men such as Dublin TD Batt O'Connor, who decried women 'frothing to the mouth like angry cats'. For Mary, the Civil War was about reclaiming 'the worth and meaning of her brother's sacrifice'; she was arrested four times and endured two gruelling hunger strikes - the first lasted 24 days - during which she lambasted the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin for the refusal to allow her receive communion. She compared herself to Joan of Arc, and in parallel, spent much time pleading with de Valera to 'stand firm' and 'not break our hearts'. Her criticisms of Treaty supporters, and indeed its opponents, whom she regarded as not firm enough, became increasingly severe. WT Cosgrave's assertion that her 'ambition is, I believe, to be Queen of Ireland' is seen by Lane as a sexist slur, but it was hardly an unreasonable claim given Mary's language and dismissal of democracy ('we shall win out, even if only a few are faithful'). She was well able to dish out the insults herself, declaring proudly she was 'the most extreme of the extreme'. This is an intense, revealing, well-researched and often compelling biography. Lane, author of previous biographies of Dorothy Macardle and Rosamond Jacob, has made a profound contribution to our understanding of the republican women of that generation and their intimate and public lives. This book is, however, somewhat undermined by poor editing, repetition and unnecessary didactic interventions about gender and trauma themes. Readers are well able to see, in the copious contemporary correspondence and commentary the author uncovers, the forces that were at work in relation to how politicised, campaigning women were viewed. They do not need it constantly pointed out to them; likewise, the narrative of Terence's agonising death is gripping and tragic enough without the need for heavy-handed authorial interjections to remind us how it traumatised his family; again, that is painfully apparent in the quoted accounts and their own words. Mary's mindset led to increasing resentment against her, including from many women; Macardle criticised her 'sense of our moral inferiority'. Loyal to the second Dáil elected in 1921, and anti-Treaty Sinn Féin, she lost her Dáil seat in 1927. There was an inevitable parting of the ways with de Valera, and eventual resignation from senior positions in both CnB and Sinn Féin for their members' perceived compromises in tolerating certain dealings with the Free State she regarded as illegitimate. She was still desperately pleading with de Valera in 1936, when he was ensconced in power with the Fianna Fáil party she scorned, to 'come back to the Republic before it was too late'. But the response from de Valera was a refusal to engage in a 'futile controversy on matters of past history'. Mary never relented; her constant focus on that history made her increasingly politically marginalised, but this book makes us understand why she would not compromise. Diarmaid Ferriter is Professor of Modern Irish History at UCD. His most recent book is The Revelation of Ireland 1995-2020 (Profile Books). Further reading Margaret Ward's groundbreaking Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism (Pluto, 1983), quotes the memorable summing up by Sheila Humphreys of the bleak new Free State dawn for women republican activists: 'We felt the Irish public had forgotten us. The tinted trappings of our fight were hanging like rags about us.' The long-neglected memoir of another anti-Treaty republican, Máire Comerford's On Dangerous Ground (Lilliput, 2021) was edited by Hilary Dully to preserve the 'authenticity of Máire's voice in the telling of her story'. At the outset of the Civil War Máire wrote, 'I was in a place where there was no need for argument, and among people whose unanimity was like a distilled spirit of highest concentration.' Síobhra Aiken's Spiritual Wounds (Irish Academic Press, 2022) is also strong on trauma and argues strongly that 'The many voices that broke the silence can no longer be overlooked. Civil wars engender vibrant bodies of competing discourses.'
Irish Times
23-04-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Ireland's oldest woman (108) on how her long life is thanks to ‘new nettles'
Very few people can say they've lived through two pandemics and the Irish Civil War , but Sarah Coyle can. Believed to be Ireland's oldest person, Ms Coyle is due to celebrate her 109th birthday this summer. She was born on July 24th, 1916. The 108-year-old grew up in Co Wicklow . She currently lives with her daughter, Marian Galligan, in Castleknock, Dublin. Sarah Coyle on her 108th birthday in July 2024. Photograph: Family photo Ms Galligan said her mother has memories of significant periods in Irish history, including the Civil War (1922-1923) and even the War of Independence (1919-1921). READ MORE Ms Coyle has one particularly vivid memory of the Black and Tans, British forces operating in Ireland during the War of Independence who were notorious for their violence. 'When she was very young, the Black and Tans came around and brought her grandfather James out. They were going to shoot him at the gable end [of the house] – for no reason, they were just going around doing purges,' Ms Galligan said. 'He blessed himself and he said, 'Blessed be the will of God'.' At this point, the leader of the group apparently changed his mind and told his men, 'Put down your guns'. 'They left him there, they didn't shoot him. It wasn't the will of God,' Ms Galligan said. Ms Coyle also remembers one occasion during the Civil War when all the men in the area called James were rounded up. 'They were trying to question them all to see if somebody, a James, had killed one of their comrades,' Ms Galligan said. Ms Coyle doesn't remember exactly who came to the door but, as her father was also called James, he was among those taken away. Sarah Coyle in her 20s. Photograph: Family photo 'At dawn, they burst into the house and only let him put on his trousers and his boots. They were all marched off up the mountains,' Ms Galligan said. His family feared the worst but thankfully he wasn't hurt, arriving home several hours later. Ms Coyle had nine siblings, some of whom also lived to incredible ages. Her sister Lily Kelly, who lives in Solihull in England, turned 103 in April. One of her brothers, Andy Byrne, died shortly before his 101st birthday. Ms Coyle was born in Knockatomcoyle, a townland in Co Wicklow, before her family moved to Coolkenno, near Tullow. Her birthplace is notable because she would go on to marry a Cavan man named Tom Coyle. As a young adult, Ms Coyle moved to Foxrock to become a housekeeper. It was at a dance in Dún Laoghaire that she met her future husband. After they married, they moved to Drumcondra. The couple had four children, but sadly two of their daughters died as newborns. Sarah Coyle with the presidential medals she has received since turning 100. Photograph: Family photo Ms Galligan's brother Patrick lives in Melbourne, Australia. Ms Coyle has five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, with another due shortly. Ms Coyle lost her eyesight in her early 30s. The cause was not entirely clear but she believes it may have been down to an incident years earlier where she was accidentally hit in the face. 'The optic nerve was destroyed,' Ms Galligan said. 'It wouldn't happen nowadays, but this was 70 years ago.' Ms Coyle's husband, Tom, worked as a postman until he had a stroke in his late 50s, followed by a brain haemorrhage. Ms Galligan recalls how her father had looked after her mother up to that point but that, then, their roles were largely reversed. Ms Coyle rarely drank but had the odd sherry 'to be sociable', her daughter said. So, what does she attribute her longevity to? Sarah Coyle (far right) with her husband Tom Coyle, their son Patrick and Tom's sister Mary. Photograph: Family photo 'Every spring her mother used to go out and get the first nettles that would come out, the new nettles,' Ms Galligan said. 'She used to put them in the cabbage. She used to say, 'that will purify your blood'. 'You see nettle tea and things like that nowadays, maybe she was on to something.'
