Ian Kenneally, who will be Westmeath County Council’s Decade of Centenaries Historian in Residence from August to December 2021, takes a look at the IRA’s intelligence war in Westmeath during 1920 and 1921, focusing on the south of the county. Earlier editions of this blog charted the development of the IRA’s Athlone and Mullingar brigades, […]
On 26 February 1927, Thomas Caddell died at his home in Gneevebawn, Tyrrellspass, succumbing to what the registrar for the district recorded as cardiac failure brought about by acute bronchitis. He was just twenty-nine years old. Caddell was one of several Westmeath participants in the Irish revolution who died before getting a real chance to […]
On 7 May 1921, at Ballycorkey Bridge, which crosses the River Inny about halfway between Rathowen and Ballynacargy, a party of police was attacked by members of the IRA’s Longford Brigade, incorporating elements of ‘B’ (Ballynacargy) Company, 1 Battalion, Mullingar Brigade. An exchange of fire ensued, lasting an hour before the ambushing party withdrew due […]
In 1921, the captain of the Mullingar branch of Cumann na mBan was a native of Co. Meath, Cecilia McDonnell, who occupied a position as chief night nurse at what was then known as the Mullingar Asylum (later St Loman’s Hospital). Baptised Rosaline McDonnell, in later years she became better known in public life as […]
In the first of a series of Westmeath County Council Decade of Centenaries podcasts, Paul Hughes, Historian in Residence, talks to John Sheehan, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Archaeology, University College, Cork, about the lives and deaths of the Tormey brothers of Moate. In January 1921, Joseph Tormey was shot dead by a British […]
On the night of Friday, 15 April 1921, a well-known solicitor from Mullingar left the apparent peace and quiet of Kinnegad and was heading for home via Griffinstown, near Coralstown, when what seemed like an ordinary evening took an unexpected turn. It was 11.30 at night, and in times of limited motorised traffic, John E. […]
At the dawn of 1921, two Westmeath women who grew up five miles apart and went to secondary school together were, at the same time, on duty in the United States, working alongside their husbands in promoting the cause of Irish independence. One of them was Alice Ginnell (née King), the wife of the maverick […]
Historians might have looked at IRA activity in Westmeath differently had the conflict produced a significant local engagement between republicans and Crown forces similar to those which occurred at Kilmichael (Cork, November 1920) or Clonfin (Longford, February 1921). There were a handful of opportunities for such an ambush in Westmeath, which for various reasons – […]
An otherwise sedate Mullingar made national headlines in early March 1921, when one of the most prominent IRA commandants of the War of Independence, Seán Mac Eoin, was shot and captured in the town by Crown forces. The Mac Eoin incident, the story of which will be told elsewhere on this blog, was a rare […]
In January 2021, the Old Athlone Society launched a new website - midlandshistory.com. This site, which the society will update regularly, provides articles and information on the War of Independence and the Civil War. The site was developed as an initiative under the Decade of Centenaries programme. While it concentrates on the Midlands, many articles […]