During November and December 2020, Westmeath County Council partnered with Midlands 103 to broadcast a series of documentaries written and narrated by Ian Kenneally, Historian in Residence for the centenary of 1920. Ian also produced a number of short videos. Below, we provide a brief overview and links to each of the documentaries. Further videos […]
In the final post of the series on 1920, we assess the situation in Westmeath as the year came to a close and the War of Independence continued to rage. We discuss the shooting of alleged spies, the IRA’s Athlone Brigade and persistent turmoil related to the ownership of land. For Westmeath, the months between […]
In our previous post, we examined the Mullingar Brigade’s kidnapping of Resident Magistrate Maxwell Moore and his colleague Gustavus Hyde, a justice of the peace. Here, we focus on the aftermath during which the Crown forces dealt a debilitating blow to the brigade. The IRA’s decision to release Moore and Hyde saved Castlepollard and Mullingar […]
In earlier posts, we discussed the development of the IRA in Westmeath and the creation of brigades in Athlone and Mullingar. Here, we focus on the Mullingar Brigade. During 1920, that brigade struggled to arm and organise its battalions, leaving it ill-equipped to carry out offensive actions against the Crown forces. Throughout 1919, the IRA […]
The burning of the Westmeath Independent’s offices and the associated print works in November 1920 was an extraordinary and distressing incident in Athlone’s history, with ramifications across the Midlands. In this edition of the blog, we provide a brief overview of the events surrounding the destruction of the paper, events which are discussed in more […]
In this edition, we discuss the aftermath of the Parkwood ambush of 22 October 1920, in which the Athlone Brigade’s flying column attacked a convoy of Auxiliaries and Black and Tans near Moate. During the ambush, one of the police lorries had been put out of action and its occupants were stranded at Parkwood until […]
In a previous post, we discussed the first attack by the Crown forces on the Westmeath Independent and the following day’s IRA ambush of a British army patrol on Lough Ree. Fearful of further violence, a delegation of Athlone’s citizens attempted to meet with the senior British army officer in the locality, Brigadier-General Thomas Stanton […]
In June 1920, Laurence Ginnell, the TD for Westmeath and Director of Publicity in the First Dáil, set out for the United States after spending more than half of the previous two years in prison. In our latest guest blog, Paul Hughes discusses Ginnell’s activities in the USA. A member of the House of Commons […]
In a previous post, we discussed the arrival of the Auxiliaries in Athlone on 16 October 1920 and the first attack on the offices of the Westmeath Independent. A day later, as we see in this edition, the IRA launched a retaliatory attack against the Crown forces. In Athlone, residents were left stunned by that […]
In the second of Gretta Connell’s guest blogs, she discusses Westmeath County Council from summer 1920 to the aftermath of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922. The local government elections in January and June 1920 brought to the fore the supporters of an independent Ireland but they also showed that sections of support remained for the […]