UCD Digital Library will soon make made available online a new collection entitled Irregular News: Civil War and Republican ephemera. This collection contains a rich store of primary source material relating to the revolutionary period. This material was collected by the Irish Franciscans and was originally held in their friary on Merchants Quay, which is … Continue reading Irregular News: Civil War and Republican ephemera
This next instalment of our Decade of Centenaries series comes from the unpublished draft of Máire Comerford’s memoirs. Máire Comerford was born on 29 June 1893 in Rathdrum, County Wicklow. She was educated privately at home but with a downturn in the family’s fortune, she was sent to London to receive an education as a … Continue reading My narrative has gone on paper hot from memory
The first 2021 addition to our Decade of Centenaries series comes from the collection of Thomas Cardiff, Transport Officer of 6 Battalion, Dublin Brigade and of 2 Brigade, 2 Eastern Division, IRA, between the years 1921 and 1922. Cardiff joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in March 1917 and first served with H Company, 3 … Continue reading DOC Series: IRA Transport Officer
Archival collections do not have to be large to be of historical value and the small collection of Eugene Downing is a great example of this. Downing's papers consist of only 15 items but they give us an insight into the life of an Irish man who fought in the Spanish Civil War. Downing (wearing … Continue reading ‘A Homeland Free of Foreign Invaders’
We continue our Decade of Centenaries series by focusing on a scrapbook kept by Frank Carney, a prisoner in Ballykinlar Internment Camp. Frank Carney was born in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh on April 25, 1896. He joined the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers at the outbreak of war in 1914, but due to continuous bouts of ill health, … Continue reading DOC Series: Ballykinlar Internment Camp
Our next installment of the Decade of Centenaries series features the diary of Seamus McCann. McCann played an active role in the War of Independence in the north of Ireland, mainly in places around Donegal and Derry. This diary was written by McCann in 1939 and gives an account of manoeuvres, training and ambushes on … Continue reading DoC Series: War of Independence Diary
Our second instalment in the Decade of Centenaries series looks at the papers of Richard Mulcahy; 1916 veteran, I.R.A. Chief of Staff during the War of Independence, Leader of Fine Gael and Minister of a number of government departments. Richard James Mulcahy was born in Waterford and educated by the Christian Brothers both there, and … Continue reading DoC Series:Diaries of Guerrilla Tactics
The papers of Ernie O’Malley, the Irish revolutionary and writer who immortalised the tumultuous Irish period of 1916–21 in his book On Another Man’s Wound, have been deposited in UCD Archives for well over forty years. Cormac O’Malley, Ernie’s son, initially transferred these papers under the terms of the O’Malley Trust, established in September 1974. … Continue reading Addition to Ernie O’Malley papers
'Walter has been Mother, Father and ideal friend to me. I could not have lived through those days of stress without his unexampled care and princely hospitality.' During the Treaty debates in 1922 these words were spoken by Arthur Griffith to H.E. Kenny about his dear friend, Alderman Walter Leonard Cole. Not long after, on … Continue reading Mother, Father and Ideal Friend
UCD Archives is delighted to launch our new online exhibition 'The Finest Men Alive': Documents of Imprisonment and Protest. This exhibition examines the documents created by those arrested and imprisoned following the 1916 Easter Rising, firstly in Dublin and then various prisons throughout the UK until the general amnesty of June 1917. Their feelings, thoughts … Continue reading ‘Finest Men Alive’