Tag Archives: Black and Tans

COVID-19 restrictions meant that significantly scaled-back commemorative event took place on Wednesday last to mark the centenary of The Glenwood Ambush – one of the most significant incidents in the War of Independence in Munster. The very short ceremony got underway at 3pm with just a few of the memorial committee in attendance and socially distanced. The laying of a wreath was performed by Mick Ryan whose father Jackie Ryan was one of the 37 IRA volunteers involved in the ambush. Earlier in the day, John Lyons, John Lenihan and Patsy Neville raised the tricolour and Paddy Carroll lit the memorial lamp. The committee have said that the actual official celebration of the 100th anniversary will take place post-Covid and at a date to be decided. This will include the official launch of a memorial plaque which is currently at the completion stage by Kilnamona-based sculptor. Michael McTigue. This plaque is being created to depict the safe house or ‘an baile sámháilte,’ to …

AS EVENTS in the War of Independence are commemorated across the country, communities in East Clare are preparing to mark the 100th anniversary of the Glenwood Ambush in the New Year. On January 20, 1921 at about 4pm, a motorised patrol of ten armed Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and Black and Tans, travelling from Sixmilebridge to Broadford, approached the back gate of Glenwood House. Waiting for them, concealed behind the walls of the Glenwood estate was a group of approximately 37 armed volunteers, from the East Clare Brigade of the IRA, led by Michael Brennan of Meelick. As the patrol passed by the gates, a fusillade of gunshots struck the patrol. Six RIC and Black and Tans were killed, two were injured and two escaped unhurt. One IRA volunteer was injured. The ambush party then withdrew through the forest and mountains to the East of Glenwood, towards the village of Oatfield. The surviving members of the patrol made their way …

SILENT and sombre were the centenary commemoration of one of the bloodiest attacks on a Clare community during the War of Independence. Unfortunately, due to the Covid 19 crisis, plans for the Canada Cross, Miltown Malbay commemoration, as part of Clare’s Decade of Centenaries, scheduled for Saturday, April 18, were put on hold. The community was to honour Patrick Hennessy, John O’Loughlin and Thomas O’Leary, who lost their lives at Canada Cross on April 14, 1920. Instead, the victims were remembered in the hearts and prayers of their descendants and the wider community in their homes. Reflecting on the attack at the time, Dr Michael Fogarty, Bishop of Killaloe, said, “My poor people they have made a Calvary of your little square, but what was meant for a massacre has become a consecration.” The families of the dead and wounded in the attack, the Mid Clare Brigade Commemoration Committee and St Joseph’s GAA Club had organised a programme that will …

STILL a teenager when he started collecting people’s stories, Tomás Mac Conmara’s new book The Time of the Tans is backboned by many years of work. It’s an oral history of the War of Independence in Clare and he said the fact that he spent so long gathering the information and accounts at the core of the book, means The Time of the Tans means a lot to him. “I’d say it is the most important one at a personal level. Anything you do like that, in terms of publishing a book, you put a lot of years and time into it, and you should do so as a historian. But because it has been 20 years in the making, almost all of the people who I interviewed and who were good enough to share their memories with me have passed away. It’s very sad in one sense, but it was always my point, that they would be gone. Historian …