Kilmichael Crossley Tender Wheel   When Independence Museum Kilmurry opened in 1965 one of the first accessions by the rural museum, was this distinctive rear (double) wheel from one of the two Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary (ADRIC) Crossley tenders attacked by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the Kilmichael Ambush. In that ambush Tom Barry’s Flying Column inflicted a telling annihilation on some 18 members of the C’ Company of the Auxiliaries (or Auxies) who had, in their short few months stationed in Macroom, intimidated and terrorised the populace in an area that was regarded
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    Lawrence Telegram (Lawrence , Massachusetts) Newspapers     Lawrence Telegram Newspaper 23-10-1920 Lawrence Telegram Newspaper 25-10-1920 Lawrence Telegram Newspaper 26-10-1920 Lawrence Telegram Newspaper 27-10-1920     Cork Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney’s Hunger Strike 12th of August 1920 – 25th October 1920   After 74 days since he began his hunger strike on the day of his arrest in Cork City Hall Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney died on hunger strike in Brixton Prison, London on the 25th October 1920.   LORD MAYOR MacSWINEY DEAD   These are the original Lawrence Telegram (Lawrence , Massachusetts)  newspapers whose coverage, not unlike many newspapers the world
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A 100-year-old gift from China to Crookstown In late 1916, Fr Edward Galvin was home in Ireland to raise funds and recruits for the ongoing missionary work in which he was involved in China. This colourful oriental-style hat was a gift from him to one of his nephew’s the following year. Fr Galvin was a native of Newcestown, a village between Kilmurry and Bandon, one of a large family of John and Mary Galvin. They moved to nearby Crookstown in the first century of the 20th century. By then, Edward was being educated at St Finbarr’s College, Cork’s diocesan seminary, before
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  ‘Shard of Wood’   After enduring a long, slow and tortuous death over the preceding 74 days, Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork, Teachta Dála for the Mid-Cork Constituency of the 1st Dáil Éireann and O/C of the Cork No. 1 Brigade of the IRA, finally achieved his freedom, as he said he would at the outset of his ordeal on foot of the two-year sentence he received at his court martial in Cork on August 16th, 1920, for having “seditious” documents. , “…I shall be free, alive or dead, within a month”.   However the Dublin Castle
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  Old School Seat from Kilmurry Boys National School An application for “Kilmurry School, Barony of West Muskerry, Townland of Ballymichael”, was made by Rev. Jas. Daly PP Kilmurry, dated 31st July 1849. Among the many queries to be answered on the application form to the Board of Commissioners was, “when was the existing school established?”- The answer given was, “ten years ago in the adjacent building”. That being so there was a school in Kilmurry in 1839, adjacent to the site that Independence Museum Kilmurry now occupies. Before the introduction of National Schools into Ireland in 1831, many private
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  Terence MacSwiney Funeral Hearse Wheel   On the weekend of the 19th – 21st of October 2018, Independence Museum Kilmurry hosted the inaugural Terence MacSwiney Weekend, the first of three such weekends the museum will stage, culminating in the centenary of the Lord Mayor’s death, in 2020. While the museum collection has many artefacts reflecting our unique connection with the martyred Lord Mayor one of the objects of which we are most proud is the front carriage wheel from the leading hearse in the Lord Mayor’s funeral cortege. Here is the story of the few days leading up to
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  Prizewinning Pin Cushion   Independence Museum Kilmurry aims to show what the ordinary men and women of Ireland, and in particular in our area, did for our country in very challenging and difficult times. We tell this story predominantly through objects that have local provenance. However we also have some artefacts of national or even international importance in the museum, indeed we would think that all of our collection informs the story of Ireland’s struggle for Independence. Although our main focus as a museum is to house items to do with the key period covering the Rising, the War
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  Killing of RIC District Inspector Oswald Swanzy   On Sunday 22nd of August 1920, while leaving church, RIC (Royal Irish Constabulary) District Inspector Oswald Swanzy was shot and killed by members of the Cork No. 1 Brigade of the IRA. This would have not been a surprising incident in that it occurred well into the ’dirty war’ stage of the War of Independence. The reason this was indeed unusual was that it happened in the Protestant stronghold town of Lisburn, County Antrim, some 400km outside the Brigade location. Outside of their jurisdiction maybe but well within their remit since
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  Here at the Independence Museum Kilmurry we have a varied and broad collection that spans the last three centuries. One of the items on display is a cannon ball from the Cromwellian Wars. Kilmurry and Cork were very much affected by the Confederate Wars of the 1640’s in Ireland. There were two incidents in particular on both sides of what is now Kilmurry Parish. The grotto in Kilmurry village was chosen as it is the site of Sceach an tSagairt which means The Priest’s Bush.  Tradition has it that a number of priests or monks attached to the medieval
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Kindly donated by the late Mr. Gerard  McCarthy of Carrigadrohid. Piece of Rebels Priest’s Tunic John Francis O’Connor was born on 13 Feb. 1883 in County Cork into a devoutly Catholic family. He entered the Capuchin novitiate on 1 Oct. 1899 and received the religious name of Dominic. In response to a call from Cardinal Michael Logue, Archbishop of Armagh, Fr. Dominic volunteered for chaplaincy work with British forces during the First World War. He resigned his post in 1917 and returned to Ireland where he was appointed to the Capuchin community at Holy Trinity, Cork.  Fr. Dominic who was
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