William Smith O’Brien was an M.P. for County Limerick and leader of the Young Irelanders. He did not have to be here in 1848. O’Brien was one of the O’Briens of Thomond, several of whom are here today. He was a Protestant aristocrat born into a privileged background in Dromoland Castle with a lineage which went back almost a thousand years to Brian Boru. O’Brien considered that the Famine justified his rebellion. O’Brien had been the most trenchant critic of the government’s famine policy in the House of Commons. O’Brien was a patriot who felt that some protest had to be made against the State.
The Young Ireland movement was inspired by Thomas Davis who edited The Nation newspaper with Charles Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon. Young Ireland made a brilliant contribution to Ireland’s literary history. The movement stood for Irish identity, Irish self-government and an intedernominational and ecumenical Ireland. The Young Irelanders gave Ireland the tricolour which is now the national flag. Thomas Francis Meagher brought the flag from Paris in 1848 and he explained its symbolism in the words which are inscribed on the monument in The Commons: ‘The white in the centre stands for a lasting truce between the Orange and the Green and I trust that beneath its folds the hands of the Irish Protestant and the Irish Catholic may be clasped in generous and heroic brotherhood’.
Across Europe in the revolutions of 1848, reactionary monarchies were forced to give way (at least temporarily) to constitutional governments. O’Brien hoped to unite landlord and tenant in Ireland in protest against British rule and to use moral force to achieve his objective. But once he was met here by the physical force of the State the limits of moral force were reached. He did not want blood. In Mullinahone and in Ballingarry and in Killenaule and throughout his rebellion he avoided taking offensive action. Although he had a price of 500 pounds on his head, here he was just after shaking hands with some of the 47 police in this house - through the parlour window, on your left as you look at the house - he told the police that all he wanted was their arms and that they would be free to go - when the police commander, Trant, ordered his men to open fire on O’Brien’s supporters. Thomas Walsh was shot dead at this gate. Patrick McBride at the right hand gable end of the house. Many others were wounded.
The police had taken five children of the McCormack family within the house as hostages. O’Brien was unwilling to take strong measures against the house which would endanger the lives of the children. Once the well armed police had possession of the house they were in a very strong fortification, akin to being in a police barracks. The rebels were hardly in a position to take it. One head constable named McDonogh had charge of the top left window (as you look at the house) and he could, on looking out, see women gathering stones in their aprons to bring to the men who were under the wall here. Fr Fitzgerald who arrived to make peace had a very lively exchange of views with the police commander, Trant, who spoke to him from the middle window upstairs. After three hours, the arrival of police from Cashel and an exchange of fire on the public roadway scattered the rebels whose ammunition was low. Among the locals arrested after the Rising were people from Ballingarry and The Commons, Lismolin, Kyle, Boulea, Kilbraugh, Kilcooley, Gortnahue, Killenaule, Drangan and Callan.
O’Brien, Meagher, MacManus and O’Donohue were charged with high treason in State trials at Clonmel. They were sentenced to death. They refused to appeal their convictions. The sentences were commuted to penal exile in Van Diemen’s Land, now Tasmania, then at the end of the earth and a journey by ship of several months. There they were joined by other transported 1848 men: John Mitchel, John Martin and Kevin Izod O’Doherty. O’Brien was deprived of his parliamentary seat as a convicted traitor.
The exhibition covers the serious attempts by John O’Mahony to re-start the Rising in September 1848 at Glenbower and Ahenny and at Portlaw in Co Waterford as well as James Fintan Lalor and the 1849 movement which centred on South Tipperary and Waterford. These actions led to further penal transportations.
Several of those exiled to Van Diemen’s Land escaped to the United States where they became leaders of the Famine Irish in exile. Thomas Francis Meagher became the most notable of them. John Kavanagh who commanded the pike men under this wall was killed as a Captain fighting under Meagher’s Irish Brigade at the battle of Antietam. Meagher himself died as Acting Governor of Montana. Denied the opportunity to advance at home a number of these men achieved eminence abroad. Charles Gavan Duffy who was under arrest in July 1848 later became prime minister of the State of Victoria in Australia.
Thomas D’Arcy McGee became one of the founders of the modern Canada and a Canadian cabinet minister though he was later shot dead by a fenian for turning his back on his former colleagues. Richard O’Gorman became a judge of the New York superior court. After the Rising John Blake Dillon escaped dressed as a priest through the Aran Islands to the United States and practised law in New York. He subsequently returned to Ireland, became an M.P. for County Tipperary, and founded the Dillon dynasty. His son John Dillon was sometime M.P. for County Tipperary and last leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. His grandson James Dillon as Minister for Agriculture was here for the centenary celebrations in 1948.
The Kilkenny man, James Stephens escaped after the Rising. He and Terence Bellew MacManus had pulled O’Brien out of the line of fire here. In 1858, Stephens founded the I.R.B or Fenian movement with his colleagues from 1848, John O’Mahony and Michael Doheny. Charles Kickham of Mullinahone and John O’Leary of Tipperary town, both of whom were active Young Irelanders in 1848, became prominent Fenians. Kickham is celebrated annually at the Kickham Country Weekend in Mullinahone. The IRB organised the rebellions of 1867 and that of 1916 which led to Irish independence.
The McCormack family, Mrs Margaret McCormack neé Duggan and her seven children, like millions of Irish families, emigrated (about 1853) to the United States of America. We know of one son, John McCormack, who died in Trenton, New Jersey in 1903. His recollections of the Rising are in the exhibition. Undoubtedly there are family members alive in the United States.
The house was subsequently owned for decades by the Walsh family and later the Morris family. It was unlived in for twenty years when the last owner sold it and five and a half acres to the State. This house has always been known in this area as the Warhouse. I am glad that with the official name, Famine Warhouse 1848, the State has chosen to place the rebellion in its appropriate context, that of the Great Famine, and has not accepted the terminology which the British papers of the time sought to denigrate O’Brien’s moral protest and that of his local supporters. I think that O’Brien and the local people of that time would be happy that the rebellion is at last being understood in its proper context.
The original impetus for today’s event dates back to 1987 and concern at the dilapidated state of the house. It has been a long struggle every step of the way. The local committee under the chairmanship of Martin Maher dates from 1988 and it included a good representative spread of people from Ballingarry and The Commons and further afield such as Dick Vaughan, Joe O’Shea of The Commons, John Walsh of Ballintaggart, Tom Croke of Grawn, Dr Willie Nolan, Susan Meagher, Paddy O’Connell, Mrs Annie Heaphy, James O’Shea, Margaret Webster, Tommy Kavanagh, John Dalton, Maisie Dunne, the late Michael Fitzgerald, and Eileen Heaphy as a very efficient secretary. I have named several but obviously I cannot name everybody.
The erection of the Young Ireland 1848 and National Flag monument in The Commons and its unveiling by the late Cardinal and historian Tomás Ó Fiaich was one of the achievements of that time. Here I would like to salute the dedication of Mr Tony Ivors who has kept the national flag flying daily since that time in The Commons according to the protocol and performed an important one-man tourist service in this region.
In 1998, on the 150th anniversary, Slieveardagh Rural Development under the chairmanship of Seamus Troy and with Peg McGarry as Secretary, and Declan Rice as coordinator, hosted a major nine day festival commemorating 1848 under the local direction of Martin Maher as Chairman and Caroline Kealy as Secretary.
The Taoiseach’s visit here and his decision to purchase the house for the State occurred during the 1998 celebrations. I would like to thank especially Pat O’Meara of The Commons, Minister Michael Smith and Dr Martin Mansergh then of the Taoiseach’s office, now a Senator, for their important work at that time. I would particularly like to pay tribute to Senator Mansergh who secured the funding from the Department of Finance for the restoration. P.J. Ryan and his team did the building work.The architect Michele O’Dea (who trained with Daniel Libeskind, amongst others, in Berlin) has worked assiduously on the project and brought it to fruition. I would like to thank the parish priest of Ballingarry, Fr Thomas Breen for his support for this event and for galvanising you to attend. I would like to thank you all for coming today. If you can’t do so today, do come back and view and read the exhibition at your leisure and bring your friends and visitors.
The Taoiseach [Bertie Ahern, T.D.] said here [in 1998] that this house ‘is an important historic monument, and part of our national heritage’ and that the house ‘will be an important cultural amenity, attracting visitors to this part of Co. Tipperary, and also having a significant educational role’. I think the Famine Warhouse 1848 will be of considerable interest to school tour groups.
For years we lamented the state of this house. Now we can celebrate developments so far. One might say that much has been done but there is more to do. As you can see for yourselves today, the immediate public roads have to be improved so that this site can be easily accessed by buses especially. We call on the County Council to upgrade the public roads as a matter of urgency. The out-buildings around the courtyard at the back of the house which were seized by Stephens and MacManus in 1848 survive unchanged since that time and are part of the historic fabric of this site. They are, as yet, undeveloped and they offer scope for extending the Exhibition significantly and for including a guides’ room, an audio-visual room and a tea-room. In John Webster we have an active manager here but we need OPW to give us normal opening hours during the summer season as one sees as standard at other State national heritage locations. This new national heritage site is situated mid-way on the direct route between two of OPW’s most visited heritage attractions, namely the Rock of Cashel and Kilkenny Castle. We need strong linkages to be made between both of those sites and here.
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