Public meetings on marking Cork’s role in Easter Rising

Plans on how to mark Cork’s role in the 1916 Rising and War of Independence are to be proposed at two public meetings in the next few weeks.

Suggestions are being sought from anyone with family connections or historical interest on the kind of events or memorials that could be organised to commemorate incidents related to 1916.

But organiser Gabriel Doherty, a lecturer in University College Cork’s school of history, said ideas are also welcome about remembering events and the people who took part in them through to 1923, during the ongoing Decade of Centenaries.

“Even though Cork isn’t understood to have risen in 1916, they did mobilise on Easter Sunday. The Aud is lying at the bottom of Cork harbour, and one of the 16 dead men of the Rising was executed for activities in Cork,” he said.

Thomas Kent was executed at the military prison at Victoria Barracks (now Collins Barracks) on May 9, 1916.

He was sentenced by court martial for his role in a battle during which a policeman was shot at his home near Fermoy a week earlier.

The Aud was scuttled by its captain while being escorted into Cork harbour, with thousands of German rifles that had been intended for the Rising sinking with it. The vessel was intercepted in Tralee Bay after failing to have its cache of weapons landed at Fenit as planned.

Irish Volunteer companies from Cork city and county were to have taken delivery of them near the Kerry border on Easter Sunday. But by the time they left the city that morning, brigade commanders Tomás MacCurtain and Terence MacSwiney knew the arms landing had failed, and the latest order from Dublin had told them the rebellion was called off.

The route taken by the biggest group of Volunteers in Cork that day took around 400 men on their way to Macroom through the village of Kilmurry, where the February 14 meeting takes place.

It will be held in the new museum there, currently being fitted out and curated by the Kilmurry Historical and Archaeological Association.

“The location is particularly suitable, both geographically for being in the centre of the county, and historically. It will be a very informal meeting to get ideas from local history groups and individuals about what they think could be done to mark the 1916 Rising in Cork, but also the central events of the War of Independence in the city and county,” Mr Doherty said.

The ideas from the meeting will be shared with Cork County Council, which is working on a strategy for centenary events up to 2023.

“We’re very interested in seeing what emerges and we expect to hold a public seminar in the next month to help devise our own strategy. Part of the work is to identify particular events as they relate to Cork, and there is already phenomenal work being done in this area by local historical groups," said council heritage officer Conor Nelligan.

Subjects for possible discussion at the Kilmurry meeting should be emailed by this Friday to [e-mail].

Ideas in relation to a Cork County Council strategy, including events that could be commemorated, can be sent to [e-mail]