Community seeks heritage status for bomb factory

An East Cork community is to lobby the Government for special heritage status for sites of interest in the area, which hosts a bomb factory dating from the War of Independence.

The people of Knockraha fear a series of proposals by state electricity network provider Eirgrid will compromise the historically significant landscape which has been earmarked as a potential tourism attraction, and commissioned an archaeological firm to compile a report on the heritage in the area.

Knockraha hosts both a bomb factory dating from the War of Independence and a site known as Sing Sing — the official prison of the Cork No 1 Brigade of the IRA from 1916 to 1921 — and authors of the Rubicon report on the area believe the sites should be “preserved as part of the area’s wider War of Independence heritage”.