1916 letters give students different slant on history

Things have changed a lot at St Angela’s College, Cork, since one of its teachers was arrested for her ties to the Easter Rising.

Students at the all-girls’ city centre secondary school — where Mary MacSwiney, a Cumann na mBan leader in Cork and later an anti-Treaty TD taught — have been using letters from the period to gain different perspectives on Irish life in 1916.

The correspondence they focused on from the Letters of 1916 online archive project is between soldier Peter Mooney, who was based for a time in nearby Ballincollig, and his sister Katie on their Co Meath farm.