Key to go on display in Cork’s Collins Barracks

A key to an important incident in Cork’s revolutionary history has been returned to the city — 98 years after its role in a daring jailbreak.

On the day that the guns fell silent in Europe at the end of the First World War, the rescue of Denis McNeilus from one of the British empire’s securest jails showed that Cork’s revolutionaries were willing and able to take physical force action.

The Donegal-born officer of the local Irish Volunteers brigade was sprung from Cork County Gaol before he could face trial for the attempted murder of a policeman.