Auction items recall Kilmichael ambush in West Cork 

Des O'Sullivan looks at the history behind the lots that will be under the hammer at Victor Mee's sale

A newspaper report of the Kilmichael ambush, left, and a Fenian sash at Victor Mee.

A full-page account of the Kilmichael ambush carried out by a Flying Column of the West Cork Brigade comes up as lot 87 at Victor Mee's sale on Tuesday, March 19. 

Complete with photographs and a hand drawing of the ambush site, where 36 IRA volunteers commanded by General Tom Barry ambushed and killed 16 members of the RIC in Kilmichael in November 1920, the sepia-coloured broadsheet newspaper page with some staining comes up as lot 87 and is estimated at €200-€400.

A 19th-century Fenian sash at Victor Mee.

The Battlefields and Silver Screen auction, with 523 lots, offers military artefacts, Irish silver and film posters. 

A framed 19th-century silk Fenian Sash is, at €2,000-€4,000, the most expensively estimated lot in a sale with everything from a Wanted poster for Billy the Kid to Georgian Irish silver sauce boats, a 19th-century Dublin flintlock blunderbuss, the Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook of Easter 1916, a film poster for Jaws and original World War I enlistment posters.