1921 Escape Gates go on display in Kilmainham Gaol Museum

Newly-restored gates have gone on display in Kilmainham Gaol Museum to mark the 102nd anniversary of a daring escape during the War of Independence.

Ernie O’Malley, Frank Teeling and Simon Donnelly escaped from Kilmainham Gaol 102 years ago. The Escape Gates will now form part of the permanent exhibition and will be displayed alongside its original padlock which the prisoners broke using a bolt-cutters, smuggled into the gaol by a sympathetic British soldier. The padlock is on loan from the National Museum of Ireland and returns to the gaol for the first time since 1921.

On the evening of 14 February 1921, at the height of the Irish War of Independence, the three men escaped from British custody in Kilmainham Gaol. With the help of a number of British soldiers who were guarding them, a bolt-cutters had been smuggled into the gaol which allowed the men to break the padlock on the gates to the western entrance to the building. Once outside, they found their way onto a tram and escaped to freedom. A fourth prisoner, Patrick Moran, who had played a key part in planning the escape, decided at the last moment to stay behind. He felt that if he escaped he would be letting down the witnesses who had agreed to give the evidence he felt would prove his innocence of the charges made against him. It was to prove a fatal decision however, as he was later found guilty and hanged in Mountjoy Prison on 14 March 1921. The gates continued to hang at the western entrance of Kilmainham Gaol until the 1990s. At that time it was decided that they were no longer fit for purpose and they were removed and placed into storage until 2019 when the Office of Public Works embarked upon a project to restore the gates with a view to putting them on display in Kilmainham Gaol Museum for the centenary of the escape in 2021.

Sven Haberman of Conservation Letterfrack took on the enormous task of both conserving the gates and mount-

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ing them for exhibition. The process of preserving them is among the most complex conservation projects ever undertaken by the museum. The gates, which date from the mid-19th century, measure 2.64 metres wide by 2.85 metres high and have a combined weight of approximately 800 kilograms. It took almost a year and a half to dry the gates out alone, and only then could the painstaking process of consolidating the wood and treating the rusted metal begin. Admission to the exhibition, which will run until March 31 is free.