Dread Bastille: Dublin Castle
1919-1922
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Contents Map key
1
The War of Independence, An Introduction
2
Dublin Castle, An Introduction
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Upper Castle Yard
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Mark Sturgis
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2
Lower Castle Yard
12
3
Chapel Royal and Record Tower
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4
Castle Gardens
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5
Ship Street Barracks
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Lily Mernin
20
6
The Forty Steps
22
7
Exchange Court
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Ernie O’Malley
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Palace Street Gate
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9
Privy Council Chamber
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Credits and Acknowledgements
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The struggle for Irish independence was a long and tangled one. On the eve of the First World War, it looked as if the British Government had finally found a solution. 2
The War of Independence, An Introduction The struggle for Irish independence was a long and tangled one. On the eve of the First World War, it looked as if the British Government had finally found a solution, by offering Ireland a degree of self-government known as “Home Rule”. With the outbreak of the war, this measure, which included an Irish Parliament to govern internal Irish affairs, was effectively put on hold. While the war was waged in Europe, a cohort of Irish Republicans staged a rebellion in Dublin on Easter Monday, 1916 – the Easter Rising.
The Easter Rising was put down after six days of fighting and one by one the British executed its leaders. The British reaction to the Rising caused a sea-change in public opinion. While a majority of Irish citizens had previously been happy to wait for a devolved, Home Rule Parliament, many now embraced the view of the executed leaders of the Rising, who felt that Ireland should be a completely independent republic.
The war was initially marked by sporadic ambushes carried out by the IRA, targeting the RIC and raiding for arms. At the start of 1920, recruitment began for a force of Temporary Constables to reinforce the RIC, who became better known to history as the “Black and Tans”. This force was augmented in July that year by an elite division of ex-army officers known as the “Auxiliaries”. Fighting continued to escalate as the war progressed. On 21 November 1920, on what became known as “Bloody Sunday”, the IRA assassinated fourteen men suspected of being members of the British intelligence forces. Later that day, in reprisal, a company of Black and Tans opened fired on a crowd of spectators at a Gaelic football match, killing fourteen civilians. By this stage, the war had become marked by a pattern of guerrilla attack followed by indiscriminate reprisals. In December, the city centre of Cork was deliberately set on fire in one such reprisal.
When the First World War ended, elections were held for Parliament in December 1918. Of the 105 MPs elected in Ireland, 73 were members of Sinn Féin, the political party which then represented those who had staged the Easter Rising. Rather than taking their seats in the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Westminster, they instead set up an independent Irish Parliament known as “Dáil Éireann”. On the day that the first Dáil met, on 21 January 1919, two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) were shot dead in an ambush by members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). This date is taken by many as marking the start of the War of Independence between Britain and Ireland.
The intensity of the violence, and the number of deaths, continued to escalate throughout the early months of 1921. Eventually, a truce was called between the opposing forces, on 11 July 1921. Over the course of the following months, a treaty was negotiated between the two sides. It was passed by a vote of the Dáil on 7 January 1922. Nine days later, Dublin Castle was handed over to the Provisional Government of the new Irish State. 3
Dublin Castle, An Introduction Dublin Castle is an immense unwieldy pile built by King John (of Magna Carta fame) … It has no claim to architectural beauty, having neither shape nor distinction. It was always the centre of British rule in Ireland, the Irish Bastille. The walls weep, not for the sins of the inhabitants, but because of a fault in the stone. The little river Poddle runs underneath and the whole place is damp, dark, smells of age and mould. So wrote David Neligan, the famous “Spy in the Castle”, of Dublin Castle during the War of Independence. Following the Norman conquest of Ireland, which began in 1169, work started on a stone medieval castle on this site in 1204, on the orders of King John of England. A fire in 1684 led to the destruction of many of the older parts of the Castle and between that time and the 1760s, the complex was rebuilt, largely in brick, in a similar fashion to the Georgian city growing up around it. Over the centuries, it evolved into a haphazard complex of buildings that housed various elements of the British administration that governed Ireland. It was best summed up by one visitor as:
… the centre and symbol of Government – that veiled, anonymous, and all-powerful institution, housed in the old fortress … a world in itself, a city within the city. It is at once the Palace of the Viceroy, a military barrack, the seat of administration, and the office of the secret police…
During the First World War, the State Apartments of the Castle were used as a Red Cross hospital. In the middle of this, in 1916, the Easter Rising unfolded around the city. One of the leaders of the Rising, James Connolly, was a patient there for a period, before his trial and execution. By the time the hospital was wound up, in July 1919, the Castle was finding itself increasingly at the centre of a new conflict. Following the outbreak of the War of Independence, security at the Castle gradually increased and by mid-1920 it had reverted to its ancient use as a fortified bastion, effectively under siege. The name “Dublin Castle” had evolved over the centuries to refer both to the complex of buildings still known by that name today and to the British administration that occupied them. The Castle was at the centre of a bureaucratic web of boards, commissions and offices that were responsible for running the country; it was the principal residence of the monarch’s representative and had a lavish suite of rooms known as the State Apartments that were used for formal ceremonial and ostentatious display; it was a barracks, an arsenal, and, at times, a prison. By the twentieth century, a reference to “the Castle” more likely referred to an official office or a government employee than a building. In this way, “Dublin Castle” forms the near constant, gloomy backdrop to many centuries of Irish history, not least for the three years leading up to Irish independence. And yet, for all this, little has been written about what happened within the walls of the actual Castle, least of all during the War of Independence. This booklet is an attempt to remedy that: to offer some glimpse into life within the besieged fortress during its “last days”.
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The centre and symbol of Government – that veiled, anonymous, and all-powerful institution, housed in the old fortress.
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The Throne Room became an office, occupied by twentytwo female typists. The State Drawing Room and some of the Viceroy’s private rooms nearby were converted into an apartment for Lieutenant-colonel Sir EdgeworthJohnstone, the Chief Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP). 6
Upper Castle Yard The Upper Castle Yard occupies the rectangle once enclosed by the medieval Castle, gaining the name “Devil’s Half-Acre” after centuries of association with bloody deeds and coercive rule. The buildings ranged around this yard housed the most important elements of the apparatus of Government and State.
The range at the east end of the Yard, separating it from the Lower Castle Yard, housed the Privy Council Chamber and in the north-east corner of the Yard were the offices of the Chief Secretary for Ireland and his deputy, the UnderSecretary. The Chief Secretary headed the bureaucratic administration of Ireland, aided by a large map on the wall of his office showing the whole of the island.
The long range to the south housed the Viceregal State Apartments, residence of the King’s representative in Ireland, the Viceroy or Lord Lieutenant. This suite of ornate rooms on the first floor was used for formal ceremonies and exclusive entertainments. On the Christmas Eve of 1919, 300 soldiers arrived unannounced and billeted themselves in some of the rooms at the west end, including the Portrait Gallery and George’s Hall – a supper room that had been built for the visit of King George V in 1911.
The range at the west end of the yard was split into four “State Residences” known as Houses No. 1 to No. 4, with House No. 5 at the end of the north range adjoining these and House No. 6 (since demolished) behind the large gateway with the statue of Fortitude (holding his spear). In former times, these were occupied by members of the Viceregal Household. Owing to the increasing danger at the end of 1919 and the start of 1920, these were also taken over by those who were ordered to live within the Castle walls for their safety. Thomas Neylon (District Inspector of the RIC) occupied House No. 2; Sir John James Taylor (Assistant Under-Secretary) occupied Houses No. 3 and No. 4; General Tudor (General Officer Commanding, Dublin District) had House No. 5; and Sir Henry Wynne (Chief Crown Solicitor) had House No. 6.
Gradually, more and more people were provided with space within the Castle. The Throne Room became an office, occupied by twenty-two female typists. The State Drawing Room and some of the Viceroy’s private rooms nearby were converted into an apartment for Lieutenantcolonel Sir Edgeworth-Johnstone, the Chief Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP). On the ground floor below him, rooms were being prepared for William Redmond, Assistant Commissioner, when he was assassinated in January 1921. St Patrick’s Hall was pressed into occasional use for dances, intended to entertain those who could not venture beyond the Castle gates for fear of assassination.
Following a change in personnel, House No. 4, at the north end of the range, was later occupied by Mark Sturgis (Assistant Under-Secretary), who left a diary of his time at the Castle during the war. The Office of Ulster King of Arms, Ireland’s heraldic authority, occupied the Bedford Tower, with its turret and clock standing resolutely over the Upper Castle Yard.
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Mark Sturgis Mark Sturgis was a British civil servant who served as Assistant Under-Secretary for Ireland from 1920 to 1922. He was a typical English gentleman of that time. He had a keen interest in horses, attending many Irish race meetings and the Dublin Horse Show, despite the risks of doing so. A fellow Castle civil servant of that time, writing under the pseudonym “Periscope”, described how “He [Sturgis] lent a cachet to the administration, he supplied an atmosphere which Dublin Castle had lacked for many years.” Periscope also left the following sketch of him:
Mark Sturgis, fresh from an early morning canter in the Phoenix Park, in his buttonhole a red rose picked in the Viceregal gardens, looks out of place in this dingy square [the Upper Castle Yard]. Hyde Park on a summer’s morning seems more in keeping with the atmosphere he creates, the general effect often aided by a nicelycut pair of riding breeches not even discarded for the official day.
However, life was not always as comfortable as these descriptions might suggest, and the occupants of the Castle, including Mr Sturgis, lived in a state of constant apprehension. The same month, he described an incident that gives some idea of the fear that constantly lurked at the back of their minds:
Last night when we had finished dinner we heard shouting in Dame Street and several shots from the direction of the Castle Gate. Soldiers came running back through the Upper Yard to get their rifles – We thought the Castle was being stormed and with hideous courage all went down to the Gate – the last thing we ought to have done as we could only have been in the way. It appeared that the foe was still outside. … [after some time] We soon got tired of looking and went to play bridge and heard no more. On another occasion, less than two weeks later:
Sturgis kept a diary, which offers some interesting glimpses into life at the Castle during that time. In August 1920, he recorded how he had lunch with the Director of the National Gallery of Ireland who:
Last night we half thought something was up. We were playing cards at 11.30 when the electric light gave out and the officer of the Guard came in to say he had heard 3 shots in the distance – tried to get on the telephone and couldn’t – so we thought wires cut etc. for general attack! Howsoever nothing happened!
… took us over the National Gallery and showed us his best pictures. … We are going to be lent some pictures from the attics and we picked out some very nice ones for our house in Upper Castle Yard.
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Despite all of this, one has the impression that Mark Sturgis quite enjoyed his time at Dublin Castle. He summed it up as follows:
Gawd knows whether I shall ever settle down happily in a London office again – here one is up to the neck in intrigue, plot and counterplot with a small spice of danger all mixed up with the life of something like a big country house in the old days.
Mark Sturgis
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Some of the inhabitants of Dublin Castle in the Upper Castle Yard, from an IRA intelligence file marking out men for possible assassination.
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Lower Castle Yard The term “Lower Castle Yard” was often used to refer to all the buildings outside the Upper Castle Yard, including those around this secondary courtyard, behind the Castle and around the Castle garden. These structures housed many of the ancillary offices and lodgings that supported the functions housed in the Upper Yard. As described by David Neligan during the War of Independence:
The Lower yard contained the H.Q.’s of the D.M. Police and the R.I.C.; the British Army’s Dublin Command, the … Tower containing state archives and the Chapel Royal. … In the Lower yard was also a police station of the uniformed D.M.P., a central telephone exchange, and the house of the Chief Superintendent. The Castle had a military garrison who manned each gate, strengthened by steel plates since 1916. When things got hot, a pass was necessary to enter. … The police offices were cramped and shabby.
As officials began to seek refuge in the Castle, these buildings were also taken over. In September 1919, the G (detective) Division of the DMP moved to the Castle from Great Brunswick Street (modern-day Pearse Street). They took over the two houses formerly used by the Viceroy’s aides de camp, requisitioning twenty bedsteads and mattresses, cooking utensils and delph, including twentyfour porridge bowls and one dozen egg cups. In early 1920, the house of the Master of the Horse was occupied by T.J. Smith (Deputy Inspector-General, RIC). Typically, the Yard was bustling with activity, as described by British novelist and journalist Wilfrid Ewart:
The interior of Dublin Castle presented itself as a hive from which … all subsequent activities sprang. In and out of the great gate, with its ramshackle flankments of barbed wire and sandbags, a constant procession of armoured cars, lorries, tenders, and Ford cars passed. … In the wide courtyard, scene of so many mysterious happenings … rows of now familiar lorries and cars stood grilling in the sunshine, their green or khaki crews smoking cigarettes, joking, fingering their revolver-holsters. In their midst, or sitting on one of the lorries, a row of nondescriptlooking civilians – spitting. … Within the buildings, soldiers, staff-officers, and officials bustling to and fro: it resembled a General Headquarters in the Great War.
The building along the north terrace was constructed between 1712 and 1717 to house the Treasury, but by 1919 a large part of it had been taken over as Constabulary Offices. At the bottom of the Yard, where the large modern offices are today, was the East Coach House (a large warren of stables, coach houses, outbuildings and staff accommodation), the Aides de Camp’s Quarters and the house of the Master of the Horse.
Along the south side of the Lower Castle Yard stands the Chapel Royal and, next to it, the Record Tower. 12
As officials began to seek refuge in the Castle, these buildings were also taken over. In September 1919, the G (detective) Division of the DMP moved to the Castle from Great Brunswick Street.
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Chapel Royal and Record Tower The Chapel Royal was constructed between 1807 and 1814, and was used as a private chapel by the Viceregal Court and by those who lived at Dublin Castle. The Chapel continued to function throughout the War of Independence, holding its final service on Christmas Day of 1922. The last marriage to be celebrated there was between the daughter of the Recorder of Dublin (a legal office, effectively the chief magistrate for Dublin) and a British Major. All the important figures in the British administration were due to attend, including the Chief Secretary, the Under-Secretaries and several generals. David Neligan passed a list of the guests to Michael Collins, who declared, “We’ll plug the bloody lot of them!”
After the wedding was celebrated in the Chapel, the party returned to the bride’s family home on Fitzwilliam Square, where Neligan could see members of Collins’s “Squad” from the window, waiting outside to carry out the assassinations. However, as Neligan explained, none of the “high-ups” had come along. Instead, they had sent their private secretaries. He left the house to confer with Collins, who was waiting at a nearby pub, and the job was called off. Neligan also left us with a description of the Chapel itself, noting:
Each window contains a representation of the coat-of-arms of two Viceroys. Curiously enough, the last half-window is filled with the arms of the last Viceroy, Lord Fitzalan.
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This story is accurate, and the stained-glass coat of arms was made by Sarah Purser’s company, An Túr Gloine (The Glass Tower), in 1922. Unlike previous commissions, the Viceroy ended up paying for this window himself, Ireland having gained its independence by the time it was installed. Next to the Chapel is the Record Tower, one of the few surviving vestiges of the medieval Castle, which was converted into a record repository between 1811 and 1813. During the War of Independence, machine guns were positioned on its roof, and a soldier kept constant aim at the Palace Street Gate, in case of attack, as described by Periscope:
Over the summit of the old Castle Keep, where the Union Jack floats, peeps the cap of a watching sentry, and the machine-guns are ensconced behind its parapet, a post of vantage which commands the Castle approaches, and gives a view over distant streets and housetops. So six hundred years before from the same tower did an English sentry, armed with a musketoon or arquebus, look forth on the river Liffey tumbling to the sea, and outside the city walls, which circled but a few hundred yards away, saw the green fields and pasture-land rolling away to the Dublin hills. Mark Sturgis later recorded in his diary how he watched the burning of the Custom House, after its attack by the IRA in May 1921, from the rooftop of the Tower.
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By the time of the War of Independence, the Garden was a simple affair, referred to as “the Pound”; however, it still provided a place of respite for those living within the Castle walls.
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The Castle Gardens There has been a garden behind Dublin Castle for several centuries, accessed from the State Apartments by the steps over the small footbridge, which still survives today. This bridge spanned the River Poddle, which today flows in a culvert beneath the road, and long before a garden was created, the site was occupied by a large pool filled by the river. This was known in ancient times as the dubh linn, or “black pool”, from which the city of Dublin takes its name. By the time of the War of Independence, the Garden was a simple affair, referred to as “the Pound”; however, it still provided a place of respite for those living within the Castle walls. As Periscope described:
Men cannot live cooped up in these walls from week to week without some outdoor recreation. No one desires to be murdered for the sake of a game of golf, or butchered on the football field. Behind the old Viceregal apartments there is a pleasant walled-in garden where tennis-courts have been laid out, and as the summer comes on the Metropolitan Police Band plays in the late afternoon. Alongside these features were several graves within the garden. During the First World War, the State Apartments had been used as a Red Cross hospital and several of those who had been killed during the 1916 Easter Rising were interred in the Castle garden. There were separate plots for “Tommies” and “Sinn Féiners”. Several of these graves survived until the 1960s, when the remains were exhumed and re-interred in Grangegorman Military Cemetery, Dublin.
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The garden affords a picturesque view of the different buildings, additions and wings that make up the main part of Dublin Castle. The view became popular with soldiers and others based at the Castle, serving as a backdrop to many souvenir photographs taken at the time.
Ship Street Barracks This large range of buildings, running the length of Great Ship Street, was created as a barracks in the nineteenth century following the failed rebellion led by Robert Emmet in 1803. It housed military forces (as distinct from the Constabulary and Police) and during the War of Independence it was home to different regiments, on rotation. A small portion of it was occupied by the “F Company” of the Auxiliaries, while prisoners, such as Ernie O’Malley, were familiar with the cells that made up part of its basement.
Swindlehurst described how “each day was a repetition of the previous one, if we weren’t on guard [duty] in some place, we were patrolling somewhere else, or else having a route march”. He was assigned to guard duty at City Hall and Jury’s Hotel on Dame Street and at Mountjoy Prison, and to policing the city curfew, as well as guarding the gates to the Castle. He lamented how “People in England don’t know anything of the conditions here, shooting occurs in different parts of the city so often that they become of no interest, unless you happen to be near the flying bullets.”
One soldier, Private J.P. Swindlehurst, who kept a diary, described his arrival in Dublin as follows:
On one of his occasional rest periods he noted: “I have a pass out, but only for two hours, we had some chips for supper, but they were awful, done in olive oil or else wagon grease, I think the latter, we couldn’t manage them.” His experience could be summed up in his own words thus:
We looked and felt terrible, cold, hungry and fed up to the teeth. Stewed Bully [corned beef] and dried bread didn’t improve our spirits, but the tea has been better. … Ship Street Barracks … is the new address, and it’s raining, what a life.
What a hole to be in … Roll on day of discharge.
Life after arrival wasn’t much better for the regular soldier. In March 1920, the Barracks was occupied by a detachment of the North Staffordshire Regiment, and correspondence from that time gives an insight into the basic facilities provided for the troops. Complaining about these facilities, their Commanding Officer wrote:
I beg to report that the Latrine Accommodation for the Company of my Detachment billeted in Dublin Castle is inadequate. There are 110 men continually living in the Castle and there are only two Latrine Seats, one of which is damaged.
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This large range of buildings, running the length of Great Ship Street, was created as a barracks in the nineteenth century following the failed rebellion led by Robert Emmet in 1803. 19
Lily Mernin Elizabeth “Lily” Mernin worked as a shorthand typist in Dublin Castle from 1914 to 1922. During the War of Independence, she worked for Major Stratford Burton, the Garrison Adjutant of the Ship Street Barracks. At the same time, she was secretly working for Michael Collins and the IRA. Mernin is credited with having been one of Michael Collins’s most important spies, and one of the few who was actually working within the walls of the Castle. Her identity was a great secret, and she was never referred to by her name, known instead as the “Little Gentleman”. She made copies of many of the documents that came across her desk during the course of her working day. She also reported back anything she overheard in conversations happening around her that she thought might be of interest or of use to the IRA. She later recalled in 1950:
I cannot recollect the exact nature of the letters and correspondence that I passed to the Intelligence Staff [of the IRA]. All I can say is that, in general, they dealt with the movement of troops, provisions for armoured trains or cars, and instructions and circulars issued to military units from G.H.Q.
This knowledge would have been essential to the IRA, particularly for one of their most daring attacks – the assassination of fourteen suspected British intelligence officers on the morning of 21 November 1920, better known as “Bloody Sunday”. Mernin also later described how:
The Auxiliaries organised smoking concerts and whist drives in the Lower Castle Yard. I was encouraged by Frank Saurin, a member of the [IRA] Intelligence Squad, to give all the assistance I could in the organisation of these whist drives for the sole purpose of getting to know the Auxiliaries and finding out all I could about them. She accompanied members of the IRA to football matches and various cafés around the city, where she would point out any Auxiliaries she recognised, giving their names and details to the person she was with. Even after the events of Bloody Sunday, Mernin continued to work at Dublin Castle until February 1922. Following this, she took up a post as a typist with the Irish Army, which she retained until she retired in 1952.
Mernin also had the job of typing up the names and addresses of British agents:
… who were accommodated at private addresses and living as ordinary citizens in the city. These lists were typed weekly and amended whenever an address was changed. I passed them on each week [to the IRA].
Lily Mernin. 20
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Homing pigeons were taken by rail, several times a week, to the different outposts around the country, from where they would be released to fly back to the Castle bearing their secret messages and reports. 22
The Forty Steps Like the Ship Street Barracks, the Forty Steps were created following the Emmet rebellion in 1803. They acted as a separation or a break between the edge of Dublin Castle and the properties and houses adjoining it to the west. They also allowed for the easy movement of soldiers around the Castle’s perimeter. The Castle wall, to the right, as the visitor ascends, was designed specifically to give an impression of strength. The ever-decreasing panels that form each stretch of the wall suggest a structure that is very thick and strong.
However, orders to take precautions, such as the bolts and bars mentioned above, were not isolated, and some of the other precautions taken against the possibility of an IRA attack sound even more curious. An officer from the Royal Engineers had the job of sitting in the cellars beneath the Castle, monitoring a “listening set”, in the hope of detecting any attempt by the IRA to try to mine or tunnel underneath the building.
During the War of Independence, the Castle, originally built for defence, was fortified and strengthened against any possible enemy attack. Sandbags were deployed across the site, and barbed wire ran along the tops of the walls, including this one. In between the chimneys on the Castle’s rooftops, large panels of canvas were stretched to act as screens. These were intended to block views into the Castle from the high-up vantage points of neighbouring buildings, to protect the inhabitants from possible snipers. Behind the Castle wall to the right, are the four State Residences that make up the western side of the Upper Castle Yard (where Mark Sturgis lived). In February 1920, the Viceroy, in a panicked letter, demanded that the rear windows of these houses be protected with steel bars and that strong bolts and locks be provided for the back doors. A civil servant, commenting on the official file, noted (much more calmly):
Postal, telegraph and telephone communications between Dublin Castle and the different administration outposts around the country were increasingly open to disruption or interception; so new options for safe and secret communications were explored. One solution was the operation of a pigeon service, and a loft of pigeons was established at the Castle. It may have been a mobile loft, similar to those used during the First World War (opposite). Homing pigeons were taken by rail, several times a week, to the different outposts around the country, from where they would be released to fly back to the Castle bearing their secret messages and reports. The precautions described above give some idea of the lengths to which the administration went to protect the Castle. In the end, the building would be handed over peaceably and freely by the last Viceroy to the Provisional Irish Government, in 1922.
The necessity for the bars is not evident to the “lay” mind, as to get to these windows anyone would have to climb a 20 foot wall, dodge the sentries and clamber through a chevaux de fries of barbed wire. 23
Exchange Court Exchange Court sits along the eastern edge of Dublin’s City Hall, which was commandeered and used during the War of Independence for courts-martial. The big, open square next to it was once full of large, brick Georgian houses, so that the “court” was in effect a narrow laneway. The house at the end of the laneway, and two more adjoining it to the side, comprised a DMP Barracks, which connected into buildings in the Lower Castle Yard, behind. For the most intense period of the War of Independence, this barracks was occupied by the “F Company” of the Auxiliary Division of the RIC, more commonly known as the “Auxiliaries”. The Auxiliaries were formed in July 1920 and were made up of former British Army officers. They soon garnered a reputation for brutality as a result of the indiscriminate reprisals they carried out on the Irish population. 21 November 1920 is remembered in Irish history as “Bloody Sunday”. On that morning, Michael Collins’s “Squad” assassinated fourteen men suspected of being British military and intelligence officers. Later that day, at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park, British forces fired into a crowd of spectators, killing a further fourteen people.
What happened to the three men that night is still contested, but none made it out of the Guard Room alive. Evidence suggests that they were possibly tortured and then killed in revenge for the assassinations that the Squad had carried out that morning. The Government’s official line was that they were shot while trying to escape, although few people believed this story. So concerned were those in charge to convey their version of events that the scene was restaged for newspapers, illustrating exactly what the Auxiliaries said had happened. Following Irish independence, a memorial plaque was erected over a window of the former Guard Room, in 1939. Few accounts of brutality or execution within the walls of the Castle survive from this period, but they certainly did take place. The deaths of Clancy, McKee and Clune are the most notorious. The account left by Ernie O’Malley of his time as a prisoner at the Castle gives another insight into the grizzly conduct of the War within the Castle’s walls.
The night before Bloody Sunday, two members of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade – Peadar Clancy, its Vice-Commandant, and Dick McKee, its Commanding Officer – were captured on Gloucester Street (now Seán McDermott Street). Also taken prisoner that night, at Vaughan’s Hotel on modernday Parnell Square, was Conor Clune, a member of the Gaelic League, an organisation that promoted the Irish language. All three men were taken to the Guard Room of the F-Company’s barracks, here, in Exchange Court. The three men were still there the following day, as the events of Bloody Sunday unfolded across the city. 24
For the most intense period of the War of Independence, this barracks was occupied by the “F Company” of the Auxiliary Division of the RIC, more commonly known as the “Auxiliaries”.
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Ernie O’Malley was a veteran of the 1916 Easter Rising and was an active member of the IRA during the War of Independence. Later in life, he wrote several books, including one in which he described his time as a prisoner of the “F Company” of the Auxiliaries in December 1920. Ernie O’Malley, photographed by his wife Helen Hooker O’Malley in 1936 in the “Passeges leading to the cell where I was imprisoned”.
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Ernie O’Malley Ernie O’Malley was a veteran of the 1916 Easter Rising and was an active member of the IRA during the War of Independence. Later in life, he wrote several books, including one in which he described his time as a prisoner of the “F Company” of the Auxiliaries in December 1920. He had been sent to the Castle as a prisoner from Kilkenny, and was kept in the same Guard Room where only a few weeks earlier Clune, Clancy and McKee had been killed. He described the setting:
We ate at the table when the guard had finished. We got the same food as they did. We had a knife and fork between four of us, a piece of bread, or our hands served instead. … Prisoners were mixed; some Volunteers, others arrested on suspicion, possibly a few pigeons to get information. Every night fresh prisoners came in; they had been out after curfew or had been taken by raiding parties. … We were allowed to exercise two at a time for less than an hour in an alley turning toward the entrance to the lower Castle yard. We could see lorries going out or waiting by, and all the bustle and movement of a fortress seat of government. O’Malley also described his interrogation within the walls of the Castle. On one occasion, he was repeatedly punched and beaten; told to place his coat on the floor to prevent his blood staining it; and later subjected to a mock execution where his interrogator pointed a revolver at his head, counted to three and, when he refused to divulge information, pulled the trigger – blank cartridges had been used. O’Malley was quite sanguine about his fate.
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As he wrote, “We did not expect to live through the war; there were too many risks to be taken, but we did feel our cause would win.” Despite this treatment at the hands of his captors, O’Malley expressed some sympathy for them. He recalled: “When they sat at the fire I could see brooding bitterness in many faces. The World War had left its mark; behind organized efficiency and a sense of comradeship was a glum, swarthy melancholy.” Later, he recalled an Auxiliary with a Scottish accent describing his time in Ireland as “a rotten job”, and continued, “But what can we do? I was out of work.” Possibly the strangest scene he described was that of 25 December: “We sat at a table beside the guard on Christmas Day, four Auxiliaries and three prisoners. It was a good dinner; we did not talk much.” Later that day, they “joined hands around the tables and sang: ‘For the Sake of Auld Lang Syne’”, following which each of the prisoners was called upon to give a speech. Some of the Auxiliaries and prisoners exchanged Christmas cards. O’Malley struck up a conversation with one guard who had studied at Trinity College Dublin. They ended the evening by shaking hands, and agreeing to meet again on Christmas Day in two years’ time, “when the Irish Republic is recognised”, to have dinner together again.
Palace Street Gate The Palace Street Gate was the main entrance to the Castle during the War of Independence. The houses to the right were commandeered in January 1921, one of them providing accommodation for the Castle’s staff of female typists. Periscope describes a typical scene:
On duty at the Lower Castle yard gate are Dublin Metropolitan and Military Police, and just inside lounge a couple of Auxiliaries ready for emergencies. Bomb-catching meshwork is stretched across the archway, and a drapery of barbed wire festoons the passage ways in front of the guardroom. Twenty yards outside the Castle gate a mantrap is open, giving access to the subterranean river Poddle that runs beneath the Castle walls. A couple of Royal Engineers are below seeing that the wire entanglements across the stream have not been tampered with during the night. As noted earlier, the River Poddle runs beneath the Castle, making its way to the River Liffey. The zig-zag in the modern paving on Palace Street shows its route. This was another source of worry for those confined within the walls of the Castle – would the IRA try to sneak in via the Poddle culvert, or perhaps try to blow the Castle up from below?
On 11 July 1921, a truce was called between the British and Irish forces and negotiations opened on resolving what had become a stalemated conflict. These negotiations eventually resulted in the Anglo-Irish Treaty (sometimes known simply as “the Treaty”), which was signed on 6 December 1921 and ratified by the Dáil on 7 January 1922, 64 votes to 57. As the conflict came to its close, on 10 January 1922, Mark Sturgis wrote:
The Castle makes a good propaganda appearance with its gate standing open for the first time for at least two years and soldiers busy removing barbed wire. Six days later, on 16 January 1922, members of the Provisional Government of Ireland made their way through this gate and up into the Upper Castle Yard to receive the handover of the administration from the last Viceroy of Ireland, Viscount FitzAlan of Derwent. Passing through the ornate, cast-iron gates, the visitor will see the steel plates fitted to the back of them following the 1916 Easter Rising. Also, to the right as they enter, the visitor can glimpse the long narrow yard, or “alley”, in which prisoners like Ernie O’Malley once exercised, and from where they were able to observe the comings and goings through the Palace Street Gate.
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On 11 July 1921, a truce was called between the British and Irish forces and negotiations opened on resolving what had become a stalemated conflict. 29
The Privy Council Chamber The morning of 16 January 1922 was bitterly cold. At a meeting in Dublin’s Mansion House, the Provisional Government elected Michael Collins as its Chairman and set out for Dublin Castle. No formal arrangements had been made for handing over Dublin Castle, and the administration of Ireland, that morning. When they had been made a few days earlier, the Provisional Government had been unable to attend at the last minute. At approximately 1.40 pm, three taxis carrying eight ministers of the new Provisional Government passed through gathered crowds on Dame Street, through the Palace Street Gate, and up through the archway that led to the Upper Castle Yard. They made their way through the doorway of the Chief Secretary’s Office in the northeast corner of the Yard and upstairs to the Privy Council Chamber, a “purple and gilded” room above the archway that connected the Upper and Lower Castle Yards (see pages 5 and 13). On arriving, Collins was greeted by James MacMahon, the Under-Secretary, with the words: “We’re glad to see you Mr Collins,” to which he allegedly replied, in his Cork accent, “Ye are like hell boy!” As Periscope describes:
Mr Collins himself was first in the door … A few minutes later the Lord Lieutenant appeared and his Ministers, some of whom had six months before a price fixed on their heads, or were spending a leisured existence in the walls of Mountjoy Prison, were introduced to His Excellency. The chiefs of the Irish Departments … had been roped in, and now stood about the Council Chamber … It was a scene worthy of
a painter, fit for a master-hand of some great dramatist. The drama of seven hundred odd years – was it comedy, farce or tragedy! – was about to be played out; the curtain was about to fall on the last act and the last scene. No press or photographers were present in the room. However, as The Irish Examiner recorded:
Those curiously inclined were able to obtain a fair idea of what was going on in the Privy Council Chamber, for its windows look right on to the Upper Castle Yard, and as the room is lighted from both sides the movings within it could be followed with tolerable accuracy. The Viceroy stood at first at the fireplace at the northern end of the apartment … the seats on the right-hand side of the Lord Lieutenant’s Chair … were occupied by Mr. Michael Collins and two of his colleagues. The Irish Independent added: “Through the windows Mr. Collins could be seen smiling and looking absolutely self-possessed as he met the Viceroy.” Just after 2.25 pm, the “meeting” broke up. “Mr Collins bounced out through the Chief Secretary’s doorway and pushed Mr. Duggan and Mr. Cosgrave into the leading car.” The Viceroy departed a short while later, at 3.00 pm. So ended the moment of “Brief, Historic Formality” that was the official handing over of Dublin Castle.
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Afterwards, Michael Collins wrote to his fiancée Kitty Kiernan: “I am as happy a man as there is in Ireland today … Have just taken over Dublin Castle.” An official statement of the Provisional Government, signed by “Michael Collins, Chairman” and released later that day, read: “The Members of the Provisional Government received the surrender of Dublin Castle at 1.45 pm today. It is now in the hands of the Irish nation.” And so it remains today.
Michael Collins, marked with an “X”, leaving Dublin Castle on the 16 January 1922.
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Credits and Acknowledgements Production Text by William Derham, Office of Public Works. Design by Clever Cat Design.
Sources Ewart, Wilfrid, A Journey in Ireland 1921 (London and New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1922). Hopkinson, Michael (ed.), The Last Days of Dublin Castle: The Diaries of Mark Sturgis (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1999). O’Malley, Ernie and O’Malley, Cormac K. H. (ed.), On Another Man’s Wound (Cork: Mercier Press, 2013). “Periscope” (G.C. Duggan), “The Last Days of Dublin Castle”, Blackwood’s Magazine, 212 (August 1922).
Le ceannach díreach ó FOILSEACHÁIN RIALTAIS, BÓTHAR BHAILE UÍ BHEOLÁIN, BAILE ÁTHA CLIATH 8. D08 XA06 (Teil: 046 942 3100 nó Riomhphost: publications@opw.ie) nó trí aon díoltóir leabhar. __________ To be purchased from GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS, MOUNTSHANNON ROAD, DUBLIN 8. D08 XA06 (Tel: 046 942 3100 or Email: publications@opw.ie) or through any bookseller.
Sheehan, William, British Voices from the Irish War of Independence 1918-21 (Cork: The Collins Press, 2005). Military Archives, Bureau of Military History, Witness Statement 441 (Lily Mernin). National Archives of Ireland, Office of Public Works Papers.
Image Credits Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland: cover; pp. 2, 5, 6, 9, 10-11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 21, 31, 33; back cover. Courtesy of the Office of Public Works: p. 15. Courtesy of RTÉ: p. 29. Courtesy of the estate of Helen Hooker O’Malley: pp. 25, 26. © IWM Q 8391: p. 22.
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The British garrison packing up and leaving the Ship Street Barracks.
