New online StoryMap on the archaeology of the War of Independence and Civil War in East Limerick

New online StoryMap on the archaeology of the War of Independence and Civil War in East Limerick

Online StoryMap project brings together local knowledge, archaeological fieldwork, and archival research to map the sites and landscapes of the revolutionary period in East Limerick

A project run by Joanna Brück and Aidan Harte from the School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, has brought together local knowledge, archaeological fieldwork and archival research to map the sites and landscapes of the revolutionary period in East Limerick.

The East Limerick Brigade of the IRA was one of the most active brigades in the War of Independence. The area also saw some of the only conventional warfare of the Civil War, notably around Kilmallock, Bruff and Bruree. This means that the surviving archaeological legacy of the period in this area is particularly rich and interesting.

The project has established the original location of places such as safe houses, training grounds, Dáil courts, arms dumps, ambush sites and barracks, many of which survive into the present. Evidence ranges from bullet impact scars on the facades of buildings, to dugouts where men and weapons were hidden, to field boundaries behind which combatants sheltered during ambushes, still unaltered from their revolutionary-period form. Now the results of that research is available online.

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Identifying these places and understanding their inter-relationships reveals how events such as raids and reprisals unfolded on the ground, and provides insights into the organisational infrastructure (such as safe houses and munitions factories) which facilitated IRA activity. This material evidence also speaks powerfully of lived experience during this period, allowing us to document the impact on the civilian population, for example by mapping evidence for the destruction of bridges during the Civil War.

The archaeology of Ireland’s War of Independence and Civil War is one of the most engaging heritage resources in the country. There is an extraordinary diversity of surviving revolutionary heritage, much of which remains unrecognised and unrecorded, both at a local and national level. This means that it is particularly vulnerable to loss, damage and destruction over time, particularly as the stories of the period pass out of living memory. Even in the last few years, some of the buildings and other sites at the heart of East Limerick’s revolutionary story have been lost to modern development, simply because people weren’t aware of their historical significance.

By researching surviving sites and landscapes, new perspectives on the local impact of this momentous time in Irish history have been uncovered, revealing just how much of this story still surrounds us.  Seeing evidence like the bullet holes visible on buildings today is a vivid and immediate experience that can bring history to life in a very different way to reading about it in a book.

Project leader Joanna Brück says “One of the most fulfilling aspects of this project was working with local communities. The amount of knowledge out there is phenomenal, but it’s being lost because it’s not being shared or recorded. With amazing online resources like the Military Archives, it’s becoming easier all the time for communities to research their own revolutionary heritage and to think about how best to safeguard the surviving remnants of this for the future.”

This project was funded by Research Ireland and was conducted in collaboration with Abarta Heritage.