The 1865 Rathcore evictions
The 1865 Rathcore evictions

Author: CE. Rayfus

Publisher: CE. Rayfus

Published: 2014-06-08

Total Pages: 443

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The book centres on a mass family clearance of thirteen families from their homesteads in Rathcore, a small rural village situated in south county Meath. The circumstances surrounding those evictions bore all the hallmarks of extremely poor landlord-tenant relations. Central to an understanding of the period was a drastic fall in tillage farming practices throughout Ireland, and the corresponding expansion of livestock/grassland farming, particularly so, in the provinces of Munster and Leinster. This shift in agricultural land-use had serious implications for social structure all across post-famine Ireland. The 1865 Rathcore evictions aims to provide an insight into the whole complex nature of the landlord-tenant relationship in Rathcore, set to a backdrop and a period in time in which a trend facilitated by an expansion of land under grass was well under-way in County Meath from the mid-nineteenth century.

The Scariff Martyrs
The Scariff Martyrs

Author: Tomás Mac Conmara

Publisher: Mercier Press Ltd

Published: 2021-09-14

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1781177260

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

' This incredible book is very, very important'. Damien Dempsey In November 2008, Tomás Mac Conmara sat with a 105 five-year-old woman at a nursing home in Clare. While gently moving through her memories, he asked the east Clare native; 'Do you remember the time that four lads were killed on the Bridge of Killaloe?'. Almost immediately, the woman's countenance changed to deep outward sadness. Her recollection took him back to 17th November 1920, when news of the brutal death of four men, who became known as the Scariff Martyrs, was revealed to the local community. Late the previous night, on the bridge of Killaloe they were shot by British Forces, who claimed they had attempted to escape. Locals insisted they were murdered. A story remembered for 100 years is now fully told. This incident presents a remarkable confluence of dimensions. The young rebels committed to a cause. Their betrayal by a spy, their torture and evident refusal to betray comrades, the loneliness and liminal nature of their site of death on a bridge. The withholding of their dead bodies and their collective burial. All these dimensions bequeath a moment which carries an enduring quality that has reverberated across the generations and continues to strike a deep chord within the local landscape of memory in East Clare and beyond.