The rumour went like this: on Saturday the 9th of June 1832 the Virgin Mary appeared on the church altar in Charleville, in north county Cork, and left ashes which were the only protection against cholera. The ashes were to be taken to neighbouring houses and placed under the rafters, then the inhabitants of those...Read More

Revolutionary War is the final in our three-part series of online talks on Laois and Ireland in revolution. Join Terry Dunne, Laois Historian-in-Residence, in conversation with local historian Michael Rafter about the course of the Civil War in LaoisRead More

Revolutionary Workers is the second of a three-part series of online talks on Laois and Ireland in revolution. The talk features Terry Dunne, Laois Historian-in-Residence and Francis Devine, labour historian.Read More

Éamon de Valera began 1922 as President of the Republic, the undisputed leader of Irish nationalism. He ended the year in hiding and in real danger of execution if caught by the Government of the Irish Free State. How did he endure such a fall from grace? And how much responsibility did he bear for...Read More

Revolutionary Women is the first of a three part series of online talks on Laois and Ireland in revolution.Read More

Laois County Library and Laois Historian-in-Residence, Terry Dunne, are hosting a three part series of online talks exploring Laois and Ireland in revolution.Read More

It is often claimed that the men who returned from the Great War were forgotten after they returned to an Ireland which had changed. This is in fact simply not true of the immediate decades after the war, however true it might be for much later decades at the close of the twentieth century. Moreover,...Read More

On the 1st of January 1920, despite it being the fair day, the streets of Maryborough were strangely silent. The silence was not to last. What was missing was motor traffic and not just because there was much less of it then than now. The absence was due to a cessation of all motor driving...Read More

On the 12th of March 1922 there was a cattle drive in the townland of Ballycarnan. Ballycarnan is just south of Portlaoise, to the east of the road to Abbeyleix. The property was then owned by Miss Flora S. Cassan of Sheffield House. In her evidence when making a bid for compensation in 1924 she...Read More

This article is an extract from a forthcoming chapter on the labour movement in Laois which will appear in a collection of essays to be published by Umiskin Press on the provincial working-class experience of the Irish revolution.Read More