seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Kent


by Leave a comment

Death of William Brown, Commander in the Argentine Navy

William Brown, Irish sailor, merchant, and naval commander who serves in the Argentine Navy during the wars of the early 19th century, dies in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on March 3, 1857. He is also known in Spanish as Guillermo Brown or Almirante Brown.

Brown is born on June 22, 1777, in Foxford, County Mayo. Comparatively little is known of his early life, and it has been suggested that he was illegitimate and took his mother’s surname and that his father’s surname was actually Gannon. He emigrates with his father to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1793, eventually settling in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A short time after their arrival, the friend who had invited them and offered them food and hospitality dies of yellow fever. Several days later, his father also succumbs to the same disease.

One morning, while Brown is wandering along the banks of the Delaware River, he meets the captain of a ship then moored in port. The captain inquires if he wants employment and Brown agrees. The captain engages him as a cabin boy, thereby setting him on the naval promotion ladder, where he works his way to the captaincy of a merchant ship. After ten years at sea, where he develops his skills as a sailor and reaches the rank of captain, Brown is press-ganged into a Royal Navy warship. British impressment of American sailors is one of the primary issues leading to the War of 1812.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Brown escapes the ship he is serving on, a galley, and scuttles the vessel. However, the French do not believe he had assisted them and imprison him in Lorient. On being transferred to Metz, he escapes, disguised in a French officer’s uniform. However, he is recaptured and is imprisoned in the fortress of Verdun. In 1809, he escapes from there in the company of a British Army officer named Clutchwell, and eventually reaches German territory.

Returning to England, Brown renounces his maritime career and on July 29, 1809, he marries Elizabeth Chitty, daughter of an English shipping magnate, in Kent. As he is a Catholic and she a Protestant, they agree to raise their sons as Catholics and their daughters as Protestants. Despite lengthy periods of enforced separation, they have nine children. He leaves the same year for the Río de la Plata on board Belmond and sets himself up as a merchant in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Late in 1811 Brown settles in Buenos Aires just as a criollo rebellion against Spanish colonial rule in Argentina is gaining strength. By April 1812, he is developing a coastal shipping business in fruit and hides. As the Spanish naval blockade of 1812–14 begins to choke trade, he is first commissioned by the patriot government as a privateer licensed to raid Spanish merchantmen, and then, on March 1, 1814, invited to take charge of a small rebel naval squadron to contest Spanish control of the Río de la Plata estuary. Leading a fleet of nineteen ships, he fixes with great speed on a set of wartime naval routines and signaling methods, and organises a system of discipline, founding the navy on principles that pay exceptional attention to the welfare of ordinary seamen.

In early March 1814, Brown shows personal courage and incisive skill in outwitting and defeating a more powerful Spanish force near Martín García Island, thereby dividing the Spanish blockade. A Spanish attempt in May 1814 to break his blockade of Montevideo is decisively crushed by him and his makeshift navy, and the Spanish strongholds on the Atlantic coast collapse, ending open war. In 1815 and 1816, however, he carries out skirmishing raids on military and commercial targets belonging to Spanish South American possessions, until detained by a British colonial governor in Barbados in July 1816 for alleged infringements of international rules of trade.

Illness, and a tortuous but ultimately successful appeal process, take up most of 1817–18, but when Brown returns to Argentina in October 1818, political enemies set in motion a prosecution for alleged disobedience of orders. Cashiered in August 1819, then restored in rank but forced to retire, he attempts suicide the following month. Convalescence and resumption of his trading concern occupies him for several years.

A repentant government renews Brown’s command of the navy in December 1825, when war breaks out with Brazil. Though vastly outnumbered by the Brazilian fleet, he shows audacity and great finesse in a number of successful engagements in the Plate estuary in 1826, roving up the Brazilian coast on occasion to create great confusion. In February 1827, he triumphs in a series of actions known as the Battle of Juncal. After another year of commercial privateering against the Brazilian merchant fleet, he is one of two delegates selected to sign peace terms with Brazil in October 1828.

Retiring from active service that month, Brown tries to remain neutral as civil war erupts in Argentina, but reluctantly accepts the post of governor of Buenos Aires under General Juan Lavalle from December 1828 to May 1829, when he resigns in disgust at government excesses. During 1829–37 he holds aloof from the despotic government of Juan Manuel de Rosas. After French and British encroachments on the region in the later 1830s, he offers to take charge of the navy again to protect national independence and is available to defend Argentine interests when war breaks out with a French-backed Uruguay in early 1841. Though exasperated by a long and “stupid war,” he blockades the Uruguayan navy effectively until French and British fleets intervene in July 1845 with overwhelming force to capture his squadron and bring the war to an end.

Idolised by the Argentinian population for his high-principled and humane advocacy of independent democracy, Brown passes his last years trading and farming a country estate. In late 1847, he journeys to Ireland, hoping to find relations in Mayo, and is shocked by the hunger and destitution of the Great Famine.

Brown dies on March 3, 1857, at his home in Buenos Aires and is buried with full military honours. The Argentine government issues a comuniqué: “With a life of permanent service to the national wars that our homeland has fought since its independence, William Brown symbolized the naval glory of the Argentine Republic.” During his burial, General Bartolomé Mitre famously says: “Brown in his lifetime, standing on the quarterdeck of his ship, was worth a fleet to us.” His grave is currently located in the La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Sir Edward Carson, Politician, Barrister & Judge

Edward Henry Carson, Baron Carson, Irish unionist politician, barrister and judge, known as the “uncrowned king of Ulster,” is born on February 9, 1854, at 4 Harcourt Street, in Dublin. He serves as the Attorney General and Solicitor General for England, Wales and Ireland as well as the First Lord of the Admiralty for the British Royal Navy.

Although Carson is to become the champion of the northern province, he is born into a Protestant family in southern Ireland. He is educated at Portarlington School, Wesley College, Dublin, and Trinity College Dublin, where he reads law and is an active member of the College Historical Society. He graduates BA and MA.

From 1877, early in his Irish legal career, he comes to mistrust the Irish nationalists. As senior Crown prosecutor, he sternly enforces the Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act 1887, securing numerous convictions for violence against Irish estates owned by English absentee landlords. He is appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland and elected to the British House of Commons in 1892, is called to the English bar at Middle Temple on April 21, 1893, and serves as Solicitor General for England and Wales from 1900 to 1905. During these years he achieves his greatest success as a barrister. In 1895, his cross-examination of Oscar Wilde largely secures the Irish writer’s conviction for homosexuality.

On February 21, 1910, Carson accepts the parliamentary leadership of the anti-Home Rule Irish Unionists and, forfeiting his chance to lead the British Conservative Party, devotes himself entirely to the Ulster cause. His dislike of southern Irish separatism is reinforced by his belief that the heavy industry of Belfast is necessary to the economic survival of Ireland. The Liberal government (1908–16) under H. H. Asquith, which in 1912 decides to prepare a Home Rule bill, cannot overcome the effect of his extra-parliamentary opposition. The Solemn League and Covenant of resistance to Home Rule, signed by Carson and other leaders in Belfast on September 28, 1912, and afterward by thousands of Ulstermen, is followed by his establishment of a provisional government in Belfast in September 1913. Early in that year he recruits a private Ulster army, the Ulster Volunteer Force, that openly drills for fighting in the event that the Home Rule Bill is enacted. In preparation for a full-scale civil war, he successfully organizes the landing of a large supply of weapons from Germany at Larne, County Antrim, on April 24, 1914. The British government, however, begins to make concessions to Ulster unionists, and on the outbreak of World War I he agrees to a compromise whereby the Home Rule Bill is enacted but its operation suspended until the end of the war on the understanding that Ulster’s exclusion will then be reconsidered.

Appointed Attorney General for England in Asquith’s wartime coalition ministry on May 25, 1915, Carson resigns on October 19 because of his dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war. In David Lloyd George’s coalition ministry (1916–22) he is First Lord of the Admiralty from December 10, 1916, to July 17, 1917, and then a member of the war cabinet as minister without portfolio until January 21, 1918.

Disillusioned by the Government of Ireland Act 1920 that partitions Ireland and establishes what is essentially a Home Rule parliament in Belfast, Carson declines an invitation to head the Northern Ireland government and resigns as Ulster Unionist Party leader in February 1921. Accepting a life peerage, he serves from 1921 to 1929 as Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and takes the title Baron Carson of Duncairn.

Carson retires in October 1929. In July 1932, during his last visit to Northern Ireland, he witnesses the unveiling of a large statue of himself in front of Parliament Buildings at Stormont. The statue is sculpted by Leonard Stanford Merrifield, cast in bronze and placed upon a plinth. The inscription on the base reads “By the loyalists of Ulster as an expression of their love and admiration for its subject.” It is unveiled by James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon, in the presence of more than 40,000 people.

Carson lives at Cleve Court, a Queen Anne house near Minster-in-Thanet in the Isle of Thanet, Kent, bought in 1921. It is here that he dies peacefully on October 22, 1935. A warship brings his body to Belfast for the funeral. Thousands of shipworkers stop work and bow their heads as HMS Broke steams slowly up Belfast Lough, with his flag-draped coffin sitting on the quarterdeck. Britain gives him a state funeral on Saturday, October 26, 1935, which takes place in Belfast’s St. Anne’s Cathedral. He remains the only person to have been buried there. From a silver bowl, soil from each of the six counties of Northern Ireland is scattered onto his coffin, which had earlier been covered by the Union Jack. At his funeral service the choir sings his own favourite hymn, “I Vow to Thee, My Country.”


by Leave a comment

Death of Professional Golfer Harry “The Brad” Bradshaw

Harry Bradshaw, a leading Irish professional golfer of the 1940s and 1950s, dies on December 22, 1990, in St. Vincent’s hospital, County Dublin.

Bradshaw is born on October 9, 1913, in Killincarrig, County Wicklow, eldest among four sons and two daughters of Edward ‘Ned’ Bradshaw, golf caddie and later golf professional, and Elizabeth Bradshaw (née Walsh) of Killincarrig. He is educated locally. A golf prodigy, he has a hole-in-one at the age of ten on an 80-yard par three at Delgany Golf Club, County Wicklow. He joins Delgany Golf Club, where he progresses from caddie to assisting his father, who is the club’s professional. As a teenager, he tends to hook the ball wildly, before he develops a grip that allows him to hit with great accuracy. Thereafter, he concentrates on honing his peerless approach play from within 100 yards of the hole. Another feature of his game is what is called his “hit and hark” approach to putting: he never lifts his head to follow the ball until he hears it drop.

Bradshaw plays in his first tournament as a professional in 1932, the same year he shoots a course record 68 at Delgany. In 1938, he wins his first professional tournament, the Bromford-Adgey Cup at Skerries Golf Club, County Dublin. In 1941, he is appointed golf professional at Kilcroney, County Wicklow, and in 1950 he begins his long association with Portmarnock Golf Club, County Dublin, when he is appointed golf professional there. By then he has already made his mark on domestic Irish golf, having won the Irish Open in 1947 and 1949. In Ireland he wins the Irish Dunlop Trophy three times, the Willie Nolan Trophy eleven times, the Moran Cup twelve times and the Irish Professional Championship ten times, the last a record later equaled by Christy O’Connor Snr.

Bradshaw is not well known outside of Ireland prior to the famous “bottle” incident at the 1949 Open Championship at Royal St. George’s Golf Club in Sandwich, Kent, England. Having headed the qualifiers and shooting an opening 68, he continues his good form into the second round when his drive at the par four fifth hole just misses the fairway and lands in a beer bottle that is standing upright with the neck and shoulder broken off. The rules are unclear on whether the bottle constitutes a hazard, and he elects to play the ball where it lay, judging (correctly) that he is not entitled to a free drop. Closing his eyes and turning his head away, he swings, shattering the bottle and advancing the ball about twenty-five yards. He is shaken and records a lacklustre round of 77. Back to his best in the next two rounds, he would win the title had his putt on the last not stopped just short. Instead, he ties with the South African Bobby Locke who defeats him by twelve strokes in the thirty-six-hole play-off with superlative rounds of 67 and 68. As a result of his experience with the broken bottle, the rules are changed to cater for the possibility of such an incident recurring. It is the closest a golfer from the Republic of Ireland comes to winning the Open Championship until Pádraig Harrington’s victory in 2007.

Bradshaw subsequently revenges himself on Locke by narrowly beating him to the Irish Open title the following month. He is then one of four British and Irish golfers to participate in a sixteen-week tour of South Africa from December 1950 to March 1951 during which he engages in further jousts with Locke, deepening their new-found friendship.

Establishing himself on the international golf circuit, Bradshaw goes on to win the Dunlop British Masters on two occasions (1953, 1955), and in 1958 he becomes the first Irishman to win the PGA Close Championship. He had also won the Dunbar Open Tournament in Scotland in 1953 and the Gleneagles Hotel Foursomes Tournament pro-am with Joe Carr in 1955. The highlight of his career comes in Mexico City in 1958, when, in partnership with Christy O’Connor Snr, he wins the Canada Cup, later known as the World Cup, for Ireland, also losing a play-off for the individual title. His performance is particularly impressive, given that he is forty-five and carrying weight while competing at altitude in oppressive heat. He and O’Connor are fêted upon their return home, and their victory is considered to play the determining role in popularising golf in Ireland. He caps a memorable year by receiving the Association of Golf Writers’ Trophy for 1958.

Bradshaw appears on three Ryder Cup teams. At the Wentworth Club in 1953, he wins his foursomes match partnering Fred Daly and his singles match against Fred Haas, but in 1955 he loses both his foursomes and singles matches at the Thunderbird Country Club in California. In 1957, he is a member of the side that defeats the American team 7–4 at Lindrick Golf Club in South Yorkshire, only the third victory by the Britain and Ireland side in the twelve matches played up to that time. He holes a five-footer to tie his match with U.S. Open champion Dick Mayer after a classic encounter. In 1963, he takes on Billy Casper, one of America’s top golfers, in a match at Portmarnock televised as part of the prestigious Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf series. Bradshaw’s three-stroke victory earns him $3,000, which is then considered a bonanza in golfing terms.

Bradshaw remains the golf professional at Portmarnock until 1983, latterly spending most of his day in the club shop. Even after his formal retirement, he remains on the payroll at Portmarnock as an informal ambassador for the club. Nicknamed “the Brad,” he is extremely popular with amateur and professional alike, is a great raconteur and tremendous company, and is noted for his lack of rancor towards, or criticism of, other players.

Bradshaw dies on December 22, 1990, at St. Vincent’s hospital, County Dublin, and is buried in St. Fintan’s Cemetery, Sutton, County Dublin.

Bradshaw marries Elizabeth Foley from Carlow in 1944 and they have four children. His three brothers, Eddie, Hughie and Jimmy, are all professional golfers.

(From: “Bradshaw, Harry” by Jim Shanahan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, November 2022)


by Leave a comment

Death of Philip Twysden, Lord Bishop of Raphoe

Philip Twysden, Anglican clergyman who serves in the Church of Ireland as Lord Bishop of Raphoe from 1747 to 1752, dies bankrupt on November 2, 1752, after having been shot while allegedly masquerading as a highwayman. The circumstances of his death later become the subject of scandalous rumour.

Twysden is born in Kent, in the South East England region, on September 7, 1713, the third son of Sir William Twysden, 5th Baronet of Roydon Hall, East Peckham, Kent, by his wife (and distant cousin) Jane Twisden.

Twysden studies at University College, Oxford, from 1732. He is awarded a Master of Arts degree, and the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law in 1745.

Twysden marries twice: firstly to Mary Purcell, who dies in 1743, and secondly to Frances Carter, daughter of The Rt Hon. Thomas Carter, Master of the Rolls in Ireland. After Twysden’s death, she marries her cousin, General James Johnston.

By his second wife, Twysden has two children: Mary, who dies in infancy, and a posthumous daughter named Frances (1753–1821). Frances, later Countess of Jersey, is one of the many mistresses of King George IV when he is Prince of Wales.

Twysden is ordained a priest in the Church of England. He is instituted in 1738 as rector of Eard and in 1745, for a short time, serves as the rector of Eastling in Kent. He accompanies Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, to Dublin as his chaplain, upon the Earl’s appointment as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

Twysden is nominated to the Bishopric of Raphoe in Ulster on March 3, 1746, and is consecrated by the Archbishop of Dublin, assisted by the bishops of Derry and Clonfert, at St. Michan’s Church, Dublin, on March 29, 1747.

Twysden dies on November 2, 1752, at home in Jermyn Street, St. James’s, London. However, according to ecclesiastical historian and author Henry Cotton, he dies at Roydon Hall, East Peckham, his father’s country house. He is buried in the south chancel of St. Michael’s Church, East Peckham, under a plain stone with no inscription.

A story grows up that, having been made bankrupt, Twysden is shot while attempting to rob a stagecoach. The location of his alleged attempted career as a highwayman is either Hounslow Heath (west of London) or Wrotham Heath in Kent.

(Pictured: The Cathedral of St Eunan, Raphoe, the episcopal seat of the pre-Reformation and Church of Ireland bishops of Raphoe)


by Leave a comment

The Tooreen Ambush

The Tooreen ambush (also known as the Toureen ambush or Ballinhassig ambush) is an ambush carried out by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on October 22, 1920, during the Irish War of Independence. It takes place near Roberts Farm, Tooreen, near Ballinhassig in County Cork. The IRA ambushes two lorries of British soldiers, killing three and wounding four others. The British surrender and their weapons and ammunition are seized by the IRA. Later that night, British soldiers go on a rampage in nearby Bandon.

Up until the Tooreen ambush, the 3rd Cork Brigade had finished its training, but had not previously engaged in battle with British troops stationed in County Cork. The Tooreen ambush is one of the first major ambushes carried out by the West Cork Brigade under Tom Barry.

The Essex Regiment of the British Army is deployed to West Cork and has a reputation for violently raiding houses throughout the countryside and arresting people believed to be IRA volunteers. They are also alleged to torture their prisoners in order to get information on the whereabouts of the flying columns, so this makes them a despised enemy to the West Cork IRA.

The Essex Regiment is known to travel on the road from Bandon to Cork City every morning and return in the evenings. The road goes through the hamlet of Toureen which the Third West Cork Brigade is stationed at nearby and it is decided to ambush this column of the Essex Regiment as it makes its way to Cork city.

Thirty-two ambushers, twenty-one being riflemen of the Third West Cork Brigade, occupy ambush positions outside Toureen and lay in wait for the approaching Essex Regiment. The Regiment normally goes in two or three lorries to Cork City so the IRA places a homemade mine on the road for use against them.

Scouts signal the approach of two lorries which are coming down the road toward the ambush site. As the first lorry passes, the order to fire is given and a homemade three-pound bomb is thrown. The bomb lands inside the lorry but does not explode. The mine that is placed on the road also fails to detonate. As the volunteers open fire, the second lorry stops and the soldiers inside leap out and return fire, but the volunteers are hidden behind a large timber gate which gives them cover. The first lorry continues on to Cork Barracks. As the fight goes on, the officer in command of the British troops, Captain Dixon, is shot in the head and killed as is one of his men.

The remaining British soldiers surrender soon after, and the IRA men cease firing. The British soldiers are relieved of their weapons and ammunition, but otherwise unharmed. Fourteen rifles, bayonets, equipment, several Mills bombs, around 1,400 rounds of ammunition and a couple of revolvers are taken from them.

Two British soldiers, Lt. Dixon MC of the Suffolk Regiment and Pte. Charles William Reid of the Essex Regiment, are killed in the ambush. Five are wounded, including Sergeant Thomas Bennett RASC who dies in Cork on the following day. Six are unhurt except for shock. None of the IRA volunteers are killed or wounded during the ambush and aid is given to the wounded soldiers, while the dead are pulled away from the lorry and it is then set on fire by the volunteers. The two soldiers who are not hurt during the ambush are released along with their wounded and they return to their barracks.

Later that night, members of the Essex Regiment go on a violent rampage through Bandon, destroying property and seeking out anyone they believe to be connected to the ambush. It is believed that at least some of the rampaging soldiers are those released unharmed by the IRA earlier in the day. The reprisal attacks are indiscriminate and include attacks on homes and properties of business owners with “establishment” connections – including the Brennan family of Kilbrogan House.

A Military Court of Inquiry into the soldiers killed, is conducted on October 28, 1920. There are mixed references to these proceedings in The Irish Times and the Irish Independent, both of which contain errors.

Lt. Dixon is buried with full military honours in St. Paul’s Church in Dover, Kent, England. Sergeant Bennett is buried in St. Peter & St. Paul Church in his home village of Shorne, near Gravesend in Kent.

(Pictured: Plaque on a farm wall marking the location of the Tooreen ambush)


by Leave a comment

Death of Irish Playwright Paul Vincent Carroll

Paul Vincent Carroll, Irish playwright and writer of movie scenarios and television scripts, dies in Bromley, Kent, England on October 20, 1968.

Carroll is born in Blackrock, County Louth on July 10, 1900, to Michael Carroll and Catherine Smyth. He trains as a teacher at St. Patrick’s College, Dublin and settles in Glasgow, Scotland in 1921 as a teacher. Several of his plays are produced by the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. He is a close friend of Patrick Kavanagh in the 1920s.

Carroll marries clothing designer Helena Reilly in Glasgow in 1923. They have four children, actress Helena Carroll, musician and producer Theresa Perez, journalist Kathleen Carroll and son Brian Carroll who resides in London. He is grandfather to Helena Perez Reilly and great grandfather to Paul Vincent Reilly. His brother, Niall Carroll, is a film critic.

Carroll founds two theater groups in Glasgow: the Curtain Theatre company, with Grace Ballantine and Molly Urquhart, in 1933 and the Glasgow Citizens Theatre in 1943. He remains the director and playwright in residence of the Citizens Theatre until his death.

Carroll wins the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for two consecutive years, respectively for Shadow and Substance (1936) and The White Steed (1937).

The Wayward Saint is made into an opera in Germany in the 1960’s and his daughter Theresa commissions and produces an opera of his Beauty is Fled from the collection Plays for My Children which opens at Phoenix Symphony Hall in the 1970s as part of Theresa’s “Children’s Opera Series.”

Carroll dies at the age of 68 from undisclosed causes in Bromley, Kent, England on October 20, 1968.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Henry Armstrong, Northern Irish Barrister & Politician

Henry Bruce Wright Armstrong, Northern Irish barrister and politician, Ulster Unionist Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Mid Armagh from June 1921 until 1922, is born on July 27, 1844, at Hull House in Sholden, a small village adjacent to the seaside town of Deal, Kent, South East England.

Armstrong is the second surviving son of William Jones Wright Armstrong of County Armagh and Frances Elizabeth, widow of Sir Michael McCreagh, and daughter of Major Christopher Wilson. He is educated at The Royal School, Armagh and Trinity College, Cambridge, gaining a BA (2nd Class Law Tripos) in 1867 and an MA in 1870. Admitted at the Inner Temple in 1866, he is called to the Bar in 1868.

In 1883, Armstrong marries Margaret Leader, daughter of William Leader of Rosnalea, County Cork. They have five sons and three daughters, of whom C. W. Armstrong also becomes a politician.

Armstrong is appointed High Sheriff of Armagh for 1875 and High Sheriff of Longford for 1894. He is a County Councillor for Armagh from 1899 to 1920, and a Member of the Irish Convention in 1917–18. Vice-Lieutenant of County Armagh in 1920, he is a Senator of Queen’s University Belfast from 1920 to 1937.

Armstrong is returned unopposed to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom for Mid Armagh in a by-election in 1921, at the advanced age of 76, becoming one of the oldest first-time MPs whose birth date is recorded. Certainly, he immediately becomes the oldest member of the current House of Commons. He is a Senator of Northern Ireland from 1921 to 1937, and Lord Lieutenant of Armagh from 1924 to 1939. For 25 years he is a member of the Representative Body of the Church of Ireland. He is Chairman of the County Armagh Education Committee from 1925 to 1931, and President of the Association of Education Committees of Northern Ireland. In 1932 he is made a Privy Councillor for Northern Ireland, and in 1938 he serves as a Justice for the Government of Northern Ireland in the absence of the Governor.

Armstrong dies at the age of 99 on December 4, 1943, at his home in Dean’s Hill, County Armagh.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany FRSL, Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, is born in London, England, on July 24, 1878. Over 90 volumes of fiction, essays, poems and plays appear in his lifetime, and a modest amount of material is published posthumously.

Plunkett, known to his family as “Eddie,” is the first son of John William Plunkett, 17th Baron of Dunsany (1853–1899), and his wife, Ernle Elizabeth Louisa Maria Grosvenor Ernle-Erle-Drax, née Ernle Elizabeth Louisa Maria Grosvenor Burton (1855–1916). From a historically wealthy and famous family, he is related to many well-known Irish figures. He is a kinsman of the Catholic Saint Oliver Plunkett, the martyred Archbishop of Armagh. He is also related to the prominent Anglo-Irish unionist and later nationalist Home Rule politician Sir Horace Plunkett and George Noble Plunkett, Papal Count and Republican politician, father of Joseph Plunkett, executed for his part in the 1916 Easter Rising.

Plunkett’s only grown sibling, a younger brother, from whom he is estranged from about 1916, for reasons not fully clear but connected to his mother’s will, is the noted British naval officer Sir Reginald Drax. Another younger brother dies in infancy.

Plunkett grows up at the family properties, notably, Dunstall Priory in Shoreham, Kent, and Dunsany Castle in County Meath, but also in family homes such as in London. His schooling is at Cheam School, Eton College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, which he enters in 1896.

The title passes to Plunkett at his father’s death in 1899 at a fairly young age. The young Lord Dunsany returns to Dunsany Castle in 1901 after war duty. In that year he is also confirmed as an elector for the Representative Peers for Ireland in the House of Lords.

In 1903, Plunkett meets Lady Beatrice Child Villiers (1880–1970), youngest daughter of Victor Child Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey, who is then living at Osterley Park. They marry in 1904. Their one child, Randal, is born in 1906. Lady Beatrice is supportive of her husband’s interests and helps him by typing his manuscripts, selecting work for his collections, including the 1954 retrospective short story collection, and overseeing his literary heritage after his death.

The Plunketts are socially active in Dublin and London and travel between homes in Meath, London and Kent, other than during the First and Second World Wars and the Irish War of Independence. He circulates with many literary figures of the time. To many of these in Ireland he is first introduced by his uncle, the co-operative pioneer Sir Horace Plunkett, who also helps to manage his estate and investments for a time. He is friendly, for example, with George William Russell, Oliver St. John Gogarty, and for a time, W. B. Yeats. He also socialises at times with George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, and is a friend of Rudyard Kipling.

In 1910 Plunkett commissions a two-story extension to Dunsany Castle, with a billiard room, bedrooms and other facilities. The billiard room includes the crests of all the Lords Dunsany up to the 18th.

Plunkett serves as a second lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards in the Second Boer War. Volunteering in World War I and appointed Captain in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, he is stationed for a time at Ebrington Barracks in Derry, Northern Ireland. Hearing while on leave of disturbances in Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916, he drives in to offer help and is wounded by a bullet lodged in his skull. After recovery at Jervis Street Hospital and what is then the King George V Hospital (now St. Bricin’s Military Hospital), he returns to duty. His military belt is lost in the episode and later used at the burial of Michael Collins. Having been refused forward positioning in 1916 and listed as valuable as a trainer, he serves in the later war stages in the trenches and in the final period writing propaganda material for the War Office with MI7b. There is a book at Dunsany Castle with wartime photographs, on which lost members of his command are marked.

During the Irish War of Independence, Plunkett is charged with violating the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act 1920, tried by court-martial on February 4, 1921, convicted, and sentenced to pay a fine of 25 pounds or serve three months in prison without labour. The Crown Forces had searched Dunsany Castle and had found two double-barrelled shotguns, two rook rifles, four Very pistols, an automatic pistol and a large quantity of pistol ammunition, along with shotgun and rifle ammunition.

During World War II, Plunkett signs up for the Irish Army Reserve and the British Home Guard, the two countries’ local defence forces, and is especially active in Shoreham, Kent, the English village bombed most during the Battle of Britain.

Plunkett’s fame arises chiefly from his prolific writings. He is involved in the Irish Literary Revival. Supporting the Revival, he is a major donor to the Abbey Theatre and he moves in Irish literary circles. He is well acquainted with W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Percy French, George “AE” Russell, Oliver St. John Gogarty, Padraic Colum and others. He befriends and supports Francis Ledwidge, to whom he gives the use of his library, and Mary Lavin.

Plunkett makes his first literary tour to the United States in 1919 and further such visits up to the 1950s, in the early years mostly to the eastern seaboard and later, notably, to California. His own work and contribution to the Irish literary heritage are recognised with an honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin.

In 1940, Plunkett is appointed Byron Professor of English in the University of Athens in Greece. Having reached Athens by a circuitous route, he is so successful that he is offered a post as Professor of English in Istanbul. However, he has to be evacuated due to the German invasion of Greece in April 1941, returning home by an even more complex route, his travels forming a basis for a long poem published in book form (A Journey, in 5 cantos: The Battle of Britain, The Battle of Greece, The Battle of the Mediterranean, Battles Long Ago, The Battle of the Atlantic, special edition January 1944). Olivia Manning‘s character Lord Pinkrose in her novel sequence the Fortunes of War is a mocking portrait of Dunsany in that period.

In 1947, Plunkett transfers his Meath estate in trust to his son and heir and settles in Kent at his Shoreham house, Dunstall Priory, not far from the home of Rudyard Kipling. He visits Ireland only occasionally thereafter, and engages actively in life in Shoreham and London. He also begins a new series of visits to the United States, notably California, as recounted in Hazel Littlefield-Smith’s biographical Dunsany, King of Dreams.

In 1957, Plunkett becomes ill while dining with the Earl and Countess of Fingall at Dunsany, in what proves to be an attack of appendicitis. He dies in hospital in Dublin, at the age of 79, on October 25, 1957. He is buried in the churchyard of the ancient church of St. Peter and St. Paul, Shoreham, Kent. His funeral is attended by many family members, representatives of his old regiment and various bodies in which he had taken an interest, and figures from Shoreham. A memorial service is held at Kilmessan in County Meath, with a reading of “Crossing the Bar,” which coincides with the passing of a flock of geese.

Beatrice survives Plunkett, living mainly at Shoreham and overseeing his literary legacy until her death in 1970. Their son Randal succeeds to the barony and is in turn succeeded by his grandson, the artist Edward Plunkett. Plunkett’s literary rights pass from Beatrice to Edward.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Kathleen Cox, Artist, Sculptor & Mystic

Kathleen Cox, Irish artist, sculptor, and mystic, is born Christina Mary Kathleen Cox in Wo-Sung, China, on July 2, 1904. Cox is considered a pioneer of contemporary Irish pottery.

Cox is the eldest daughter of Dr. R. H. Cox, originally from Dundalk, County Louth, and the port health officer in Shanghai. He is also an amateur geologist and models in clay. In his retirement, he invents a periscope later used during World War I by the Royal Navy. The years living in China leave an impression on the young Cox, visually and culturally. The family returns to Ireland in 1911, first moving to Listowel, County Kerry, and later to Howth, County Dublin. She attends Alexandra College, and later the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in 1921. While there she studies sculpture under Oliver Sheppard and is considered one of his most talented students, winning the Royal Dublin Society Taylor prize for modelling in 1925, 1926, and 1927. The money from these prizes allows Cox to travel to Paris in 1929.

Cox exhibits in 1924 at the Tailteann exhibitions, and in 1925 submits textile designs to the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland. She establishes a pottery studio at 7 Schoolhouse Lane, Dublin, with college friend Stella Rayner in 1929. The studio has the first electric kiln in Ireland. The first exhibited piece by Cox shown by the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) is in 1930, with a pair of Madonna bookends, and portrait masks of the daughter of Dermod O’Brien, Brigid O’Brien, and writer Norris Davidson. Davidson is a friend and neighbour, who commissions her to design the poster for his 1929 film, Suicide. She exhibits with the RHA from 1931 to 1933, and the Tailteann 1932, while also holding exhibitions in her studio. During this period Hilda Roberts paints her portrait, Strange Spirit. Kathleen Cox in her studio. The theme of womanhood is prominent in her work, including in the sign of her studio.

In 1932, Cox begins producing a line of more commercial figurines, drawing influence from the Royal Doulton Burslem factory, where she works for a time. One such figurine is The Lavender Man (pictured), modelled on Michael Clifford, a Dublin street trader. In the mid 1930s, she develops a frustration with her work and with her lack of impact on the wider world. In attending the Chinese exhibition in London in 1935, it is confirmed to her that pottery should be practical rather than ornamental. It spurs her to destroy all her moulds and sell her kiln upon her return to Dublin.

Cox marries Alan Palmer in 1937, the couple has two daughters and relocate to England. Palmer is a conscientious objector during World War II, with the couple running a farm at Meopham, Kent, returning to London after the war.

Cox dies in early September 1972 in London. Some of her work is held in the collections of the National Museum of Ireland and with four works featured in the exhibition Not Just Pots: Contemporary Irish Ceramics of the 21st Century.

It is during the 1920s that Cox begins to question mainstream religion and becomes a vegetarian. Finding that her personal philosophy is similar to that of theosophy, she joins the movement and speaks at meetings. She is heavily influenced by the founder of the Order of the Great Companions, the Rev. William Hayes, who is living in Dublin in the 1930s. She writes and illustrates a children’s book on world religions, A story of stories, which she publishes under the pseudonym C.M. Kay in 1970.


by Leave a comment

Death of Patrick Mayhew, British Barrister, Politician & Northern Ireland Secretary

Patrick Barnabas Burke Mayhew, Baron Mayhew of Twysden, PC, QC, DL, British barrister, politician and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who serves during a critical period in the Northern Ireland peace process, dies at his home in Kent, England, on June 25, 2016. He is a key figure in the December 1993 Downing Street Declaration which leads to the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire on August 31, 1994

Mayhew is born on September 11, 1929. His father, George Mayhew, is a decorated army officer turned oil executive. His mother, Sheila Roche, descendant of members of the Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendancy, is a relative of James Roche, 3rd Baron Fermoy, an Irish National Federation MP for East Kerry. Through his father, Mayhew is descended from the Victorian social commentator Henry Mayhew. He is educated at Tonbridge School, an all boys public school in Tonbridge, Kent.

Mayhew then serves as an officer in the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards, studies law at Balliol College, Oxford, and is president of the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA) and of the Oxford Union. He is called to the Bar by the Middle Temple in 1955.

In 1963, Mayhew marries The Rev. Jean Gurney, and they have four sons.

Mayhew contests Dulwich at the 1970 United Kingdom general election, but the incumbent Labour Party member, Samuel Silkin, beats him by 895 votes. He is Member of Parliament (MP) for Tunbridge Wells from its creation at the February 1974 United Kingdom general election, standing down at the 1997 United Kingdom general election.

Mayhew is Under Secretary of Employment from 1979 to 1981, then Minister of State at the Home Office from 1981 to 1983. After this, he serves as Solicitor General for England and Wales from 1983 to 1987, and then Attorney General for England and Wales and simultaneously Attorney General for Northern Ireland from 1987 to 1992.

Mayhew is Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from 1992 to 1997, the longest anyone has served in this office.

Mayhew is one of only five Ministers (Tony Newton, Kenneth Clarke, Malcolm Rifkind and Lynda Chalker are the others) to serve throughout the whole 18 years of the premiership of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. This represents the longest uninterrupted Ministerial service in Britain since Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, in the early 19th century.

Mayhew is knighted in 1983. On June 1997, he is given a life peerage as Baron Mayhew of Twysden, of Kilndown in the County of Kent. He retires from the House of Lords on June 1, 2015.

Mayhew suffers from cancer and Parkinson’s disease in his later years. He dies at the age of 86 on June 25, 2016, in his home in Kent.

Mayhew’s son, The Honourable Henry Mayhew, appears in the fourth episode of the series The Secret History Of Our Streets, discussing life in the Portland Road, Notting Hill, London. Another son, Tristram, co-founds the outdoor adventure company Go Ape. His son Jerome is the Conservative Party MP for the constituency of Broadland in Norfolk since December 2019.