seamus dubhghaill

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

Tag Archives: Navan (County Meath)


by 2 Comments

Birth of Sir James Comyn, Irish-born English High Court Judge

Sir James Peter Comyn, Irish-born barrister and English High Court judge, is born at Beaufield House, Stillorgan, County Dublin on March 8, 1921. Considered by many to be “the finest all-round advocate at the English bar”, he is appointed to the High Court of Justice in 1978, serving on the bench until his retirement in 1985.

Comyn is the son of Nationalist barrister James Comyn KC and of Mary Comyn. Through his father he is the nephew of the barrister Michael Comyn KC. Both his father and uncle had been political and legal advisers to Éamon de Valera, who at one point uses Beaufield House as a safe house. However, the Comyn brothers have a falling out with de Valera shortly before he comes to power in 1932, and Michael Comyn is passed over as Attorney General of the Irish Free State. As a result, James Comyn, who is then attending Belvedere College in Dublin, is sent by his father to attend The Oratory School in England. He spends six months as a trainee at The Irish Times under the editor R. M. “Bertie” Smyllie, but abandons journalism after a joke he added to an obituary is printed in the paper, leading to his demotion to the racing department.

Comyn then matriculates at New College, Oxford, where he reads law, graduating with Second Class Honours. In 1940, he defeats Roy Jenkins for the presidency of the Oxford Union, winning by four votes. After suffering the first of several breakdowns through his life, he briefly works for the BBC‘s Empire Service during World War II.

Comyn is called to the English bar by the Inner Temple in 1942, the Irish bar in 1947, and the Hong Kong bar in 1969. In 1944, he begins his pupillage with Edward Holroyd Pearce KC, later a law lord, and joins his chambers at Fountain Court. He practises in London and on the Western circuit, supplementing his earnings by teaching banking, a subject of which he knows nothing. On one occasion, he rises in Lambeth County court to cross-examine a female defendant in an eviction case. Just as he begins by saying “Madam,” the defendant opens her bag, takes out a dead cat, and throws it at him. The judge’s reaction is to tell the defendant, “Madam, if you do that again, I’ll commit you.” Comyn wins the case.

Comyn takes silk in 1961, and acquires a large practice as a senior, appearing in many high-profile cases. In 1964, he wins damages for libel for the former safe-breaker Alfred George Hinds against a Scotland Yard inspector by convincing the jury that Hinds is in fact innocent. In 1970, he successfully defends the Labour MP Will Owen, who is accused of providing information to the Czechoslovak intelligence services. In 1975, he defeats the government’s attempt to obtain an injunction against the publication of the diaries of former minister Richard Crossman.

Comyn is Recorder of Andover between 1964 and 1971 (honorary life recorder from 1972), commissioner of assize for the Western Circuit in 1971, and a Recorder of the Crown Court between 1972 and 1977. He is elected a bencher of the Inner Temple in 1968 and serves as chairman of the Bar council from 1973 to 1974.

Having refused a previous invitation by Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St. Marylebone to join the bench, Comyn is again nominated by Elwyn Jones, Baron Elwyn-Jones, in 1977, and is appointed a High Court judge in 1978, receiving the customary knighthood upon his appointment. Initially assigned to the Family Division, he does not take to the work and is reassigned to the Queen’s Bench Division in 1979. He has a reputation for leniency in sentencing, first acquired as Recorder of Andover. In 1980–81, he presides over an unsuccessful libel action by a member of the Unification Church, colloquially known as the Moonies, against the Daily Mail, the longest libel trial in England up to that time. His Irish background makes him the target of Irish Republican Army (IRA) action, and in 1981 the Provisional IRA burns his house in Tara.

Recurring bouts of depression lead to Comyn’s early retirement, on grounds of ill health, in 1985. In retirement, he divides his time between England and Ireland, whose citizenship he has retained. He writes a number of books, including memoirs, light verse, and books on famous trials. He also breeds Friesian cattle. He dies in Navan, County Meath on January 5, 1997, at age 75.


by Leave a comment

2009 Bank of Ireland Robbery

The 2009 Bank of Ireland robbery is a large robbery of cash from the College Green cash centre of the Bank of Ireland in Dublin on February 27, 2009. It is the largest bank robbery in the Republic of Ireland‘s history. Criminals engage in the tiger kidnapping of a junior bank employee, 24-year-old Shane Travers, and force him to remove €7.6 million (US$9 million) in cash from the bank as his girlfriend and two others are held hostage.

Late on the night of February 26, Travers, whose father is a member of the Garda Síochána based at Clontarf, Dublin, is alone watching television at the home of his girlfriend near Kilteel, County Kildare. The woman and her mother are out shopping together. When they arrive home with the five-year-old nephew of Travers, six heavily built masked men, dressed in black and carrying handguns, jump from the bushes.

The family is held overnight by the armed gang, during which time their mobile phones are confiscated, and Travers’ girlfriend is hit across the back of her head with a vase by one of the men. As dawn approaches, the gang orders all but Travers to enter their dark Volkswagen Golf family car. They are then bound together and driven to Ashbourne, County Meath.

The bank employee is given a mobile phone, ordered to collect €20, €50, €100 and €200 bank notes from his workplace, and supplied with a photograph of the rest of the family at gunpoint to convince his colleagues that their lives are under threat. Travers drives to Dublin in his red Toyota Celica, acquires the cash through the assistance of colleagues who viewed the photo, and carries the money out of the building in four laundry bags. He takes it to Clontarf Road railway station, whereupon he surrenders the cash and his sports car to a waiting gang member.

Travers then enters a Garda station, the first point at which Gardaí are notified that the robbery had taken place. One hour after this, the other family members succeed in freeing themselves and walk to a nearby garda station. Travers’ girlfriend requires immediate medical treatment for a head wound she received during a struggle with her captors, and the family are reported to be “traumatised” by their ordeal. Travers’s car is later found burned out in an apartment block near Tolka House Pub in Glasnevin.

Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform Dermot Ahern says “proper procedures” were not followed during the course of the robbery, saying that Gardaí should have been contacted before the money had left the bank. He also questions how such a large sum of money could be taken as a result of one man being targeted.

The bank’s chief executive, Richie Boucher, appointed just two days earlier, immediately writes to all his staff to remind them that protocol should be followed in the event of future robberies, saying “Our priority is always for the safety and well-being of all staff. I am sure this incident will raise concerns. Our best defence is to follow tried and tested procedures. I would ask everybody to remind themselves of these procedures, which are there to protect you, your families and the bank.”

€1.8 million of the stolen cash is recovered and seven people are arrested by Gardaí in a number of incidents on February 28. A house in Phibsborough is sealed off and ten more houses are searched. A total of five cars and one van are seized by Gardaí. One of the men is arrested following a chase along the M50 motorway near the Navan road, with two bales of packed cash being discovered in his car. Four other men are arrested in a car in Monk Place and in Great Western Square, Phibsborough, and two more are seized in a house on Great Western Villas, Phibsborough. Cash is also found in a car in Phibsborough.

The six men and one woman are believed to be members of a well-known gang from Dublin’s north inner city and have connections to a major Dublin gangland figure. On March 2, those arrested appear before the High Court to challenge the lawfulness of their detention, viewing the warrants issued by the District Court the day before as invalid. That day, two of those arrested are released.

An unidentified bank employee is arrested on January 28, 2010, based on suspicion that the robbery had been an inside job.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Colm O’Rourke, Footballer & Broadcaster

colm-orourke

Colm O’Rourke, sports broadcaster, columnist and former Gaelic footballer, is born on August 31, 1957. His league and championship career with the Meath GAA senior team spans twenty years from 1975 to 1995.

O’Rourke is born in Aughavas, County Leitrim, but is raised in Skryne, County Meath after his family moves there in his youth. He plays competitive Gaelic football during his schooling at St. Patrick’s Classical School in Navan. He first appears for the Skryne GFC at underage levels, before winning two county senior championship medals in 1992 and 1993. While studying at University College Dublin he wins a Sigerson Cup medal in 1979.

O’Rourke makes his debut on the inter-county scene when he is picked for the Meath minor team. He later joins the under-21 side but enjoys little success in these grades. He makes his senior debut during the 1975-1976 league. Over the course of the next twenty years he is a regular member of the starting fifteen and wins back-to-back All-Ireland medals in 1987 and 1988. He also wins five Leinster Senior Football Championship medals, three National Football League titles and is named Texaco Footballer of the Year in 1991. He plays his last game for Meath in July 1995.

In retirement from playing O’Rourke combines his teaching career with a new position as a sports broadcaster. His media career begins with RTÉ where he has worked as a studio analyst with the flagship programme The Sunday Game for over twenty-five years. He also writes a weekly column for the Sunday Independent.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Seán Mac Stíofáin, Irish Republican Army Commander

sean-mac-stiofain

Seán Mac Stíofáin, Irish Republican Army (IRA) commander and a founding member of the Provisional IRA and its first chief of staff, is born in Leytonstone, London on February 17, 1928.

Mac Stíofáin is born John Stephenson, the son of Protestant parents. He claims Irish ancestry on his mother’s side although the validity of this is uncertain. He leaves school at sixteen, working as a labourer and converting to Catholicism. He also serves in the Royal Air Force during World War II, working as a storeman. After the war, he becomes involved and obsessed with Irish republicanism. He joins the Irish Republican Army in 1949 and helps organise an IRA unit in London.

In 1953, Stephenson leads a raid that steals rifles and mortars from a cadet school armoury in Essex. He is stopped randomly by police, arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison. He serves more than three years behind bars, using this time to learn Irish Gaelic. Released in 1956, he marries an Irish woman, moves to Dublin and changes his name to Seán Mac Stíofáin, the Gaelic form of his birth name.

Mac Stíofáin gradually ascends through the ranks of the IRA, becoming its director of intelligence. The outbreak of the Troubles in 1969 opens up divisions in the IRA over strategy and tactics. While Cathal Goulding and other leaders want to use violence carefully, Mac Stíofáin and his supporters urge open warfare with the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).

In August 1969, Mac Stíofáin leads a raid on the RUC station at Crossmaglen, in defiance of IRA orders. In December, he and four others form a Provisional Army Council. This splinter group becomes the nucleus of the Provisional IRA.

Mac Stíofáin becomes the Provisional IRA’s first chief of staff. He also oversees its rearming and the escalation of its military campaign in Northern Ireland. In July 1972, he represents the Provisional IRA in secret talks with the British government in London. When these talks collapse, he orders an increase in Provisional IRA operations, beginning with the mass bombing of Belfast on July 21, 1972.

Mac Stíofáin remains in charge until November 1972, when a controversial television interview leads to his arrest, imprisonment and removal from the Provisional IRA leadership. He is released the following year but is no longer prominent in the Provisional IRA. He spends the rest of the 1970s working for a Sinn Féin newspaper.

Mac Stíofáin died on May 18, 2001, in Our Lady’s Hospital in Navan, County Meath, after a long illness. He is buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery, Navan. His funeral is attended by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Mother Frances Mary Teresa Ball

frances-teresa-ball

Mother Frances Mary Teresa Ball, foundress of the Irish Branch of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM), is born in Dublin on January 9, 1794.

Ball is the youngest of six children born to John and Mable Clare Bennet Ball. Her father is a wealthy silk weaver. Catholicism is still suppressed in Ireland at this time. She is therefore sent to England at the age of nine to the Bar Convent in York. Henry James Coleridge describes her as “a bright, quiet, high-spirited girl, fond of fun, and with much depth of character.” In these times students do not return home for Easter, Christmas or summer holidays. They stay at the school, and live like religious people, until they leave school, usually in their late teens.

In 1807, her eldest sister, Cecilia is professed at the Ursuline convent in Cork. Ball travels from Dublin to Cork for the ceremony, where she meets Mary Aikenhead. Cecilia Ball takes the name of Sister Francis Regis and is within a few years made Superior of the convent in Cork. Upon the death of her father in 1808, Ball returns to Dublin. She is expected to make an admirable wife for the son and heir of some rich Catholic Dublin merchant family.

In June 1814, under the direction of Dr. Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, Ball returns to York and enters the novitiate of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There she receives her religious training, and makes her profession in September 1816, taking, in religion, the name of Mary Teresa.

Recalled by Archbishop Murray, Ball returns to Dublin in 1821 with two novices to establish the Irish Branch of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the instruction of children. They stay with Mary Aikenhead and the Irish Sisters of Charity in Stanhope Street while Rathfarnham House is being renovated. In 1822 she opens the first institution of the order in Ireland, in Rathfarnam House, four miles from Dublin. She decides to call the house “Loreto” after the village in Italy to which the Nazareth house of the Holy Family is said to have been miraculously transported.

Ball is a woman of great piety and administrative ability. Her energies are devoted to the establishment of schools and to the development of the sisterhood which now has members in many countries. The first offshoot is planted in Navan, County Meath, in the year 1833. The year 1840 is marked by the erection of the first church in Ireland dedicated to the Sacred Heart, in Loretto Abbey, Rathfarnham. In addition to the boarding and day schools the sisters conduct orphanages.

For almost forty years after bringing the IBVM to Ireland, Ball establishes a wide network of convents and schools across Ireland, as well as in India, Mauritius and Canada. The nuns are usually called Sisters of Loreto after the shrine at Loreto, Marche in Italy.

Mother Mary Teresa Ball dies at Rathfarnham Abbey on May 19, 1861, after a long illness.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Pierce Brosnan, Actor & Producer

Pierce Brendan Brosnan, actor, film producer, and activist, is born at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, County Louth, on May 16, 1953.

Brosnan is the only child of Thomas Brosnan, a carpenter, and May (née Smith, born circa 1934). He lives in Navan, County Meath for twelve years and considers it his hometown. He goes to Primary School in St. Annes Primary School, Navan. Brosnan’s father abandons the family when he is an infant. When he is four years old, his mother moves to London to work as a nurse. From that point on, he is largely raised by his grandparents, Philip and Kathleen Smith. After their deaths, he lives with an aunt and then an uncle, but is subsequently sent to live in a boarding house. He is educated at Elliott School, now known as Ark Putney Academy, a coeducational secondary school with academy status in southwest London.

Brosnan, after leaving comprehensive school at age sixteen, begins training in commercial illustration. He then goes on to train at Drama Centre London for three years. Following a stage acting career he rises to popularity in the television series Remington Steele (1982–87), which blends the genres of romantic comedy, drama, and detective procedural. After the conclusion of Remington Steele, Brosnan appears in films such as the Cold War spy film The Fourth Protocol (1987) and the comedy Mrs. Doubtfire (1993).

In 1994, Brosnan becomes the fifth actor to portray secret agent James Bond in the Eon Productions film series, starring in four films, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day, from 1995 to 2002. He lends his likeness for Bond in the video games James Bond 007: Nightfire and James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, providing his voice for the latter. During this period, he also takes the lead in other films including the epic disaster adventure film Dante’s Peak (1997) and the remake of the heist film The Thomas Crown Affair (1999). Since leaving the role of Bond, he has starred in such films as the musical/romantic comedy Mamma Mia! (2008), the Roman Polanski-directed political thriller The Ghost Writer (2010) and the action spy thriller The November Man (2014).

In 1996, along with Beau St. Clair, Brosnan forms Irish DreamTime, a Los Angeles-based production company. In later years, he has become known for his charitable work and environmental activism. He is married to Australian actress Cassandra Harris from 1980 until her death in 1991. He marries American journalist and author Keely Shaye Smith in 2001, and becomes an American citizen in 2004, holding dual citizenship in the United States and Ireland. He has earned two Golden Globe Award nominations, first for the television miniseries Nancy Astor (1982) and next for the dark comedy film The Matador (2005).


by Leave a comment

The Battle of Ashbourne

fingal-brigade-ira

As the end of the 1916 Easter Rising becomes increasingly apparent and the rebels in Dublin are being squeezed harder and harder by the British forces, the rebels outside the city achieve a small victory on Friday, April 28, 1916, in what comes to be known as the Battle of Ashbourne.

The Battle of Ashbourne is a direct confrontation and gun battle between up to 70 members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and about 37 Irish Volunteers, led by Thomas Ashe and Richard Mulcahy. It is one of the few engagements outside of Dublin city centre and is, in contrast to the main Rising in Dublin, a successful one.  It is also an example of the guerilla warfare that becomes a normal method of operation during the Irish War of Independence.

After the Volunteers battalion is mobilized on Easter Sunday, they are split into smaller groups, known as flying columns, and are sent north of Dublin city towards Ashbourne. Their mission is to destroy the railway line near Batterstown and disrupt the movement of British troops into the city. They set out by bicycles, mostly armed with shotguns. After raiding a number of barracks in the area, cutting communications, and collecting rifles, they reach the Cross of the Rath at Ashbourne.

There they are met with a barricade that has been hastily erected by the RIC members stationed in the barracks nearby. The RIC constables quickly surrender and are sent to the barracks to order a full surrender, but they do not return. The Volunteers take up positions across the road while James O’Connor and Ashe try to break in the door. The constables begin firing from the upper windows of the building and a gun battle breaks out.

The fighting intensifies as RIC reinforcements arrive from Navan, Dunboyne, and Slane. Two Volunteers, John Crennigan and Thomas Rafferty, are fatally wounded. When District Inspector Gray is killed, the constables surrender and are taken prisoner. The Volunteers gather their arms and ammunition while Ashe warns the constables that they will be shot if they take up arms against the Irish people again.

In total, fourteen people are killed in the battle – two Volunteers, eight RIC members, two civilians driving the RIC cars, and two innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. Many more are injured.

The Volunteers’ victory is short lived, however, as in the early afternoon of the next day Ashe receives word of the surrender in Dublin. He demobilises the battalion and sends the men home. Many, including O’Connor, are arrested within days and interned in Wakefield Prison and Frongoch Internment Camp.

Ashe eventually spends time in jail for his role in the uprising and is jailed again in 1917. He begins a hunger strike on September 20, demanding POW status. Ashe dies after just five days on hunger strike from injuries received while being force-fed. The manner of his death outrages the Irish population.

As a side note, Thomas Ashe is a cousin of actor Gregory Peck.