Museum of Meath – Meath History Hub with Noel French

There have been many proposals and campaigns for a Museum for Meath. This is my contribution and because of the medium it allows me to bring together the most iconic artefacts from Meath from a widely dispersed geographical area. It also allows me to include the human items which will resonate on a personal level with the people of Meath of today.

Irish Giant Deer Antlers

Item: Irish Giant Deer Antlers
Date: 11,000-8000 BC
Find Location: Remains of Irish Giant Deer uncovered or exhibited in Lagore crannog, Dunshaughlin; Kilnew, Bellewstown; Lisboe, Kingscourt; Kilskyre; Liss House, Oldcastle; Mountainstown, Wilkinstown; Newtown Estate, Drumcourath; River Dee, in bed of river between Nobber and Whitewood; Ballybetagh; Bloomsbury, Kells; Newrath Little, Kells and Williamstown Kells.

Current Location: Locally held, some sold at auction, others National Museum of Ireland
Description:
This reconstructed skull with two antlers spanning a width of 304 cm and a height of 122cm, nine points to the left and eight to the right, with composition restoration was found on a north Meath estate and displayed in the estate house until sold at auction in recent years. The first recorded example of this species was discovered in “a great bogge” in county Meath in 1588.
The Irish elk or Irish giant deer, is an extinct species of deer in the genus Megaloceros and is one of the largest deer that ever lived. Its range extended across Eurasia during the Pleistocene, from Ireland to Siberia to China. This Giant Irish Deer is believed to have roamed the lowlands of central and eastern Ireland, weighing up to 800-1000 lbs. and stood at 2 metres at the shoulder, with antler width of up to 4 metres. They had large palm like antlers, the largest antlers know to have existed on any deer. It is understood they were a victim of the Ice Age finally disappearing from Ireland around 10,500 years ago.
The best collection of fossil’s can be found at the National Museum of Ireland where there are 10 complete deer skeletons and over 250 partial remains, which includes 6 females.

Further Information:
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/artio/irishelk.html

http://www.wilddeerireland.com/elk.html

Flint Tools

Item: Two flint microliths and three flint blades
Date: 7000-6000 BC
Find Location: Randalstown, Navan.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland

Description:
A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. Blades are a specialized type of lithic flakes that are at least twice as long as they are wide. These items were uncovered at the site of the medieval church at Randalstown. Neolithic Scrapers were discovered along with an item resembling a Mesolithic boring tool and microliths. These items represent a camp rather than a permanent settlement. These people moved to secure the best food sources. The earliest evidence for human colonisation/habitation of this island can be attributed to the Mesolithic (c.7500-4500 BC). In this post-glacial phase, with an improved climate, dense woodland cover and an increasing population of wild fauna, the first settlers coming from the east, found a suitable habitat to accommodate their hunter gatherer lifestyle. Excavation of the earliest settlements in Ireland has produced tiny blades and points of flint and chert, called microliths that were used in composite harpoon-like implements. Scrapers and stone axes were also utilised.

Mesolithic Fish Trap

Item: Fish Trap
Date: Mesolithic c. 5000 B.C.
Find Location: Clowanstown, Dunshaughlin.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland, Dublin.

Description:
A woven basketry fish-trap constructed from alder and birch and used for fishing on the small lake which existed at Clowanstown in the Middle Stone Age. c. 5000 B.C. The conical trap was used by early Irish people to scoop fish from the lake or catch them in a weir. Radiocarbon tests date its creation to between 5210 and 4970 BC. The warp-and- weft technique is quite advanced and similar to the way of weaving cloth that would be developed much later in human history. The Irish trap is of classic design and similar ones are still in use around the world. The item was discovered at Clowanstown, during archaeological investigations in advance of the construction of the M3 Clonee – North of Kells Motorway.

Further Information:
A history of Ireland in 100 objects by Fintan O’Toole
www.tii.ie/tii-library/archaeology/…/catch-of-the-day-at-clowanstown.pdf
http://www.museum.ie/Archaeology/Explore-Learn/Schools-Teachers/Post-Primary/Prehistoric-Ireland bottom of page for links
www.museum.ie/NationalMuseumIreland/media/Archaeology…/fishtraps_1.pdf
http://www.nra.ie/technical-services/archaeology/seandaezine/archaeology-through-art/

Carrowkeel Pots

Item: Carrowkeel Pots
Date: 3350-3110 B.C.
Find Location: Tara – The Mound of the Hostages
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland

Description:
The passage tomb named ‘The Mound of the Hostages’ or Duma na nGiall (sometimes Dumha-na-Ngiall) positioned on the north-south ridge of the Hill of Tara. Carrowkeel pottery is found in a number of Neolithic burials, usually in a broken form. It takes its name for the Carrowkeel Passage Tombs in Sligo. Middle Irish Neolithic Carrowkeel ware is an open, decorated globular bowl of coarse fabric and is possibly best suited for food and drink, rather than just storage. The occurrence of complete Carrowkeel pots in the Mound of the Hostages and Knockroe passage tombs does suggest that they may have been originally deposited intact. Carrowkeel pots are generally decorated on the whole outer surface of the vessel. The dominant decorative devices comprise either a series of looped rows of indentations, as is found on the examples from the Mound of the Hostages. Carrowkeel ware is associated with cremation and burial as great quantities of ashes are found buried under the passages, chambers and recesses of these monuments.

Further Information:
Duma na nGiall, The Mound of the Hostages, Tara Muiris O’Sullivan.
http://www.knowth.com/tara_book.htm
https://www.ucd.ie/news/mar06/030306_mound_of_the_hostages.htm
www.undergraduatelibrary.org/system/files/2226.pdf

Knowth Macehead

Item: Macehead
Date: 3300-2800 BC
Find Location: Knowth
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
This flint macehead, found beneath the eastern chamber tomb at the passage tomb at Knowth, is one of the finest works of art to have survived from Neolithic Europe. A piece of very hard pale-grey flint, flecked with patches of brown, was carved on all of its six surfaces with diamond shapes and swirling spirals. At the front they seem to form a human face, with the shaft hole as a gaping mouth. Measuring 7.90 cm in length and weighing approximately 324 g, the macehead has as cylindrical perforation towards its narrower end, which would have held a wooden handle. An object of exceptional craftsmanship the mace-head was probably a prestigious symbol of religious or political authority. It was discovered in 1982 during an excavation carried out by Dr George Eogan. It was discovered by Liam O’Connor, who found it sitting on the old ground surface between two large stone jams that defined the entrance into the northern recess of the tomb.

Further Information:
Eogan, G. & Richardson, H. 1982 ‘Two Maceheads from Knowth, Co. Meath’ in The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Vol. 112, pp. 124
Waddel, J. 1998. The Prehistoric Archaeology of Ireland, Galway University Press, Galway, p. 74
Eogan, G. & Richardson, H. 1982 ‘Two Maceheads from Knowth, Co. Meath’ in The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Vol. 112, p. 123
http://www.knowth.com/knowth-mace-head.htm
http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/02/the-knowth-macehead/
http://www.newgrange.com/knowth-macehead.htm

Phallic Stone

Item: Phallic Stone
Date: Neolithic Period 3300 – 2800 B.C.
Find Location: Knowth – near the entrance to western passage
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland, Dublin.
Description:
A long, thin stone, with a groove along one side and ribs along the other, terminating in a headpiece with three engraved ovals. Generally described as a phallic object, it may have been used as a sight piece for making astronomical observations, a measuring device or as a holder for a stringed pendulum. As a phallus-shaped stone it might suggest that fertility rituals were part of this mystique. Discovered in 1970 in a small depression outside the western tomb entrance at Knowth.

Further Information:
George Eogan 1984, Excavations at Knowth 1, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin.
George Eogan 1986, Knowth and the passage–tombs of Ireland, Thames & Hudson, London.

Amulet Loughcrew

Item: Axe Amulet

Date: 3300-2800 BC
Find Location: Loughcrew
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
This amulet axe has a sharp edge but was most likely a ritual object. Found at the passage graves in Loughcrew.

Beaker Pottery

Item: Beaker Pottery
Date: 2500-2200 BC
Find Location: Newgrange
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
The passage tomb at Newgrange serued as a focus of ceremonial actiuity in tbe Late Neolitbic and Beaker periods. The pottery assemblage at Newgrange was composed of about 11,000 sherds of some 210 vessels representing four principal varieties: fine Beaker and coarse domestic Beaker, Grooved Ware, Late Neolithic decorated ware, and Food Vessel. a “beaker house” discovered at Newgrange was constructed of wattles and clay and was used for flint napping ¬ a process of removing nodules of flint. During the Late Neolithic, it appears that Newgrange was no longer being used by the local population, who did not leave any artefacts in the passage tomb or bury any of their dead there. As the archaeologist Michael O’Kelly stated, “by 2000 BC Newgrange was in decay and squatters were living around its collapsing edge.” These “squatters” were adherents of the Beaker culture, which had been imported from continental Europe, and made Beaker-style pottery locally.

Bronze Axehead

Item: Bronze Axehead
Date: 2500- 1700 BC
Find Location: Lisboy, Siddan, Slane.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Metalsmiths learned that if they mixed another metal called tin with copper, they could produce a stronger metal called bronze. They created objects from bronze such as this bronze axehead which was found at Lisboy, Co. Meath.

Knife

Item: Tanged Copper Knife

Date: 2500-2200 BC

Find Location: Probably Dunshaughlin

Current Location: National Museum of Ireland

Description:

Early Bronze Age metalwork began with the production of simple copper and bronze axes and daggers and some gold ornaments. Tanged copper dagger with trapezoidal outline. This dagger has a wide triangular blade. These metal weapons were the preserve of the higher ranking members of the society whereas the rest of the community used a bow and arrow for hunting or fighting. The find circumstances of this item are not known but they may be associated with the royal site at Lagore. Ireland had significant copper and gold resources during prehistory, making it arguably, one of the most important metal producing areas in early prehistoric Europe. Copper ore was used to make tools of copper, and later mixed with tin to make bronze tools.

Encrusted Urn

Item: Encrusted Urn
Date: 1900-1700 BC
Find Location: Keenoge, Duleek
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
The site was discovered in early January 1929. The landowner and two workmen came across a triangular cairn which included a cist burial. Fourteen burials, six in cists were recovered in 1930s from the cemetery mound. Predominant rite was crouched burials and grave goods amounted to eight Food Vessels, one Cinerary Urn and a jet necklace. The excavation was directed by the then Director of the National Museum, Dr Adolf Mahr between 1929 and 1936.
The site, a flat cemetery consisted of six cist burials and several pit burials were also excavated. Over three hundred bowl food vessels have been found in Ireland but this is the largest assemblage found at any one site.Other finds from the burials at Keenoge include both cordoned and encrusted urns, a bronze razor and flint artefacts. This food vessel was found in Burial 9 which was a small rectangular cist built from two long stone slabs and two narrow ones. There would normally have been a massive capstone over the burial but this had been moved at some earlier date. The burial contained the unburnt remains of a child which appears to have been placed in a crouched position within the cist and lying on its right side with its head to the west.
The vessel has a narrow rounded rim and internal bevel and has a tripartite body form providing for three distinct areas of decoration. The decorative motifs include horizontal lines, convex and concave impressions, comb impressions and chevrons. A cruciform pattern on the base of the vessel is reminiscent of the design and layout of early Bronze Age gold sun discs in the Museums collections. A boar’s tusk was found at the other end of the cist, also perhaps intended to accompany the child into the afterlife.

Further Information:
Adolf Mahr’s Excavations of an Early Bronze Age Cemetery at Keenoge, County Meath Author(s): Charles Mount and Laureen Buckley Source: Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature, Vol. 97C, No. 1 (1997), pp. 1-59, 61-68
See also Jet Necklace from Kennoge

Jet Necklace

Item: Jet Necklace

Date: 1900-1700 BC
Find Location: Keenoge, Duleek
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Burials with jet beads are very unusual in Ireland. Around the neck of the woman in Grave 13 beneath the jaw were 40 jet beads of varying sizes which formed a tight necklace or choker about 15cm in diameter. The beads were mostly fusiform but two were cylindrical and one of the ends of no. 40 was internally bevelled. They range from 1.1cm to 2.25cm in length and all have a uniform perforation of 0.3cm. Most of the beads were perforated through their length but some have been perforated. Sources of jet are limited, and the most important is on the eastern coast of Yorkshire, near Whitby.

Bronze Age Axehead

Item: Battle Axe
Date: Early Bronze Age c.1800
Find Location: Tara – The Mound of the Hostages
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
The battle-axe made from stone, was found with cremated human bones underneath an upturned urn and has been vitrified by the heat. Found in three parts, now joined, fractured by fire of cremation pyre. Made form igneous rock, possibly marble. The blade is polished to a smooth finish. This axe was found in an urn in burial 38 in the Mound of the Hostages.

Further Information:
M. O’Sullivan, Duma na nGiall. Tara. The Mound of the Hostages. (Bray, 2005)
https://www.ucd.ie/news/mar06/030306_mound_of_the_hostages.htm

Sword

Item: Sword Blade (Photo: National Museum of Ireland)
Date: 1600-1200 BC
Find Location: Rossan, Kinnegad.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Middle Bronze Age ‘rapier’ blade has been discovered at a bog in Rossan. It was identified on the surface of the bog by Christie Nolan and then reported to the National Museum by Pat Dunne, both of whom work for Bord na Mona.
The find-place was subsequently investigated by Mary Cahill, Keeper of Irish Antiquities and no additional artefacts were identified. However, several other important finds including a bog body and bog butter have been made at Rossan in recent years. The sword blade measures c. 40 cm in length and is fashioned out of bronze. The handle of the ‘rapier’, which was attached via two rivet holes, was probably made from an organic substance such as wood or bone and this no longer survives.
Rapiers were most likely used as thrusting rather than slashing weapons and they are recorded from both Britain and Ireland. Where finds spots are known, the majority appear to have been discovered in watery contexts, such as bogs, rivers or lakes and this may be indicative of ritual deposition rather than casual loss.
Rapier in this context is an archaeological term for a relatively short, narrow, double-sided blade that emerged in the Middle Bronze Age and represents Ireland’s earliest type of bronze sword (rather than a dagger).

Tara Torcs

Item: Torcs (Photo: National Museum of Ireland)
Date: c.1200 -1000 BC Bronze Age
Find Location: Tara
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Discovered in 1810 by a boy digging close to the Rath of the Synods on the Hill of Tara. Two similar torcs, four flanged variety, one larger than the other. The larger torc is 42 cm in diameter and the smaller one, 21 cm. The two torcs contain over a kilogram of gold, which was a very large amount for the time. These torcs would have been worn around the waist of a very important person or possibly wooden idol. Irish antiquarian George Petrie purchased it in the 1830s for the Royal Irish Academy for £180.A torc, also spelled torq or torque, is a large rigid or at least stiff neck ring in metal, made either as a single piece or from strands twisted together The word comes from Latin torquis (or torques), from torqueo, “to twist”, because of the twisted shape many of the rings have. The terminals are bands of gold bent back so as to hook one around the other. It is also suggested that these were ritual offerings.

Further Information:
Fintan O’Toole A history of Ireland in 100 objects

Gormanston Log Boat

Item: Log Boat
Date: 1132-1013 BC
Find Location: Sea bed off Gormanston
Current Location: County Louth Museum, Dundalk.
Description:
A wooden boat was been discovered c. 1km offshore at Gormanston by workers laying a gas pipeline between the UK and Ireland. Seven timbers were retrieved by the backhoe dredger. Archaeologists monitoring the dredging for Dúchas, the Heritage Service, immediately halted the work and called in the services of an archaeological diving company to investigate.
‘This is a unique find,’ said Dr Niall Brady, director of ADCO (Archaeological Diving Company) Castlecomer, who oversaw the four/five person diving team. ‘It’s a very exciting find because whilst logboats are common enough on rivers, they are much rarer in a maritime context. This is the first successful raising of a seagoing vessel that emerged as part of an infrastructural programme in Ireland.”
The boat is a substantial seagoing vessel built out of a single tree trunk, probably oak. It was buried under two metres of sand. It has a number of interesting features along both sides which relate to seagoing usage. Nooks in the side suggest outriders making it a coastal craft and it is one of the only off-shore marine vessels so far discovered in Ireland.
The logboat was conserved at the Mary Rose Trust in Portsmouth, England, and returned to Ireland. The National Museum of Ireland arranged for the vessel to be loaned to the County Louth Museum in Dundalk, where it is to feature as part of its collections. A C14-determination of a sample of the timber was analysed at Queen’s University Belfast, and returned date of 1132-1013 BC.

Further Information:
Niall Brady, ‘Gormanston boat discovery’, Archaeology Ireland 16.3 (2002),
http://adco-ie.com/gormanston-landfall-co-meath-prehistoric-logboat/

Sleeve Fastener

Item: Sleeve Fastener
Date: Late Bronze Age 1150BC-750BC
Find Location: Near Hill of Tara
Current Location: British Museum
Description:
Gold sleeve fastener. The crescent-shaped body is decorated with longitudinal incised grooves on the outer surface. The ends are decorated with a fine diamond pattern between two bands of three horizontal incised grooves. The terminals expand to form two flat plain discs set at an angle to the body. Acquired by British Museum in 1849.

Further Information:
Cahill, M., 1994. Mr. Anthony’s Bog Oak Case of Gold Antiquities, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy.94C, 3, 53-109.

Ring

Item: Ring
Date: 1150BC-750BC (circa) Late Bronze Age
Find Location: Clonard
Current Location: British Museum
Description:
Gold penannular plain ring. The circular solid body is circular in cross-section and it is slightly thinner at the ends rather than in the middle. The ring has parallel squared flat endings facing each other.
Acquired by British Museum in 1909. Donated by John Pierpont Morgan.

Bracelets

Item: Two gold bracelets, one a replica
Date: 800-700 BC
Find Location: Tremblestown, Trim.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
A bracelet of gold, with a quadrangular row of pellets, was found, with another more solid article of the same kind, but unornamented, near the castle of Trimblestown. Punched indentations are the only decorations. The find was recorded in the Dublin Penny Journal in 1833. These objects were one of the thousands of objects that were acquired by the Royal Irish Academy shortly after the death of Dean Henry Richard Dawson of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in 1840.

Further Information:
Eogan, G. 1983 Hoards of the Irish Later Bronze Age. Dublin, University College

Three Bracelets and a sun flower pin

Item: Three Bracelets and a sun flower pin
Date: 800-700 BC
Find Location: Drissoge, Athboy.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
This hoard of four gold objects was discovered at Drissoge in 1953 by Martin and Michael Coffey during ploughing. The ploughing was being carried out by tractor for the first time and so was deeper than previously tilling of the land. A large penannular bracelet was made from sheet gold bent round and joined with molten gold with terminals formed from flat disks of gold which were soldered on. There are two penannular bracelets approximately crescent shaped made from solid bar gold of round section terminating in expanded hollow extremities. A dress pin is unique and is similar but not identical to the sunflower type. Its two parts were manufactured separately. The hoard was probably deposited for safety.
Further Information:
George Eogan, ‘A Hoard of Gold Objects from Drissoge, Co. Meath’ in The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Vol. 87, No. 2 (1957), pp. 125-134

Hoard of Bronze Objects

Item: Hoard of Bronze Objects consisting of a sword fragment, a ring, a chisel and a sunflower pin.
Date: 800-700 BC
Find Location: Park, Co. Meath
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland

Pig’s Feet

Item: Pig’s feet bones Photo: Fiona Beglane
Date: Iron Age 370-110 BC
Find Location: Trim
Current Location:
Description:
Excavations by Mandy Stephens and Finola O’Carroll in the green space to the south of the castle uncovered a number of deposits in peaty soils. One of these deposits contained a number of pig bones, identified as the forelimbs, and these were dated to 370 – 110 BC (O’Carroll and Stephens 2007; Beglane 2009).
The deposit of bones dating to the Iron Age consisted almost entirely of pig forelegs. There was the equivalent of fifty-one pig forelegs, some cattle, horse and sheep bones. The deposition probably took place in the September-November period. These pig’s feet could have been votive offerings deposited as part of a ritual feast or part of an autumn slaughter. A parallel with the pig bones at Trim is the midden at Llanmaes in Wales where many of the bones come from the right forequarters of pigs.

Further Information:
Fiona Beglane ‘Long pig’s feet from Iron Age Trim’ in Michael Potterton and Matthew Seaver Uncovering Medieval Trim – Archaeological Excavations in and around Trim Co. Meath. (Dublin, 2009)

Bone Piece

Item: Decorated Bone Slip
Date: 2nd Century BC
Find Location: Loughcrew
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Cairn H of the Loughcrew Cairns was excavated in 1943. A number of bone slips or plaques were discovered. Some were plain and polished while others had incised decoration. The decoration in one case is similar to that on the Broighter Collar. Some of these objects are decorated with fine-line curvilinear compass-drawn designs in an Irish version of the La Tène art style known as the ‘Loughcrew-Somerset Style’. These bone slips may be votive offerings.

Further Information:
Raftery, B. 1984. La Tène in Ireland: Problems of Origin and Chronology. Marburg.
Raftery, B. 1994. Pagan Celtic Ireland. London: Thames and Hudson.
Rahtz, P. et al. 1992. Cadbury-Congresbury 1968-72. BAR British Series 223
Rossan Bog Body

Bog Body

Item: Bog Body (Photo: National Museum of Ireland)

Date: 700-400 BC
Find Location: Rossan, Kinnegad.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
The partial remains of a bog body has been uncovered in Rossan bog in Co. Meath. The find was discovered by Bord na Móna workers and subsequently excavated by a team of archaeologists, led by Maeve Sikora of the National Museum of Ireland. Although as yet undated the remains were found in an area that has previously produced bog body remains (Moydrum Man) that were radiocarbon dated to the Early Iron Age (700-400 BC).

Further Information:
http://irisharchaeology.ie/2014/09/new-bog-body-found-in-rossan-co-meath/
P.V. Glob, The Bog People (London, 1969),
Eamonn P. Kelly, ‘New find supports kingship and sovereignty theory’ in Archaeology Ireland Autumn 2011 pp. 4-5
Eamonn P. Kelly, Kingship and Sacrifice: Iron Age bog bodies and boundaries (Bray, 2006)

Clonycavan Man

Item: Clonycavan Man – Bog Body
Date: 392-201 BC
Find Location: Clonycavan, Ballivor.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Clonycavan Man, an Iron Age bog body, discovered in Meath in February 2003, displayed signs of a ritual death. Of slight build he was 157 cm (5ft 2 inches) tall. He could have been as tall as 175 cm (5ft 9 inches) as the body may have shrunk in the bog. He was over 25 years of age and his body was naked when found as were most bog body finds. Clonycavan Man had a distinctive hairstyle, at the back of the head the hair was cut to about 2.5 cm long with the rest of hair about 20cm long gathered into a bundle on top of his head. His hair was shaved across the front of his forehead. Clonycavan Man used a type of hair gel, plant or vegetable oil mixed with pine resin, perhaps to give him the impression of height. The pine resin came from trees which grow in the Pyrenees in south western France or Spain.

Further Information:
‘Clonycavan Man: A Bog Body from Ballivor by Noel French
http://irisharchaeology.ie/2011/08/irish-bog-bodies-recent-discoveries/
P.V. Glob, The Bog People (London, 1969),
Eamonn P. Kelly, ‘New find supports kingship and sovereignty theory’ in Archaeology Ireland Autumn 2011 pp. 4-5
Eamonn P. Kelly, Kingship and Sacrifice: Iron Age bog bodies and boundaries (Bray, 2006)

Block of Enamel

Item: Block of Enamel
Date: Early Historic Period/Iron Age
Find Location: Between Tara and Kilmessan
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Enamel was used to decorate metalwork. Enamel is a type of allochromatic glass that consists usually of quartz sand, iron oxide, potassium oxide (potash) and borax (flux). These components form a transparent and colourless fondant after firing at temperatures between 700 and 900 degrees Celsius. It is possible that enamel may have been imported from the Meditarrean region, particularly Italy. This substance is generally red in colour during the early phases of the Iron Age. The find would tend to indicate that there was a bronze working centre at or near Tara. Enameling is a decoration technique in which a glass of certain composition is fused to the surrounding or under laying metal. Metal items, especially bronze objects, were often inset with enamel. This was achieved either by creating a raised bordered area on the metal surface (the champlevé technique) or by creating a recessed area (the cloisonne method); in both cases, the areas were then filled with coloured enamel.

Further Information:
Valerie Ball and Margaret Stokes, ‘On a block of red glass enamel said to have been found on Tara Hill: with observations on the use of red enamel in Ireland’ in R.I.A. Trans. xxx (1892-6) pp 277-94; E.C.R. Armstrong, ‘Note on block of red enamel from Tara’ in R.S.A.I. Jn. xli (1911), pp 61-2.

Lumps of Enamel

Item: Lumps of Enamel

Date: Early Historic Period/Iron Age
Find Location: Hill of Tara
Current Location: British Museum
Description:
Three glass lumps of red enamel-paste; broken off from larger mass. Length: 41.2 millimetres (max) Weight: 81 grammes (total, all three). Donated by Dr. Valentine Bell. Acquired 1892. Enamel was used to decorate metalwork. Enamel is a type of allochromatic glass that consists usually of quartz sand, iron oxide, potassium oxide (potash) and borax (flux). These components form a transparent and colourless fondant after firing at temperatures between 700 and 900 degrees Celsius. It is possible that enamel may have been imported from the Meditarrean region, particularly Italy. This substance is generally red in colour during the early phases of the Iron Age. The find would tend to indicate that there was a bronze working centre at or near Tara. Enameling is a decoration technique in which a glass of certain composition is fused to the surrounding or under laying metal. Metal items, especially bronze objects, were often inset with enamel. This was achieved either by creating a raised bordered area on the metal surface (the champlevé technique) or by creating a recessed area (the cloisonne method); in both cases, the areas were then filled with coloured enamel.

Three Copper-Alloy Toe Rings

Item: Three Copper-Alloy Toe Rings
Date: Iron Age 100BC-100AD
Find Location: Rath, Ashbourne

Current Location:
Description:
During the excavation of the feet three copper-alloy rings were found at the toes of both feet. Two of these rings are almost identical with one found encircling toes on each foot. Both are spiral-rings roughly of the size and shape of modern key rings. The spiral-ring on the right foot, however, was located in situ, meaning that it had been found in the same position as it was at the time of the funeral. The ring was still in an upright position and clasped around the tips of at least two toes (the big toe and the one next to it). The third toe-ring, which was decorated with a herring-bone motif, was also found on the right foot, encircling the toe next to the little toe. The presence of the two almost identical spiral-rings could indicate that they were part of some kind of footwear. The position of the spiral-ring on the right foot with the ring on the tips of at least two toes shows that it was not worn as a toe-ring as such, because it would have slid off the toe. One possibility is that the rings were put in this position especially for the funeral. Another explanation may be that the two spiral-rings were attached to sandals.

Further Information:
Holger Schweitzer “Iron Age toe-rings from Rath, County Meath, on the N2 Finglas-Ashbourne Road Scheme.” Recent archaeological discoveries on national road schemes 2004: proceedings of a seminar for the public, Dublin. 2004.
Cultural Resource Development Services Ltd

Roman Samian Ware

Item: Samian Pottery
Date: Roman 100-400 AD
Find Location: Lagore, Dunshaughlin
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
At Lagore crannog, near Dunshaughlin, various Roman items were uncovered in the dig in the 1930s. Sherds of Samian ware , a fine bright red pottery originating in Gaul, were found at Lagore. This type of pottery was created in Gaul, France, in the middle of the second century. Sherds of this type of pottery were also uncovered at Tara and Knowth. Three small sherds of Samian ware were found during excavations at Lagore Crannog, between 1934 and 1936. The fabric of the pottery is orange-pink in colour and the slip is orange-red. All three are decorated body sherds. Fine horizontal grooves formed by the potter’s fingers are visibly on the interior surface of smallest sherd. One of the sherds has traces of wear and has been perforated, possibly for later re-use as a pendant. Samian ware is the name given to red-gloss pottery that was mass-produced from the first century BC to the third century AD. It was first produced in northern Italy but by midway through the first century AD it was nearly all being made in Gaul with some small scale production in Colchester in Roman Britain. Distinguished by its red colour, Samian ware is often elaborately decorated with typical classical scenes from mythology. Bowls, dishes, plates and small cups with decoration in relief were made by throwing the pot within a mould.

Further Information:
Comber, M. (2001) “Trade and Communication Networks in Early Historic Ireland”, The Journal of Irish Archaeology, 10, Wordwell Ltd.
Hencken, H. (1950) “Lagore Crannog: An Irish Royal Residence of the 7th and 10th Centuries AD”, PRAI 53C
Lynn, C. (1984) “Some Fragments of Exotic Porphyry found in Ireland”, The Journal of Irish Archaeology, 2, Wordwell Ltd.
Warner, R.B. (1976) “Some observations on the context and interpretation of exotic material in Ireland, from the first century BC to the second century AD”, PRAI 76C
www.irisharchaeology.ie/2011/11/roman-contacts-with-ireland/

Ladle – Roman

Item: Ladle
Date: Roman 100-400 AD
Find Location: Bohermeen
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
A bronze ladle with a round bottom and a long winged handle was discovered in 1848 by turf-cutters in the bog of Bohermeen, in close proximity to a large number of pointed stakes and other remains of timber which may have been the remains of a crannog. The ladle is of a kind found widely and commonly throughout the Roman world. The ladle is constructed of extremely thin bronze, measuring in all 28 cm, the internal diameter of its bowl being 13 cm. A bronze pin was also discovered with the ladle. The ladle is one of the few functional Roman items discovered in Ireland and may point to an element of trade. Alternatively the item may have been a votive offering.

Further Information:
W. G. Wood-Martin. The lake dwellings of Ireland: or, Ancient lacustrine habitations of Erin, commonly called crannogs (Dublin, 1886)
Seán P Ó Ríordáin, ‘Roman material in Ireland’ Proceedings of the R.I.A. ( May 1947) Section C, pp 35-82.
J. D. Bateson ‘Roman material from Ireland: a re-consideration’ in Proceedings of the R.I.A. vol. 73 sec. C (1973) pp. 21-98.

Coins – Roman Newgrange

Item: Roman Coins
Date: Roman 100-400 AD
Find Location: Newgrange
Current Location: National Museum
Description:
Newgrange was venerated as a shrine by pilgrim of high social status and they deposited votive offerings at the site. Coins from first, third and especially fourth century have been uncovered. The first Roman coins uncovered at Newgrange were discovered about 1699 when the tomb itself came to light. Coins from various emperors were unearthed – Domitian AD 81-96, Postumus AD 260-168, Probus 276- 282, Maximian 286- 305, Constantine I 308-337, Constantine II 337- 340 and later emperors. The wide date range, high value and quantity rule out casual loss. The suggestion is that they were grave goods or votive offerings. The likely depositors are the native Irish rather than Romans.
They depict the Emperors Constantine I and Constantine II and were struck at the Roman mint in Trier, a city now located in modern Germany. The first coin bears the inscription CONSTANTINVS P F AVG and dates from AD 330-337, while the second coin is inscribed CONSTANTINVS IVN NOB C and dates from AD 320-330. They both contain small loops for suspension, which suggests that they had been reused as pendants. The coins form part of a very important corpus of Roman material from the site. This collection of Roman artefacts includes at least 25 coins along with a number of rings, brooches and torc fragments. The majority of these object came from two specific locations; the area in front of the tomb entrance and the ground surrounding the three largest stones of the Great Stone Circle, which surrounds the monument.

Further Information:
http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/04/roman-coins-from-newgrange/
R.A.G. Carson and Claire O’Kelly ‘A catalogue of the Roman coins from Newgrange, co. Meath’ and ‘Notes on the coins and related finds’ in Proceedings of the R.I.A. vol. 77 sec. C (1977) pp. 35-56
Vittorio Di Martino Roman Ireland (Cork 2003)

Roman Objects

Item: Votive offerings of Roman jewellery and two pieces of inscribed metalwork
Date: 2nd to 4th century AD
Find Location: Newgrange
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Newgrange was venerated as a shrine by pilgrim of high social status and they deposited votive offerings at the site. Among the items deposited were a finger ring made of copper and tin with Celtic style design; a disc brooch of bronze with gilt central inset of black glass and decorated with running spirals and circles with a gilded face at centre of brooch above and the end of a Torc. In 1842 five gold items were uncovered at Newgrange near the entrance – a gold chain, two bracelets and two finger rings. In 1967 the hook end of a gold torc with an inscription SCORNS.MB was discovered at Newgrange. The brooches are believed to have been made in the south east of England in the Roman period.

Roman Coin – Navan

Item: Roman Coin (not actual coin in photo – similar coin)
Date: Roman 161-175 AD
Find Location: Navan
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
A coin of Younger Faustina 161-175 was discovered at Navan but the site of the find is not located. It was given by William Wakeman to George Petrie who deposited it in the Royal Irish Academy.

Further Information:
http://www.navanhistory.ie/index.php?page=roman-statue
J.D. Bateson, ‘Roman material from Ireland: a re-consideration’ in Proceedings of the R.I.A. vol. 73 sec. C, 1973, pp. 21-98.

Statue Roman

Item: Statue
Date: Roman 100-400 AD
Find Location: Navan
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
This statue, at approx 8 cm high, and made of copper alloy, is described as having originally been ‘found in the River Boyne near to Navan’. A figurine of a youthful male wearing a knee length tunic with sash, possible boots and a wreath on his head. The left arm is held out in front of his body and the right arm extends above his head but is fractured at the wrist. It is Roman and was believed to be a representation of Hercules, but now thought by the museum to perhaps be a representation of a Lar. Lares were the deities of an area of land or a territory said to bring protection and plenty to the community that lived on that land. They were also associated with the cult of the Emperor and were often placed at shrines found at crossroads and boundaries. Presented to George Petrie by William Wakeman. The figurine may have been deposited in the river as a votive offering. The figure was believed lost but was recently re-discovered in the Museum crypt.

Further Information:
http://www.museum.ie/The-Collections/Documentation-Discoveries/September/A-Roman-figurine
http://www.navanhistory.ie/index.php?page=roman-statue

Item: Finger Ring

Date: Fourth Century Romano-British
Find Location: Newgrange
Current Location: British Museum
Description:
Gold finger-ring. The hoop, oval in plan view, is formed of three beaded wires attached to one another. The shoulders are decorated with double spirals of milled/beaded wire and small pellets. The S-patterns all face the same way, rather than being paired as mirror-images. The raised oval bezel is incised around the edge to give a roped effect, and is set with an undecorated, flat-surfaced blue stone, a nicolo (quartz).. The gold is heavily worn. There is a small rectangular piece of sheet gold applied to the interior surface of the hoop under the bezel area. Acquired by British Museum in 1884.

Further Information:
Kent & Painter 1977 no. 232

Statue of St. Patrick

Item: Statue of St. Patrick
Date: Associated with 432
Find Location: Tara
Current Location: OPW Depot, Trim.
Description:
The statue, erected in Tara possibly in 1895 to commemorate the centenary of Maynooth Seminary, commemorated the events of 433AD when St. Patrick lit a bonfire on the nearby hill of Slane on the eve of Easter Sunday. The statue had been cast in concrete by local sculptor William Curry and had stood on the highest point of Tara for more than a century. Thomas Curry was born about 1821 and lived his life in Bridge Street, Navan. The statue was erected at his own expense. The body of the statue became pockmarked by bullet-holes and its hands went missing.
It was removed from Tara in 1992 for refurbishment by the then OPW but in the removal the statue was damaged beyond repair. In 1992, the Office of Public Works advised the bishops of Meath that the condition of the original statue of St Patrick on the Hill of Tara had deteriorated beyond repair.
A local Committee to Restore St. Patrick to Tara was formed but in a competition for a replacement and unacceptable choice was made by the selection committee. There was only one local representative on the selction committee and there was further uproar among locals. Following a meeting with the minister, Dúchas were ordered to search Ireland to see if a suitable statue of St. Patrick was available elsewhere. Three years later, a statue donated by the Sisters of Charity went up on the site.
Archaeologist Dr Conor Newman, chairman of the Heritage Council, said the removal of the original statue of St Patrick from the Hill of Tara in 1992 was something that never should have happened

Further Information:
Michael Fortune My Tara (2012)
https://www.google.ie/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Statue+of+St.+Patrick+tara
http://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/923-st-patricks-day-as-seen-on-tv/505868-st-patrick-statue-controversy/

Armlet

Date: 5th or 6th century AD
Find Location: Ballymahon, Castlerickard.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Discovered during drainage work on the river Boyne in 1852, the armlet is made of yellow bronze. It was discovered at the junction of the Deel and Boyne rivers. It consists of two circular coils approximately 9cm in diameter, each coil terminating in a circular expansion. It originally had a third coil which is now missing. The terminal of the second ring and the joining point of the two rings are decorated with a whirling triskele design. The missing coil was broken off an attempt was made to re-attach it at some stage. There has been a suggestion that it was part of a royal regalia and may be a votive offering deposited in the river. The design shows a north of Britain influence.

Further Information:
Etienne Rynne ‘The coiled bronze armlet from Ballymahon, Co. Meath’ in JRSAI (1964) pp 69-72.

Frankish Gold Coin

Item: Frankish Gold Coin

Date: 7th century
Find Location: Trim
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
The coin, known as a tremissis (equal to one third of a solidus and to the shilling of Anglo-Saxon England), is based on coins issued by the late Roman and Byzantine emperors and copied by successor states in Western Europe including the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons.
Measuring only 12mm across and weighing 1.16g, one face bears the image of a human head shown in profile wearing a crown or diadem and inscribed BELLO FAETO, the name of the mint, Beaufay, a town in mid-France lying north-east of Le Mans. The opposite face bears an equal-armed cross set on three steps and the name of the moneyer FREPOMVND.
The coin was first mentioned by the Cork-based coin collector, John Lindsay in 1860 when he described it as being in the cabinet of the Very Rev. Richard Butler, Dean of Clonmacnoise and was said to have been found at Trim. It subsequently dropped out of sight and, although cited in the literature, its whereabouts was unknown.
The coin was being offered for sale by a US online auction house in October 2015 so the Museum successfully bid for it at the online auction.
Gold tremissis coins are common on the Continent and in Anglo-Saxon England but rare elsewhere – only one is known from Scotland. There are only two examples from Ireland – this one from Trim and a second found near Portlaois, now in the British Museum. They may have been treasured as amulets or keepsakes, combining the symbolism of imperial Rome and kingship (in the form of the bust) and Christianity (the cross). The coins may have been given as diplomatic gifts by a foreign trader or aristocrat. One potential candidate might be the young Frankish prince, Dagobert, who in 656 was sent to Ireland to be educated in the monastery of Rath Melsigi (identified as Slane, Co. Meath or Clonmelsh, Co. Carlow). As Dagobert II he briefly ruled the eastern Frankish kingdom of Austrasia (a territory including much of north eastern France and the lower Rhineland) between 676 and 679.

Further Information:
http://www.museum.ie/Corporate-Media/News/March-2016/Rare-Frankish-Gold-Coin-Resurfaces

Castletown Kilpatrick Pin

Item: Pin
Date: Late sixth/early seventh century
Find Location: Castletown-Kilpatrick
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Late fourth/early fifth century found in 1848 the larger is known as a hand pin, its head resembling the palm of the hand with the fingers bent forward, the larger with the beaded rim is an ancestral form. The fine-line spiral patterns on both pinheads derive from contemporary Celtic metalwork, were originally highlighted in red enamel. Silver hand pins are rare but examples in bronze with elaborately decorated heads were made in Ireland into the sixth century.

Slave Collars

Item: Slave Collars
Date: c. 651 A.D.
Find Location: Lagore, Dunshaughlin.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland, Dublin.
Description:
Two slave collars discovered at the lowest occupation strata at Lagore crannog. Two piece decorated iron collar with its attachment chain. A hinged collar decorated on the sides with inset pieces of twisted iron. The collar is secured by passing the chain through the inner loop. The long chain attached to the collar is in a similar style to that of late Roman Britain while the collar decoration suggest Anglo-Saxon workmanship. It is suggested that the collar halves was made by two different smiths at two different times. Hostages – or else favourite dogs – seem more likely than slaves to wear such fine work.

Further Information:
B.G. Scott, “Iron ‘slave-collars’ from Lagore Crannog, Co Meath” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy C 78, (1978) pp 213-30.
Hugh Hencken, ‘Lagore Crannog: An Irish Royal Residence of the 7th to 10th centuries AD’ in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (November 1950)

Gold Filigree Panel

Item: Filigree Panel
Date: Seventh Century
Find Location: Lagore, Dunshaughlin
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
An experimental piece of gold filigree from Lagore Crannog, County Meath, shows at some point in the seventh century an Irish craftsman attempting to approximate elaborate filigree effects common on Anglo-Saxon work. Towards the end of the seventh century a change in Irish personal ornament takes place with the appearance of a kind of brooch that is often referred to as pseudo-penannular or more simply as the “Tara” type. The fashion is best represented by the two finest and probably earliest of the series—the so-called Tara Brooch (from Bettystown, Co. Meath) and the Hunterston Brooch found in Ayrshire in Scotland. The ornamental possibilities were seized upon by the best craftsmen who had at their disposal not only a new range of techniques but also a new hybrid art style that combined animal ornament of Germanic origin with scrollwork in the Ultimate La Tene tradition, with plain interlace from the Mediterranean world—probably Italy—and Christian iconographical themes although these are very subtle. The Tara and Hunterston Brooch stand very close to the style of the Lindisfarne Gospels and are probably to be dated to the late seventh or very early eighth century.

Further Information:
http://what-when-how.com/medieval-ireland/jewelry-and-personal-ornament-medieval-ireland/

Tara Brooch

Item: Brooch
Date: c 700 A.D.
Find Location: Bettystown
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
This brooch was found not in Tara but near the seashore at Bettystown, Co. Meath, in 1850. It was found near the sea-shore, by the child of a poor woman, who afterwards sold it in Drogheda. The story goes that she found it in a box buried in the sand, though many believe the brooch was actually found inland but the woman’s family altered the facts to avoid a legal dispute with a landowner. Its provenance was attributed to Tara by a dealer in order to increase its value. It is made of cast and gilt silver and is elaborately decorated on both faces. The front is ornamented with a series of exceptionally fine gold filigree panels depicting animal and abstract motifs that are separated by studs of glass, enamel and amber. The back is flatter than the front, and the decoration is cast. The motifs consist of scrolls and triple spirals and recall La Tène decoration of the Iron Age. A silver chain made of plaited wire is attached to the brooch by means of a swivel attachment. This feature is formed of animal heads framing two tiny cast glass human heads.

Further Information:
http://www.museum.ie/Archaeology/Exhibitions/Current-Exhibitions/The-Treasury/Gallery-1-Iron-Age-to-12th-Century/Tara-Brooch-(1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-jBovahy4g
http://www.bernards.cz/english/the-tara-brooch-one-of-ireland%E2%80%99s-greatest-treasures-explained-id2015010002

Book of Kells

Item: Book of Kells
Date: c. 800 AD
Find Location: Kells
Current Location: Old Library, Trinity College, College St, Dublin 2
Description:
The Book of Kells (Trinity College Dublin MS 58) contains the four Gospels in Latin based on the Vulgate text which St Jerome completed in 384AD, intermixed with readings from the earlier Old Latin translation. The Gospel texts are prefaced by other texts, including “canon tables”, or concordances of Gospel passages common to two or more of the evangelists; summaries of the gospel narratives (Breves causae); and prefaces characterizing the evangelists (Argumenta).
The book is written on vellum (prepared calfskin) in a bold and expert version of the script known as “insular majuscule”. It contains 340 folios, now measuring approximately 330 x 255 mm; they were severely trimmed, and their edges gilded, in the course of rebinding in the 19th century.
The most famous of its manuscripts, the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow, were presented by Henry Jones, Bishop of Meath and former vice-chancellor of the University, in the 1660s.

Further Information:
All 677 pages (340 folio) of the ninth-century Book of Kells have now been digitised and made available online by the Library of Trinity College Dublin, where the book has been housed since 1661. The digital images can be viewed via the library’s website at:
http://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/home/index.php?DRIS_ID=MS58_003v
https://www.tcd.ie/visitors/book-of-kells/
http://www.tcd.ie/library/manuscripts/book-of-kells.php

Donore Door Handle

Item: Door Handle
Date: Early eight century
Find Location: Donore, Moynalty
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Copper alloy disc with animal-headed handle, discovered in advance of drainage works on the river Borora in 1984 and entered the National Museum of Ireland’s collection in 1985. Made of bronze, the handle is elaborately carved in the shape of a beast with a free moving ring through its teeth. The mount is decorated with spiral, elongated animal shapes and abstract patterns. These designs are similar in style to the Lindisfarne Gospels. It is likely that the handle came from a religious building rather than a secular one.

Further Information:
Michael Ryan ‘The Donore Hoard: early medieval metalwork from Moynaltt, near Kells, Ireland ’ in Antiquity, 61, (1987) pp 57-63.
S. Youngs, Work of Angels, Masterpieces of Celtic Metalwork 6th-9th Centuries AD. (1989) British Museum Press. Cat.64

Harness Mounts

Item: Gilt Bronze Harness Mounts
Date: 8-9th Century
Find Location: Athlumney, Navan
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
In 1848 a branch of the Dublin and Drogheda railway was being laid to Navan. Below Athlumney Castle “on the eastern side of the river were discovered a quantity of most interesting antiquities, bridle bits and horse trappings of iron, bronze and silver, rings, buckles, head stalls, pettrells and clasps besides a large collection of bones both human and those of lower animals”. These remains were taken to the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. A very perfect human skull and fragments of two others were found. These were found by Mr. Wakeman, a writer and antiquarian. Sir William Wilde also noted that “The only perfect head, found was sent out of the country, it was given to the late Dr. Prichard, immediately before his death, and no account of it has since appeared”.
This has been suggested as the burial of a Viking warrior. A Scandinavian presence is suggested in Athlumney by a horse skeleton that was found with a collection of horse furnishings and some human bones suggests that the burial may be linked to the base at Rossnaree. However, it is more likely that the burial – accompanied with a mount, a bridle-bit, four bronze-plated iron rings and seven decorated plaques – belonged to a settlement, possibly a longphort site, at Athlumney on the eastern bank of the River Boyne. Clinton interprets the burial as being female which would imply a more permanent type of settlement whereas Harrison believes that the presence of a large amount of horse bones indicates the ritual deposition a male with a horse burial. Either way, it is more likely that this burial occurred in an area – where the rivers Blackwater and Boyne merge – that featured some form of Scandinavian settlement in the ninth century.

Further Information:
http://www.navanhistory.ie/index.php?page=viking-burial
Stephen Harrison, ‘Viking graves and grave-goods in Ireland’, in A. Larsen (ed.) The Vikings in Ireland, (2001) pp 61-75.
Mark Clinton, ‘Settlement dynamics in Co. Meath: the kingdom of Lóegaire’ in Peritia, xiv, (2000), pp 372-405.

Brooch

Item: Pseudo-Penannular Brooch
Date: 8th/9th century
Find Location: Hill of Tara/ Skryne
Current Location: British Museum
Description:
Silver pseudo-penannular brooch. Slender hoop, at the apex two panels of gilt interlace framing an empty rectangular setting. The junction with the expanded terminals is marked by deep circular settings for amber, one piece remaining. The centre of each terminal has a raised subtriangular field subdivided into five panels – an empty central lozenge with four irregular panels each with a profile animal. Each terminal has a flat border of repetitive interlace and is gilded overall. Two thin strips and an empty rectangular setting link the terminals. The pinhead, which is a separate casting riveted to the shank, has an empty central lozenge framed by cast beading and simple interlace and four empty settings. A border of c-scrolls and billets gives the head a falsely cusped appearance. Acquired by British Museum in 1893.

Further Information:
Bibliography: Smith, R.A. 1914. Irish Brooches of Five Centuries, ‘Archaeologia’ LXV, 248, pl. XXVI, no. 7.
Whitfield, N., 1995, ‘Formal conventions in the depiction of animals on Celtic metalwork’, in C. Bourke (ed.), “From the Isles of the North. Early Medieval Art in Ireland and Britain”, Belfast, pp. 89-104, at p. 90. fig. 4a.

Bell – Dunboyne

Item: Bell

Date: 8/9th century
Find Location: Dunboyne
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
The Dunboyne Bell, which was found by Eamonn Walsh of Courthill, Dunboyne, in a nearby field in Kilbrennan in 1972. The bell, which dates back to the 8th or 9th century, is made of iron and was coated in bronze. The bell was found along with seven human remains and is associated with an early Christian community in Dunboyne. The handle was intact but the clapper was missing. Forged from a single sheet of iron, folded along the side and held together by means of six rivets. The mouth of the bell is flanged internally. It is presumed that the bronze was applied to the iron by means of dipping. The Dunboyne Bell in its refurbished state is on display in the National Museum in Dublin. Made around the AD 500s–900s, hand-bells were used to call monks to prayer in Irish monasteries. The earliest bells were made from wrought iron sheets that were folded and riveted into shape, then brazed with copper alloy. This process was incredibly labour-intensive, requiring plenty of time, raw materials and technological skill. Contemporary carvings show figures with croziers – the symbolic hooked staffs of holy office – also carrying hand-bells, suggesting that the latter too were symbols of high standing in the Irish church.

Further Information:
http://www.port64.com/parish/index.php/parish-history
https://blog.britishmuseum.org/2014/04/14/holy-hand-bells-the-endless-histories-of-irish-relics/
Cormac Bourke, ‘Early Irish hand-bells’ in J.R.S.A.I vol. 110 (1980) pp 52-66.

Hand Bell

Item: Handbell
Date: Ninth Century
Find Location: Co. Meath
Current Location: The Hunt Museum
Description:
A ninth century bronze bell which is four-sided and rounded at the edges. It is splayed at the mouth and tapers towards the crown. The handle is not original and the clapper is missing. The bell was found in Co. Meath.

Shrine

Item: Fragments of a house shaped shrine (Photo: National Museum of Ireland)
Date: Ninth Century
Find Location: Clonard
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Fragments of a house shaped shrine were found during drainage work in the early nineteenth century. These house shaped shrines were originally designed to receive relics of the saints. The fragments consist of two sheets of bronze and a decorated disc of cast bronze. The long side was decorated with a pair of medallions of which one survives.

Further Information:
Raghnall Ó Floinn ‘A Fragmentary House-Shaped Shrine from Clonard, Co. Meath’ The Journal of Irish Archaeology Vol. 5 (1989/1990), pp. 49-55
http://homepage.eircom.net/~clonardns/finiansfolder/Finianofclonard.htm

Clonard Bucket

Item: Bucket
Date: Ninth Century
Find Location: Clonard
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
A small wooden bucket decorated with bronze work dating from the eighth or ninth century, discovered during drainage works. In the 1830s, work on the Kinnegad River near Clonard revealed a highly ornate Early Christian bucket with bronze bands and amber insets bound with filigree and decorated bands of bronze. The bucket measured 14cm in height and had been carved from a single block of yew with a separate base. Around forty similar buckets are known from Ireland and Scandinavia. The Scandinavian examples originate mainly from graves dating to the ninth and tenth centuries while the Irish ones are mainly found in rivers and bogs. A few are also known from domestic sites of between the eighth and tenth centuries. The highly decorated character of the Clonard bucket suggests that it may have served an ecclesiastical ceremonial function, possibly as a dispenser for wine or holy water. The proximity of the find spot to St. Finian’s monastery of Clonard would support such a theory (O’Floinn 1983). In association with the bucket, a Dutch box was found containing coins from the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558–1603), James II brass money from the Jacobite War (1688–90) and coinage of William and Mary, the latest of which dated to 1694. This suggests that the bucket was deposited for safekeeping sometime after that date.
The small size of these vessels would suggest that they were used for serving liquid in small quantities-perhaps wine.

Further Information:
George Coffey Guide to Celtic Antiquities of the Christian Period (London, 1910) p. 76

Whalebone Sword Hilt

Date: 9th Century
Find Location: Collierstown, Skryne.
Current Location: National
Description:
A whalebone sword hilt in two pieces was recovered from the same deposit as the PRSW and E-ware i.e. mid-6th century AD. Collierstown 1 excavated in advance of the M3 road scheme, was a cemetery that was utilised from potentially the mid fifth until the late ninth century. A 3rd century AD Latin verse noted Irish men ‘who cultivate elegance adorn the hilts of their swords with the tusks of great sea-animals’ tusks probably extended to whalebone, which was rare and valued as a raw material. whalebone has been found on Early Medieval sites such as Raheens, Co. Cork, Rathmullan, Co. Down, Inishkea, Co. Mayo and Lough Faughaun crannog, Co. Down. Although it is possible that these were hunted, it seems more likely that they represent the use of accidentally stranded animals, for example in A.D. 753, the ‘Annals of Ulster’ note that a whale (with three gold teeth) was cast ashore at Bairche in Ulster. In contrast, for A.D. 827, there is a reference to a ‘great pig-slaughter of sea-pigs (probably porpoises) by the foreigners’ on the coast of Ard-Cianachta (in modern Co. Louth, on Ireland’s east coast). This could again simply represent the opportunistic slaughter of a large group of stranded animals, but it may also imply hunting out at sea using boats and harpoons.

Further Information:
O’Hara, R. 2008 Collierstown, Co. Meath. Medieval Archaeology, 58, 367–373.
O’Hara, R. 2009a. Report on the Archaeological Excavation of Collierstown 1, Co. Meath. Unpublished report prepared for Archaeological Consultancy Services Ltd. Available at www.m3motorway.ie
https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj0i_PVoZfRAhXHKcAKHbizC_8QFggqMAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heritagecouncil.ie%2Ffileadmin%2Fuser_upload%2FINSTAR_Database%2FAR01055_EMAP_Collierstown_Cemetary_4-4_10.pdf&usg=AFQjCNGaVbcrg6u_FMfU7EFP6AfTVqN7Tw&bvm=bv.142059868,d.ZGg
Early Medieval Ireland: Archaeological Excavations 1930-2004

Kells Crozier

Item: Crozier
Date: 9th-11th century
Find Location: Kells
Current Location: British Museum
Description:
The Kells Crozier was made by various craftsmen over at least two different periods between the late 9th and 11th century AD. The crosier is composed of a wooden core of yew wood which has been encased in copper-alloy sheets. These have been secured by nailing the sheets onto the wooden core and which are further secured through a series of three metalwork knops. The decoration of these knops features a series of zoomorphic interlace and knot-work, dating to the ninth or tenth-century. In the eleventh century a new knop decorated with black niello and silver inlay in the Scandinavian Ringerike style replaced an earlier one at the top of the shaft. The curved crest of the crook is elaborately decorated with interlinking birds; where this meets the straight end of the crook a human head appears. Its total length measures about 133 cm.
The crosier bears an inscription in mixed Latin and the old Irish language on the interior arch of its crook reading, ‘OR DO CONDUILIG OCUS DO MELFINNEN’, which, roughly translated, asks supplicants to pray for Cúduilig and Maelfinnén who were involved in its refurbishment. Scholars have identified these names with individuals who were connected with the important Irish monastic settlement at Kells. George Pertrie identified the names as belonging to ecclesiastical figures from Kells whereas Márie Mac Dermott and Perette Michelli have suggested the royal heir of Cashel, Cú Duilig. The crozier was discovered behind the cupboard of a London solicitor’s office in 1850. This cupboard had not been moved for sixty years previously. The crozier subsequently belonged to several owners (including Cardinal Wiseman) before being purchased by the British Museum in 1859. In 2000 a replica of the crozier was made and exhibited in Kells.

Further Information:
Máire MacDermott, ‘The Kells Crozier’, Archaeologia-12, 96 (1955), pp. 59–113

Metal Working

Item: Lead model for ringed pin, bone motif piece and crucible

Date: 9th/10th century
Find Location: Lagore Crannog, Dunshaughlin.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
The lead alloy model was used in the manufacture of ringed pins which would have been pressed into the clay mould from which the finished product would have been cast. The interlace design on the bone motif piece is very close to that of the unprovenenced ( No locality given) mount (6) some of the bone motif used as a model. Designs on bone originals may have been used for the casting of clay moulds.

Further Information:
Comber, Michelle: Lagore Crannóg and non-ferrous metalworking in Early Historic Ireland, 101-114 JIA VIII (1997) The Journal Of Irish Archaeology

Ingot Mould

Item: Stone Ingot Mould
Date: 9th/10th century
Find Location: Moynagh, Nobber.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Coins, Gold and silver ornaments was melted down to form bullion. Ingots were a convenient way of storing the precious metal. The metal was melted in clay crucibles and then cast in simple stone moulds. Owen Smith, a Nobber farmer, excavated at Moynagh Lough in 1886 and this was one of the items he discovered.
At Moynagh Lough two metalworking areas were uncovered during excavations in recent decades. Clay moulds were also uncovered. Copper may also have been created into ingots. Among the objects recovered at Moynagh Lough in 1987 were crucible shards, heating tray fragments, clay mould fragments and a lump of yellow enamel. The production period for Moynagh Lough was dated on stylistic grounds between c 690 and c 720 AD.

Further Information:
Bradley, J. 1982-3. Excavations at Moynagh Lough, Co. Meath 1980-81: interim report. Ríocht na Mídhe, 7(2), 12-32.
Bradley, J. 1984. Excavations at Moynagh Lough, Co. Meath 1982-83: interim report. Ríocht na Mídhe, 7(3), 86-93.
Bradley, J. 1985-6. Excavations at Moynagh Lough, Co. Meath 1984: a summary report’. Ríocht na Mídhe, 7(4), 79-82.
Bradley, J. 1990-1. Excavations at Moynagh Lough, Co. Meath, 1985 and 1987. Ríocht na Mídhe, 8 (3), 21-35.
Bradley, J. 1994-5. Excavations at Moynagh Lough, Co. Meath. Ríocht na Mídhe, 9(1), 158-69.
Bradley, J. 1997. Archaeological excavations at Moynagh Lough, Co. Meath 1995-96. Ríocht na Mídhe 9(3), 50-61

Silver Hoard

Item: Hack Silver Hoard
Date: 9th/10th Century
Find Location: Loughcrew
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
The Loughcrew find, from a crannog on Lough Creeve, consists simply of two complete ingots and a brooch
fragment. When complete, however, this brooch would have been an exceptionally large example of a Norwegian variant on a Baltic penannular brooch type that is characterised by faceted hoop- and terminal knobs terminal knobs, together with stamped decoration. The type is of rare occurrence in the west, although one other silver fragment is on record from Ireland, although unfortunately unprovenanced. Ornaments and coins were cut up into hack silver and weighed on portable folding balance scales. Sometimes hack silver was buried in the ground for safety.

Further Information:
Sheehan, J. and Graham-Campbell, J. (2009) ‘Viking-age gold and silver from Irish crannogs and other watery places’, Journal of Irish Archaeology, 18, pp. 77-93.

Leggagh Coin Hoard

Item: Anglo-Saxon Coins
Date: Possibly deposited about 923
Find Location: Leggagh, Nobber
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Discovered in a sandpit near Nobber about 1843 the hoard included eight coins from Edward the Elder, 899-924, a coin minted by the Danes of East Anglia and a tenth coin since lost a Kufic dirham from Samarkand. It is thought that Islamic coins came to Ireland, via Scandinavia.
Anglo-Saxon coins have also been discovered at Fennor, Fourknocks, Killyon Manor, Knowth, Lagore and Oldcastle.

Further Information:
Michael Dolley, ‘The C.1843 Leggagh (Nobber) coin-hoard reconsidered’ in Ríocht na Mídhe V, 2, (1972) pp 14-22.

Crozier

Item: Crozier

Date: Eleventh century
Find Location: Clonard
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Cast copper alloy crozier head, measuring 17.7 cm in height, is well worn. The crozier was recorded as being found in Clonard in the Minutes of the Royal Irish Academy. The crozier consists of a bionical knop surmounted by a bronze crook with a rectangular drop. Traces of decoration on the crook show strips of metal arranged in a lozenge-shaped pattern. These crosiers were made as shrines to contain the staff of the saint. Croziers such as this were symbols of power and authority. Many date to a period of political upheaval, when the Irish Church was undergoing reform. This reform led to competition between the larger monasteries as they strove to become the new diocesan centres. Lavish church treasures such as croziers and other shrines were commissioned at this time, partly to reinforce the claims of particular monastic centres and their secular patrons

Further Information:
Raghnall Ó Floinn, A crozier head from Clonard’ in T. Condit and C. Corlett (eds), Above and Beyond: essays in memory of Leo Swan (Bray, 2005), pp 333-42

Monk and Nun Roof Tiles

Item: Curved Roof Tiles

Date: Late 12th Century
Find Location: Trim Castle
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
These tiles were used to roof the castle at Trim in the late twelfth century. The roof survived for three hundred years being re-roofed in the 15th century. The tiles were laid down in two layers. The lower layer was laid face up secured to the roof timbers by projecting nibs. The upper tiles were laid face down spanning two lower tiles. All tiles are narrowed at one end to fit inside to the next tile.
Over two tonnes of tile debris was discovered in the 1990s excavations. Some were also uncovered during the earlier excavation. From its first phase, the keep at Trim appears to have been roofed with tiles. The form of these tiles is unparalleled elsewhere in Ireland or Britain. Some were probably imported, while others could be local copies. They are most closely paralleled by the ‘monk’ and ‘nun’ tiles used to roof castles and churches in Denmark and north Germany from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries.

Further Information:
Trim Castle, Co. Meath: excavations 1995-8 by Alan Hayden
Michael Potterton: 2005: Medieval Trim: history and archaeology. Four Courts Press, Dublin. 464pp.

Key

Date: 11-13th century
Find Location: Knowth
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
In the 7th or 8th century the great Knowth mound was fortified with a ditch, and perhaps became the residence of the kings of North Brega. Around the 10th and 11th centuries, Knowth was particularly important as one of its kings, Congalach, who died in 956, became High King of Ireland. In 1142 the first Irish Cistercian Abbey was founded at nearby Mellifont, the lands of Knowth became part of its possessions and a grange was built on the top of the Neolithic mound. Mellifont and its granges flourished up to the time of the Reformation in the mid-16th century.

Bog Butter found in Duleek Bog

Item: Bog Butter
Date: Iron Age or Medieval Period
Find Location: Duleek
Current Location: Drogheda Museum Millmount
Description:
Bog butter has also been discovered at various other sites throughout Meath including most recently at Ervey on the border with Cavan. The creamy white dairy product, which smells like a strong cheese and is believed to be about 2,000 years old, was unearthed by Jack Conway, from Maghera, Co Cavan, while he worked on Emlagh bog in June 2016. The find, while not unusual, has been given to the National Museum, where it will be preserved. Bog butter was often buried to preserve it to be dug up at a later date. Other research has shed light on it being buried as an offering to the gods or spirits in the hope of renewed prosperity. The Emlagh discovery, 12ft below the surface, may never have been intended to be unearthed as there was no cover. Bog butter dated to Iron age or medieval period. Bog butter may be a votive offerings or boundary marker. A firkin of bog butter was found in Mountainstown bog in 1943.

Further Information:
https://nmni.com/acm/Collections/Human-History/Pre-History/Bog-butter

Shrine of An Cathach

Item: Shrine of An Cathach (Eleventh century side panel in photograph)
Date: Late 11th century
Find Location: Associated with Kells
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland, Kildare Street
Description:
An Cathach (meaning “the Battler”) was a very important relic used by the Clan Ó Domhnaill of Tír Chonaill, as a rallying cry and protector in battle. It is the oldest surviving manuscript in Ireland, and the second oldest Latin psalter in the world. The manuscript is now in the Royal Irish Academy. It was enclosed in a shrine.
The late 11th-century shrine (cumdach) of the Cathach, made by Sitric of Kells, Co. Meath to the order of Cathbarr O’Donnell, may be seen in the National Museum of Ireland. The initial work on the case was done between 1072 and 1098 at Kells, but a new main face was added in the 14th century with a large seated Christ in Majesty flanked by scenes of the Crucifixion and saints in gilt repoussé. This was done by Cathbharr Ó Domhnaill, chief of the O’Donnells and Domhnall Mag Robhartaigh, the Abbot of Kells. The shrine cover consists of a brass box measuring 9 inches long, 8 inches wide and 2 inches thick. The top is heavily decorated with silver, crystals, pearls and other precious stones. It shows an image of the Crucifixion and an image of St Colm Cille.
The side panels which date from the eleventh century are decorated with broad scrolls or stems, in typical Ringersike fashion. It bears an inscription enabling it to be dated to between 1062 and 1094. The inscription also bears the name of its Irish maker Sitric mac Meic Aeda – a name form which suggests that he may have been of mixed Irish-Norse origin.

Further Information:
https://www.ria.ie/cathach-psalter-st-columba
M. Esposito, ‘The Cathach of St Columba’, Louth Archaeological Journal 4 (1916-20), 80-3.
M. Herity and A. Breen, The Cathach of Colum Cille: an introduction (Dublin, 2002).
R.S. Ó Cochláin, ‘The Cathach Battle Book and the O’Donnells’, The Irish Sword 8 (1968), 157-77.
Dáithí Ó Cróinín, ‘The Cathach and Domnach Airgid’in Bernadette Cunningham and Siobhán Fitzpatrick (eds), Treasures of the Royal Irish Academy Library (Dublin, 2009), 1-8.

Chess Piece

Item: Queen from Chess Set
Date: Late Twelfth Century
Find Location: Clonard
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Ivory chess piece showing a queen seated on Clonard, discovered in a bog in Clonard in 1817. It is the only know survivor of a number of chess pieces found in Clonard bog. It may be of Scottish or Scandinavian origin. It may have been brought to Clonard by someone in the retinue of Simon de Rochfort who became bishop of Meath in the late twelfth century.
It represents a carved figure of a Queen from a chess set. It is made of ivory or polished bone with a core of lead. It has a small iron spike at the base, presumably for attachment to the playing surface.
The figure has a crown, wears a shoulder length veil over a mantle. The edges of the mantle are folded back revealing a decorative border of dots and crosses. The left hand is raised to the cheek and is supported by the right hand at the elbow.
The chair the figure sits on has projecting arms. The back of the chair is decorated with a pair of two-legged dragons with backward looking heads. Their tails are fishlike and intertwined. The mouths of the animals are joined by a beaded scroll. The letters S, P and K are written on the back in Lombardic script. The perforation through the neck seems to have been added at a later date.
The figure it seems belongs to the same workshop tradition which produced the group of 78 walrus ivory chessmen found in 1831 on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland. Only two other figures are known from the same workshop- one in Bargello, Florence, the other found in Óland in Sweden. The decoration of these pieces is Romanesque in style and were manufactured in some Viking Kingdom in the second half of the twelfth century. The Clonard piece was found before the Lewis chess pieces, this piece represents the sole survivor of a similar set now lost.

Further Information:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~clonardns/thechesspiece.htm

Seal Matrix

Item: Seal Matrix of the Augustinian monasteries of Durrow and Trim
Date: 13th century
Find Location: Lynn, Mullingar, Co. Westmeath
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
The organisation of the monastery was in the hands of the abbot or prior who had his own seal. These frequently carried images of the abbot and his crozier, the symbol of his power. Discovered about 1833 Dean Butler made a copy of it. On one side is an abbot, face on, with a book in his left hand and a crozier in his right. The other side has an image of the abbot side on.

Further Information:
Michael Potterton, Medieval Trim: history and archaeology (Dublin, 2005)

Bone Stylus

Item: Bone Stylus
Date: 13th/14th century
Find Location: Trim Castle
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
A stylus is a slender, tapered utensil used for writing on wax-coated wooden tablets. Styli crafted in medieval Ireland were generally hand-carved from animal bone. While the tip used to carve into the wax was sometimes created simply by sharpening the bone into a point, most often a sharp metal tip was inset into the end of the bone shaft. Styli from multiple archaeological sites indicate that the bone tips were sometimes re-carved after breakage or the loss of the metal tip.
This particular stylus is made of bone and is missing its metal inset tip. The bone is a creamy white color. The top of the stylus is spherical. This rounded top was used, much like the eraser at the end of a modern pencil, to “erase” writing in the wax by rubbing back and forth on the wax to smooth over the indented surface.
Writing with a stylus and wax was much cheaper than writing on paper in the Middle Ages, especially since the wax tablets were reusable. Styli were used for a number of purposes in medieval London, most notably for writing school exercises, legal records, and correspondence, although they could be used for any type of composition. It has been argued that these instruments were also used as markers for transferring embroidery patterns or as parchment “prickers,” used to prepare parchment for writing by marking horizontal lines.
Archaeological and documentary evidence supports the contention that the stylus was a popular and essential tool for centuries throughout Europe.

Wooden Yoke – Killeen

Item: Wooden Yoke
Date: Medieval period – 13-15th century
Find Location: Merrywell, Killeen.
Current Location:
Description:
This yoke was discovered from the fill of a well at Merrywell, Killeen in 2005 by ACS Ltd. Oxen were used to provide a source of power through their ability to haul ploughs and heavy loads and to transport people and goods. Oxen also provided meat and hide. By the start of the thirteenth century eight-ox plough teams were in use in Meath. Oxen were used throughout the Dublin region in medieval times. Heavy horse were sometimes used together with oxen for ploughing. The great plow-horse, which was originally developed on the Continent for military use, was introduced to Ireland, and by the end of the fifteenth century it seems that oxen were largely superseded for this purpose.

Further Information:
https://books.google.ie/books?id=2rwRDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA557&lpg=PA557&dq=ploughing+with+oxen+medieval+ireland&source=bl&ots=qqjOyNCXSw&sig=TfJUXhd8VgCSjGpJsvgbzxDrxzA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiUnNmplvnQAhXFB8AKHWDuDWYQ6AEIWjAN

Petronilla de Meath Place Setting

Item: Place Setting

Date: Associated with 1324
Find Location: Associated with Meath
Current Location: Brooklyn Museum, New York.
Description:
Created by artist, Judy Chicago, in 1974-79 this place setting runner has a cotton/linen base fabric. Petronilla de Meath was the first Irish woman to be burned at the stake for the crime of heresy. She served as a maid to Dame Alice Kytler, one of the earliest women to be accused of witchcraft. In Kilkenny in 1324, Lady Alice Kyteler, along with her son and ten others, became one of the earliest targets of witchcraft accusations, centuries before the more famous rash of witch trials in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She was charged by the Bishop of Ossory with a wide slate of crimes, from sorcery and demonism to the murders of several husbands. Lady Alice was believed to have illegally acquired her wealth through magical and devilish means. With the help of relatives, Lady Alice used her connections to flee to England, taking with her Petronilla’s daughter, Basilia. Lady Alice’s followers, including Petronilla, remained behind. Some were convicted and whipped, but others, Petronilla included, were burned alive at the stake. Petronilla’s place setting employs many of the most familiar symbols of witchcraft from both Petronilla’s time and today, including the broomstick incorporated into the illuminated letter “P” on the front of her runner.

Further Information:
Curran, Bob. A Bewitched Land: Ireland’s Witches. Dublin: O’Brien, 2005.
Davidson, Sharon, and John O. Ward, trans. The Sorcery Trial of Alice Kyteler: A Contemporary Account (1324). Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2004.

Silver Pennies – Kells

Item: Silver Pennies of Edward I and Edward II
Date: 1325-50 AD
Find Location: In the vicinity of Kells
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Meath has very few coins from this period. This find was made in the 1950s but the circumstances were not recorded. The coins are stamped EDW REX ANGL DNS HYB meaning Edward King of England Lord of Ireland.

Further Information:
Michael Kenny, ‘A small coin hoard from Kells: silver pennies of Edward I and Edward II’, Ríocht na Mídhe VIII, 1 (1987) pp 110-112

Ring brooch – Boyerstown

Date: 13th Century
Find Location: Boyerstown, Navan.
Current Location:
Description:
This medieval ring brooch dating to about the 13th century was found during the early stages of excavation of a medieval house at Boyerstown, in advance of the M3 Clonee–North of Kells motorway scheme.. Ring brooches, which were used to fasten clothing, were worn by both men and women throughout medieval Europe. The brooch is typically tiny, just 30 mm in diameter, but close inspection reveals the nature of the markings on the front and back. The inscription on the front of the brooch is in Latin: IESVS NAZARENVS REX I. This is a shortened version of the titulus, that is the inscription placed above the head of Jesus Christ at his crucifixion: IESVS NAZARENUS REX IVDAEORVM, which translates as ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’. The strange creatures appear on the reverse of the brooch. There are four creatures, each in its own separate panel. Two of the creatures, occupying opposite panels, appear to be naturalistic depictions of birds. Mary Deevy

Seal Matrix

Item: Seal Matrix
Date: 1308-14
Find Location: Trim
Current Location: Unknown
Description:
The seal of Geoffery de Geneville. This seal comes from a monastic house of Dominicans in Ireland, founded by Geoffroy de Geneville (or de Joinville), Lord (France), brother of Jean de Joinville, the companion and historian of the king of France, St Louis. Geoffroy de Joinville was the confidential friend of Edward I, married in 1250 the co-heiress of Walter de Lacy, Maud de Lacy [AKA Matilde de Briouze], Lady of Corvesdale, of Ludlow, and of Meath.
The seal may come from the monastic house of Dominicans at Trim, (Baile Athatroin) in Ireland, founded in 1263 by Geoffroy de Geneville (or de Joinville), Lord of Meath, and his wife under the patronage of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Geneville arms are at the lower point of the seal.

Further Information:
E.A. Conwell A Ramble Round Trim (Dublin, 1878)

Brooch

Item: Silver Brooch ring
Date: 14th/15th Century
Find Location: Trim Castle.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
In 1854 Dean Butler described how this ring was discovered in the Castle yard. On the front is the abbreviated form of Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews and on the reverse is the abbreviated form of Casper, Melchoir and Balthasar, the three magi. In the middle ages the veneration of the three magi was believed to have given protection against witchcraft, illness and accidents.

Further Information:
Michael Potterton, Medieval Trim: history and archaeology (Dublin, 2005)
Mary B. Deevy, Medieval Ring Brooches in Ireland: A Study of Jewellery, Dress, and Society (Bray, 1998)

Bell, Processional Cross and Candlestick

Item: Altar Furnishings
Date: c. 1450-1500 AD
Find Location: Sheephouse, Oldbridge.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Very fine processional cross which, together with a pricket-candlestick and a small hand-bell of bronze, was discovered in 1899 by John Farrell, resting on the rock, covered by some stones, a few feet from the surface of the ground in a quarry at Sheephouse, near Oldbridge. These items may have belonged to nearby Mellifont Abbey and been buried during the Reformation. Found on lands once owned by Mellifont. The three pieces are almost certainly English imports.

Further Information:
JRSAI Vol. XLV (1915) Series VI, Vol. V Part I 31 March 1915 Armstrong, E.C.R.: Processional cross, pricket-candlestick, and bell found together at Sheephouse, near Oldbridge, Co. Meath, 27-31.

O’Reilly Money

Item: “O’Reilly money” Two examples

Date: 15th century
Find Location: Unknown but specimens were found in Oldcastle
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks
Description:
“O’Reilly money” was a base metal forgery of the Scottish or English Groat. O’Reilly’s Money has been identified by Michael Dolley as “plated copies of the clipped English groat of the last half of the 14th and first half of the 15th centuries.” The clipped groats usually weigh in the region of 30 grains.
O’Reilly’s Money is first mentioned in January 1447 when Parliament met at Trim, and was concerned that the O’Reilly Money was circulating in such volumes that an Act of Parliament was be passed outlawing its production and usage.
In 1840 a coin hoard containing no fewer than 71 clipped English groats was discovered at Oldcastle. The important sept of the O’Raghallaigh was centred in Breffny, and the Cavan-Meath mearing may be regarded as the epicentre of O’Raghallaigh influence.
Berry argued that the coins should be equated with the “cross caoile” money which he supposed to have been struck “by O’Reilly at Crossakeel” near Kells in the west of Co. Meath.

Further Information:
https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwjb1qDI-v3QAhVJBsAKHTUyBmUQFgghMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.britnumsoc.org%2Fpublications%2FDigital%2520BNJ%2Fpdfs%2F1967_BNJ_36_19.pdf&usg=AFQjCNEZAHEgvFrqtb–rr-7TTMAkpkKDg&bvm=bv.142059868,d.ZGg&cad=rja
https://oldcurrencyexchange.com/2016/03/29/obrien-rare-coin-guide-oreillys-money-1447-1459/

Patrick Coin – Trim

Item: Coin Henry VI half farthing called ‘Patrick’
Date: 1460
Find Location: Trim 1835
Current Location: Whereabouts unknown
Description:
In 1460 Richard, Duke of York, decreed that there should be a separate coinage for Ireland minted at Dublin and Trim. In 1461 Christopher Fox was appointed comptroller of the mints at Trim and Dublin.
In 1463 Germyn Lynch, masterworker of moneys at Dublin and Trim was ordered to make coins for Ireland. A coin called a Patrick was issued which had a bishops head in full face with a tiara and the word ‘Patricius’ round it and on the other side a cross between two stars and two spurs with the word ‘Salavator.’ In 1833 a Patrick coin was uncovered in Trim.
In 1835 Dean Butler published a list of his coins discovered locally in his book on Trim castle. The coins included a Trim half groat, Drogheda groat, Dublin half groat, three crowns all from the reign of Edward IV, a Drogheda penny from Richard III and three crown pennies from Henry VII.

Further Information:
J.B.S. MacIlwaine, ‘Notes on some Irish coins found at Trim’ in British Numismatic Journal 10, (1913), pp.309-12
Richard Butler, Some notices of the castle and o f the ecclesiastical buildings of Trim Trim, 1835.

Trim Groat

Item: Trim Minted Groat
Date: 1465
Find Location: Trim
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks
Description:
Cross and pellet style groat issued about 1465 from Trim Mint. In 1460 Richard, Duke of York, decreed that there should be a separate coinage for Ireland minted at Dublin and Trim. In 1461 Christopher Fox was appointed comptroller of the mints at Trim and Dublin. In 1463 Germyn Lynch, masterworker of moneys at Dublin and Trim was ordered to make coins for Ireland.

Altar Cross

Item: Altar Cross
Date: c. 1470
Find Location: Site of Greek Church, Trim.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Found in 1901 on the site of the Greek Church (Lackenash). Gilt bronze cross, the upper portion appears to have been broken and repaired. The front and back are decorated with scored ornament. The figure of Christ was attached by three rivets.

Further Information:
Michael Potterton, Medieval Trim: history and archaeology (Dublin, 2005)

Seal Matrix – Gaulstown

Item: Seal Matrix
Date: Medieval
Find Location: Gaulstown, Dunshaughlin
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Discovered in 1976 by Mary Everard in the mud walls of her home. A seal authenticates a document. This bronze matrix is pointed oval in shape, 6.6 cm in length. The device represents the Holy Trinity. On the reverse is SIGILLM: CONVENTUS: FRATRM: PREDICATORM DE MOLIGAR showing that the sela was the common sela of the Convent of Preaching Priors of Mullingar, a Dominican priory founded about 1237. The seal is relatively unworn so it was probably new when lost. The Mullingar priory held a small amount if lands near Dunboyne not too far distant from Dunshaughlin. A gold seal ring discovered at Girley, Athboy has some designs that might link it to the Mullingar priory.

Further Information:
Raghnall Ó Floinn, ‘Medieval seal matrix from Gaulstown, Co. Meath’, Ríocht na Mídhe VI, 4, (1978-9) pp 84-88.

Seal – Kells

Item: Seal
Date: 16th Century
Find Location: Kells
Current Location: British Museum
Description:
Acquired 1862. Brass seal-matrix for a counter-seal of a local or official seal; bronze; circular; high semi-circular ridge for handle at back; open hand surmounted by flaming star; sprays and patterns with dots in field; inscription; with wax impression. Diameter: 5 centimetres. Inscription Content: POSVI::DEVM::ADIVTOREM::MEVM. The appearance of the hand which might suggest an association with Ulster.

Ussher Medal

Item: Lead Medal obverse only
Date: 1820 Associated with 1625
Find Location: Dublin – Subject was Bishop of Meath
Current Location: British Museum
Description:
Gold Lead medal; obverse only. (obverse) Bust of Archbishop James Usher, right, wearing gown, stiff ruff, and cap on the head. Engraved by William Stephen Mossop.
Acquired by British Museum in 1849. Medallic Illustrations 1, published in 1885, states:
Rare. This medal was engraved in Dublin by the younger Mossop in 1820, who was prevented by illness from executing a reverse, or hardening the die of the obverse. None therefore were struck except in soft metal. It was one of an intended series of celebrated persons connected with Ireland.
Hawkins states (1885): “James Usher, the learned and distinguished Irish prelate, born 1580, was consecrated in 1620 Bishop of Meath, and in 1625 translated by James I to the Archbishopric of Armagh. He came to England in 1640, and the rebellion in the next year preventing his return to Ireland, Charles I conferred upon him the bishopric of Carlisle. He vainly endeavoured to assist Charles in making a treaty with the Parliament at the Isle of Wight, and afterwards witnessed the King’s last moments on the scaffold, from the shock of which he never recovered. He calculated the date of the Creation to have been nightfall on 22 October 4004 BC. Ussher’s chronology represented a considerable feat of scholarship: it demanded great depth of learning in what was then known of ancient history, including the rise of the Persians, Greeks and Romans, as well as expertise in the Bible, biblical languages, astronomy, ancient calendars and chronology. He died 21 March, 1656.”Further Information:
Alan Ford, James Ussher: Theology, History, and Politics in early-modern Ireland and England Oxford University Press (2007)
Richard Snoddy, The Soteriology of James Ussher: The Act and Object of Saving Faith, Oxford University Press (2014)
Knox, R. Buck (1967), James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, University of Wales Press

Scurlogstown Hoard

Item: Silver coins of Charles I (1625-49)
Date: 1625-49
Find Location: Scurlogstown
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
In the Ireland of the 1640s there was a huge amount of uncertainty due to the military conflict, famine and forced movement of people. Hoarding increases during periods of uncertainty. Meath suffered during this period.
These coins of Charles I were discovered at Scurlockstown in 1946 but all other details of the find circumstances are not known. The hoard included three coins, two shillings and one halfcrown.

Further Information:
Michael Kenny, ‘Silver coins of Charles I (1625-49), found at Scurlockstown, Trim’, Ríocht na Mídhe IX, 1 (1994-1995) pp 22-23.

Coin Hoard – Navan

Item: Coin Hoard – Inchiquin and Ormonde money from find illustrated
Date: pre 1645
Find Location: Abbeylands, Navan.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Hoard of 474 silver coins the latest being of Charles 1 (1645) found at Abbeylands, Navan, Co. Meath, found on 17 June 1921 during the cleaning out of a ditch in a black-glazed crock. 29 coins of Edward VI to Charles I, and a further find of 446 additional coins belonging to the same hoard, Edward VI to Charles I, 3 Scottish and 12 Spanish. Deposited after 1645.
The most interesting coins discovered in the Navan find were the Inchiquin and Ormonde money. During the period of the Great Rebellion in Ireland and the English Civil War a number of crudely made local coinages were produced in Ireland, mostly in Dublin. These coinage were almost exclusively of silver plate cut and struck into a number of denominations with simple patterns including often their weight or value. Most common among these issues is the ‘Ormonde Money’ issued by the Lord Justice the Earl of Ormond in about 1642-1645. The Inchiquin money (top illustration) was struck under the authority of the Lord Justices of Ireland in about 1642. This coin was struck on each side from the same punch – therefore the coin was made in two strikings not just one. It was originally believed that these coins were issued by Lord Inchiquin, but their issue by the Lord Justices in 1642 is now well established.

Further Information:
E. C. R. Armstrong, ‘Treasure Trove find in Co. Meath, Ireland’ in The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Sixth Series, Vol. 11, No. 1, June 30th 1921, pp. 78-79.
http://www.navanhistory.ie/index.php?page=abbeyland-hoard

Chalice

Item: Chalice
Date: 1635
Find Location: Crossdrum, Oldcastle.
Current Location: Fordham University, New York, U.S.A.
Description:
The Chalice of Crossdrum was found in 1750 in Crossdrum, in a souterrain, beside a priest’s skeleton, along with other liturgical items, including a chausable, altar-stone, crucifix and candlesticks. It is a small silver vessel, less than seven inches in height with an hexagonal base. Three of the sides of the base bear symbolic decorations, crudely etched. The front shows a figure of the Crucifixion, from which the cross is curiously omitted, surrounded by the instruments of the Passion and surmounted by an oddly conceived moon and stars. One of the sides shows a device representing a branch with acorns growing on it; the device on the other side is more difficult to classify. Around the base is the inscription in the quaint lettering of the period: ‘Ora pro Stephano Cook et Elizabetha eius uxore et Maria filia 1635’ (Pray for Stephen Cooke and Elizabeth his wife and Mary his daughter.)
The man who made the discovery, Hugh Reilly, handed the discovery over to his brother, the Rev. Bartholomew Reilly, a parish priest in Co. Meath. The chalice and paten were subsequently passed from Rev. Bartholomew Reilly to Fr. Owen Reilly, the former’s uncle, on the event of his death in 1782. Fr. Owen Reilly died in 1784. Debate surrounds the location of the chalice after Fr. Owen Reilly’s ownership.
The chalice resurfaced in 1832, under the possession of Rev. George McDermot, parish priest of Oldcastle. The chalice was kept in the parish, coming under the ownership of Father George Leonard, the successor parish priest. Fr. Leonard died in 1877, at the age of 85. The chalice then passed to Leonard’s nephew, Fr. Thomas Fagan and then passed to Fr. Fagan’s nephew, the Very Rev. Thomas Gaffney in Vermont. Fr. Gaffney, in his will, left the chalice in the hands of Fr. James A. Taaffe, S.J., of Fordham University.

Further Information:
Thomas Taaffe, ‘The Crossdrum Chalice.’ in Historical Records and Studies, Vol. 5. New York: United States Catholic Historical Society, (1909) pp 186-94.
Philip O’Connell, ‘The Crossdrum Chalice’ in The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (February, 1947) pp 125-34
John Smith The Oldcastle Centenary Book – a History of Oldcastle (Oldcastle, 2004)

Cannon Ball

Item: Stone Cannonball
Date: 1649? Probably 16th/17th-century
Find Location: Drogheda area
Current Location: Drogheda area
Description:
Stone cannonball found in Bryanstown, Drogheda, Co. Meath. Cannonballs were made in early times from dressed stone, referred to as gunstone. Stone cannonballs were used during the Civil War in England, 1644 to 1646.
This cannonball may date from Cromwell’s siege of Drogheda. The siege of Drogheda took place on 3–11 September 1649 at the outset of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. The coastal town of Drogheda was held by the Irish Catholic Confederation and English Royalists under the command of Arthur Aston when it was besieged by Parliamentarian forces under Oliver Cromwell. Thank you to John McCullen for this item.

Trim Token

Item: Token
Date: 1663
Find Location: Trim
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks
Description:
Token produced in Trim in 1663 by merchant, George Harris. Coin marked with GH. In 1660 George Harris was one of the people nominated by Trim Corporation to tax the parish of Trim towards the repairing of St. Patrick’s Church. Other merchants who issued tokens in Trim at this time include: Patrick Heylan, Patrick Clinton and James Kelly.
Tokens were issued by merchants. Most tokens of this period were issued in the eastern two thirds of Ireland. By the first half of the seventeenth century, the copper coinage in both Britain and Ireland was in complete disarray. Neither James I nor his son, Charles I, took much interest in providing small denominations. By 1663 the tradesmens’ tokens seemed to have been issued prolifically but were discontinued after 1673 when, on October 17, another proclamation from the king forbade anyone to issue them without license from his Majesty.
Another Trim token is now in the British Museum. Penny alloy token. A harp depicted. Minted by Patrick Clinton, Trim 1649-1672

Further Information:
https://oldcurrencyexchange.com/2015/05/11/the-proliferation-of-unofficial-irish-farthing-tokens-in-the-17th-century/
http://www.britishfarthings.com/Tokens/17th-Century/Ireland/Ireland.html
https://books.google.ie/books?id=lNgHAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=%22George+Harris%22+%22Trim%22&source=bl&ots=kKbbM1sBNv&sig=feH1Gr8PL2vuDEyLv-0hiyTbnd4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjk6pDEhf7QAhVMKMAKHfLODGMQ6AEINzAF
Navan Maces and Seal

Item: Navan Town Maces and Seal

Date: 1680 and 1661
Find Location: Navan.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks.
Description:
Navan has a pair of silver Maces. The maces are 50 cm long, weigh 1130 grammes and were made by Andrew Gregory in 1680. The Sergeants at Mace were paid 1 pence for every barrel of corn, which they could discover being sold without payment of duty.
The Navan seal was granted to the town by King Charles II after the restoration of the monarchy in 1661. The design of the seal seems to be based on the crest of the Cowan family. It consists of an arm emerging from a bank of clouds holding a heart. It also contains three symbols of the restored royalty – a crown, a harp and a rose. The motto which is written all round these enclosed symbols says “Restaurato Carlo Secundo Respiramus” which means “We rejoice in the restoration of Charles II”. This seal is dated by many writers at 1661 when Charles was restored to the throne but it may date from 1673 when Charles granted Navan a new charter with many additional rights.

Further Information:
http://www.navanhistory.ie/index.php?page=mace-and-seal
The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Series VI Vol. L part ll 1920.

St. Oliver Plunkett’s Ring and Watch

Item: St. Oliver Plunkett’s Ring and Watch
Date: 1681 AD
Find Location: Dunsany
Current Location: Held in secure location
Description:
Saint Oliver Plunkett (1st November 1625 – 1st July 1681) was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. He was born at Loughcrew, Oldcastle and related to the other Plunkett families in Meath at Killeen and Dunsany. maintained his duties in Ireland in the face of English persecution and was eventually arrested and tried for treason in London. He was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 1 July 1681, and became the last Roman Catholic martyr to die in England. Oliver Plunkett was beatified in 1920 and canonised in 1975, the first new Irish saint for almost seven hundred years. The Plunkett family of Dunsany kept the crook of St. Oliver Plunkett’s travelling cross, his Episcopal ring and his watch. St. Peters, Drogheda, houses the national shire to Saint Oliver Plunkett.

Further Information:
http://www.saintoliverplunkett.com/
“The Story of Dunsany Castle,” by Malachy Lynch and Mary-Rose Carty

Battle of the Boyne Musket

Item: Musket
Date: 1690
Find Location: Oldbridge, Drogheda
Current Location: Orange Order, Belfast.
Description:
The musket is believed to have been used at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 was purchased by the Orange Order in 2015. The privately-owned musket was on loan to the Irish state but returned in 2011 to its owner, a County Antrim businessman who wanted to remain anonymous. Made in the Tower of London in 1685 by George Fisher, gunmaker to English King James II, once carried by a Jacobite Dragoon, is also thought to have been active at the Siege of Derry in 1688/89. The musket made headlines in 2007 when the late Northern Ireland First Minister, Ian Paisley, presented it to the then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in a symbolic moment for the peace process at the opening of the Battle of the Boyne Visitors’ Centre in Co Meath.

Further Information:
Padraig Lenihan, 1690 Battle of the Boyne, Gloucestershire, 2003.
G. A. Hayes McCoy, Irish Battles, Belfast, 1990,
Richard Doherty, The Williamite War in Ireland 1688–1691, Dublin 1998.
http://www.battleoftheboyne.ie/

King William’s Gifts

Item: King William’s Gifts
Date: 1690
Find Location: Lismullen, Navan.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland.
Description:
Sir John Dillon’s close connection to Ormond, the Lord Lieutenant, may have resulted in William of Orange spending a night at Lismullen after the Battle of the Boyne. A number of personal items were said to have been given to the Dillons by William of Orange in 1690, two days after the Battle of the Boyne. The items included a glass decanter, a glass posset bowl, a bed-coverlet and two pairs of gauntlets. According to family tradition, King William slept at Lismullen on the 2 July 1690. In 1977 Millicent Dillon of Lismullen donated a number of items to the National Museum.
The posset bowl is a flint glass vessel used for posset, a mixture of milk with wine or ale. The decanter is made of flint glass of globe shape and gadrooned base, decorated with wheel carving of Willian III’s coat of arms, a field gun, pow3der kegs, pistol and sword.

Further Information:
Catriona MacLeod, ‘Some hitherto unrecorded momentoes of William III (1650-1702), Prince of Orange and King of England from Lismullen, Navan, Co. Meath’ in Studies ; an Irish quarterly review, 65 (1976), pp 128-143
http://www.historyireland.com/early-modern-history-1500-1700/fit-for-a-king-mementoes-of-william-of-orange-1650-1702-in-ireland/

Swift’s Table

Item: Table
Date: c. 1700 AD
Find Location: Laracor, Trim.
Current Location: St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin
Description:
A table used by Dean Jonathan Swift to celebrate the Eucharist in his church at Laracor, near Trim. In February 1699-1700 Swift was made vicar of Laracor, near Trim. With this appointment was united the adjacent rectory of Agher, and afterwards the living of Rathbeggan, all in the diocese of Meath. Swift ministered to a congregation of about fifteen and had abundant leisure for cultivating his garden, making a canal (after the Dutch fashion of Moor Park), planting willows, and rebuilding the vicarage.
Swift was the incumbent from 1700 until his death in 1745, and Laracor would have provided his principal income and Irish residence until he became Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1713, after which he employed a curate at Laracor. His lifelong friend Esther Johnson, known as Stella, had a house at Knightsbrook, 1.2km from Laracor church, after she first came to Ireland in 1701. The present church building dates to 1856 and was closed c. 1970.

Further Information:
James Reynolds, ‘Jonathan Swift – Vicar of Laracor’ Riocht na Midhe (1967) pp 41-54

Alabaster head of St John the Baptist

Item: The alabaster head of the decapitated St John the Baptist, his brow gashed.
Date: Medieval Period
Find Location: Associated with Kells
Current Location: Clongowes Wood College
Description:
At Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare, is an English alabaster head of St John the Baptist. Still with some paint and gilding, this relief panel has been scratched with the name of one Fr Betagh. This must be Thomas Betagh (1738–1811), a Jesuit priest, scholar and teacher, born in Kells, Co. Meath. Betagh, whose family had lost their lands in the time of Cromwell, for a time ran a school for clergy; among the school’s pupils was Peter Kenney SJ, founder of Clongowes Wood College. At the centre of the Clongowes panel, which presumably had once belonged to Betagh, is the severed head of St John, flanked by St Peter (with his customary keys) and a mitred bishop—almost certainly St Thomas Becket. Below them is the Lamb of God and, at top, are the remains of an angel with painted peacock-feather wings.
Possibly a speciality of the Nottingham workshops, alabaster heads of St John, like that at Clongowes, would often be fitted into wooden altarpieces and were much used in private devotional settings, such as in the home or private chapel. Four similar alabaster St John heads survive in Ireland. Were they perhaps a popular type of alabaster in Ireland? They certainly seem to have been a fairly affordable devotional art form in England.

Further Information:
F. Cheetham, English medieval alabasters: with a catalogue of the collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1984; Woodbridge, 2005).
J. Hunt & P. Harbison, ‘Medieval English alabasters in Ireland’, Studies (Winter 1976), 310–21.
P. Williamson, F. Cannan, E. Duffy & S. Perkinson, Object of devotion: medieval English alabaster sculpture from the Victoria and Albert Museum (Alexandria, VA, 2010).
http://www.historyireland.com/volume-22/holy-images-england-medieval-english-alabaster-sculpture-ireland/

Trim Town Maces

Item: Trim Town Maces

Date: 1728
Find Location: Trim
Current Location: In care of Meath County Council
Description:
The set of two silver maces were made in Dublin in 1728 by Master Goldsmith William Williamson and were presented to Trim Corporation by Garret Wesley from Dangan Castle.
William Williamson was located in Cole Alley and Castle Street. He was apprenticed to William Skinner in 1707 and then turned over to Alexander Sinclair. He became a Freeman in 1726 and was elected Warden from 1732 till 1735. He became Master of the Guild in 1737. Williamson became a freeman in 1740. He was churchwarden at St Werburgh’s in 1750. He was elected to the Common Council City of Dublin in 1752 and was Assay Master 1754-1770.
The maces survived the burning of Trim Town Hall in 1920 as they were stored in a fireproof safe. The Trim corporation had two serjeants at mace as two of their officers. The two serjeants at mace were appointed by the Portreeve (Mayor) for the period of one year but their terms were usually renewed each year. They executed the process of the Borough Court and were paid a salary of £5 per annum as well as other fees.

Coconut Chalice

Item: Coconut Chalice
Date: 1733
Find Location: Galtrim
Current Location: Church of Ireland
Description:
This chalice was used for the celebration of the Eucharist. Bishop Ellis recorded in “The State of the Diocese of Meath” that at “Galtrim they had no utensils for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper except a chalice of cocoa nut tipped with silver”. This record dates from about 1733 as Ellis was Bishop of Meath from 1732 to January 1734. The chalice disappeared from the church and came into the hands of Dr. Minchin of Kells who restored it to the parish of Galtrim. The stem of the chalice is made of ebony.

Further Information:
John Healy History of the Diocese of Meath (Dublin, 1908)

Crucifixion Stone

Item: Crucifixion Stone Tablet
Date: 1740
Find Location: Summerhill
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts & History, Collins Barracks,
Description:
This stone was discovered in O’Neill’s house (now Fields) around 1938 in a walled up small room. It depicts the crucifixion scene and a collection of the symbols of the death of Jesus Christ. The symbols carved on the stone include the sun and the moon, the ladder, the cock and the pot, the cord, the spear, the three nails, the hammer, the pincers and the temple. The stone was clearly used for secret Catholic worship.

Further Information:
Dean Anthony Cogan, The History of the Diocese of Meath Ancient and Modern (Dublin, 1862) 3 Volumes

Beggar’s Badge

Item: Beggar’s Badge
Date: 1742
Find Location: Kells
Current Location: Kells
Description:
Beggars’ badges were badges worn by beggars beginning in the early fifteenth century in Ireland and Britain. They served two purposes; to identify individual beggars, and to allow beggars to move freely from place to place. In medieval and early modern times, beggars were generally valued and respected for the news they carried and for their craftsmanship or their medical or musical skills.
Jonathan Swift wrote a satirical pamphlet in 1737 supporting the control of beggars. In it he writes:” I have for some years past applied myself to several Lord Mayors, and to the late Archbishop of Dublin for a remedy to this evil of foreign beggars; and they all appeared ready to receive a very plain proposal, I mean, that of badging the original poor of every parish, who begged in the streets; that the said beggars should be confined to their own parishes; that, they should wear their badges well sewn upon one of their shoulders, always visible, on pain of being whipped and turned out of town; or whatever legal punishment may be thought proper and effectual.”
The local parish vestry had charge of the local government and as such controlled begging. Thank you to Rev. William Seale for this item.

Shelf for Ludlow Loaves

Item: Shelves
Date: c.1760-1907
Find Location: St. Mary’s Church of Ireland , Navan
Current Location: St. Mary’s Church of Ireland , Navan
Description:
There was a shelf under the gallery to the right of the entrance door for Lord Ludlow’s Loaves. Lord Ludlow and the Ardsallagh Estate provided 5s. worth of bread each week for the poor. The Duke of Bedford continued this practice up to about 1907. In 1867 ten sixpenny loaves, were provided for the poor of the parish by the Duke of Bedford. The original donor, however, was Lord Ludlow, who directed that five shillings’ worth of bread should be provided weekly for the poor of this church.
John Preston was confirmed as owner of Ardsallagh in 1666. His grandson, also John, died leaving a daughter, Mary, as heiress. Mary married Peter Ludlow around 1727. Peter was grand nephew of a famous General Edmund Ludlow who fought alongside Cromwell against King Charles I. Peter Ludlow was M.P. for Meath in 1719 and 1727. Peter Ludlow died in Bath on the 19th of June 1750 and was succeeded by his son, also called Peter. Peter Ludlow was created Baron Ludlow of Ardsallagh in 1735 and Viscount Preston of Ardsallagh and first Earl of Ludlow in 1760. The second Peter married Lady Frances Saunderson and was succeeded by his eldest son, August, became the second Earl Ludlow and his second son George James the third Earl. George James left his estates to the Duke of Bedford who gave them to his brother Lord John Russell who was succeeded by his grandson. Lord John Russell was created Earl Russell in 1861.

The Christening Robes of the Earl of Darnley

Item: The Christening Robes of the Earl of Darnley
Date: 1767
Find Location: Associated with Athboy
Current Location: Sold by Adams Auctioneers
Description:
The Christening Robes of John Bligh 4th Earl of Darnley (born June 30 1767) A very rare and complete satin and silk embroidered suite, comprising a robe with lace trim and foliage borders; a pillow with tasselled corners; a quilt with similar borders; a cover; a canopy with ties; a lace bonnet with lining and a pair of other bonnets in Brussels lace John Bligh, b.1767 was one of the ‘miraculous’ children of the 3rd Earl of Darnley, who was M.P. for Athboy and a confirmed bachelor nearing 50. He surprised Dublin society by marrying Mary Stoyte, an heiress from Streete, Co. Westmeath. The 3rd Earl took seriously his conviction that he was in reality a teapot. In spite of his concerns that his spout could break-off in the night he fathered seven children. The 4th Earl, for whom these robes were made, had milder illusions, in that he claimed to be The Duke of Lennox. He married Elizabeth Brownlow of Lurgan.

Flintlock Holster Pistols

Item: A Pair Of Irish 22-Bore Rifled Brass-Mounted Flintlock Holster Pistols
Date: c. 1770
Find Location: Associated with Kells
Current Location: Sold by Auction by Bonhams
Description:

Made by F. Lord of Dublin, Circa 1770
The crest is that of Sir Thomas Taylor (20 October 1724 – 14 February 1795) who was MP for Kells, Co. Meath from 1747 to 1760, as was his father before him. He was created an Irish peer as Baron Headfort of Headfort in 1760, and Viscount Headfort in 1762. He was raised to an earldom as Earl Bective of Bective Castle in 1766. In 1783 he was installed Knight of St. Patrick and made a Privy Councellor in Ireland
With two-stage swamped sighted barrels each turned at the girdle and rifled with seven grooves, octagonal breeches each stamped with Co. Meath registration mark ‘ME 56/7’ on the top flat. Both engraved with owner’s crest, an earl’s coronet above, border engraved spurred pommels each with oval cap with a martial trophy against a stippled ground, trigger-guards with first pattern acorn finial and each engraved with a flower-head on the bow, turned brass ramrod-pipes, and original ramrods with brass-capped wooden tips, one with iron worm.

Further Information:
http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/the-duel-in-irish-history-by-james-kelly/
https://mylesdungan.com/2013/06/04/affairs-of-honour-the-irish-code-duello/
https://brendano7.com/2010/07/20/duelling-in-eighteenth-century-ireland/

Bishop’s Seal

Item: Seal of the Diocese of Meath

Date: c. 1778
Find Location:
Current Location: British Museum
Description:
Gold Oval silver seal-matrix of the See of Meath, Roman Catholic. It has a gadrooned back; open handle with grooved scrolls; shaped loop at end. A shaped shield of arms the See of Meath and Plunket, sable, three mitres argent (Meath) and sable, a bend argent, in sinister chief a castle of the same (Plunket); above, a cardinal’s hat. No legend. Pearled border. Patrick Joseph Plunket, Bishop of Meath, 1778-1837.
Patrick Joseph Plunkett was born in 1738 in Kells. Academically able, he was ordained in September 1764. He was appointed Bishop of Meath, a position he was somewhat reluctant to take up. His consecration took place in February 1779. En route to Ireland, the ship carrying his possessions was attacked and robbed by the famous American privateer John Paul Jones. On arrival in Meath, he set up his episcopal residence in Navan where he was inducted as parish priest in 1781. As bishop he had two main aims. First to revitalise the Church, demoralised through the effects of the Penal Laws and second to establish a system of education by which his people would free themselves from a position of ignorance and servitude and which would develop the practice of their religion. Bishop Plunkett restored the Catholic Church in Meath as a vigorous element in the lives of the people and made it a respected force in society. He is buried under St. Mary’s Church.

Further Information:
Text from ‘Catalogue of British Seal-Dies in the British Museum’, A.B. Tonnochy, London 1952, cat. no. 946.
http://www.navanhistory.ie/index.php?page=p-j-plunkett

Crucifix

Item: Crucifix
Date: 1792
Find Location: Navan
Current Location: St. Mary’s Church, Navan.
Description: This limewood crucifix is the sole surviving religious work by Edward Smyth and his sole surviving piece in wood. The figure was removed from the wall in 1949 and the following inscription was on the back “EWD SMYTH-DUBLIN-sculp-1792”. In 1973 the crucifix, was restored by the National Gallery’s Department of Conversation. Edward Smyth is thought to have been born in or near Navan in 1749. He and his parents moved to Dublin where Edward became a well-known sculptor. He is best known for his emblems of Irish rivers and the Royal Coat of Arms on the Customs House in Dublin. ASrchitect, James Gandon, described him as “an artist capable of the highest works fo art, either as a modeller or a sculptor.”

Further Information:
http://www.navanhistory.ie/index.php?page=h-g-leask-article
H.G. Leask, ‘The Edward Smyth Crucifix or The Navan Crucifix’ in Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 1950.

Token

Item: Token (Photo of similar token)

Date: 1792
Find Location: Market Square, Navan.
Current Location: Unknown.
Description:
Discovered in a wall at the stationary shop of the Meath Chronicle at Market Square in 1977 the coin was struck by the Hibernian Mining Company which was incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1792. The company struck the coins as there was a shortage of small denomination coinage throughout the British Isles. The tokens circulated widely and formed the basis of Ireland’s currency in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The token bears the company’s cipher “HMCo”. Around the edge are listed the surnames of the company chairman; Turner Camac, his brother; James Camac and the company’s founder John Howard Kyan. The Hibernian Mining Company operated a mine at Ballymurtagh ( the name appeared on the token found in Navan) on the western bank of the Avoca river, Co. Wicklow.

Further Information:
http://www.mining-memorabilia.co.uk/aimc.htm
http://www.countywicklowheritage.org/page/mining_in_west_avoca

Militia Button

Date: 1794
Find Location: Blackfriary, Trim.
Current Location: Irish Archaeology Field School (IAFS)
Description:
‘Longford Militia’ button was found during excavations of 18-19th century rubble layers covering the eastern range of buildings on the site. The button, presumably from the coat of one of the militia men, has a loop on the back to fasten through a button hole. The Longford Militia, as with all the militias, was founded in 1793 amid concerns for the security of the Irish colony (both internally and externally), when many of the regular Crown forces were engaged in the war with France. Historical sources can also trace the movements of the Longford Militia who, prior to 1857, were dispatched to regional headquarters nationwide (as well as occasionally to England) before being based permanently in County Longford.
The button is 2.1cm in diameter, made of copper, and is stamped with the Prince of Wales’ crest – consisting of three feathers rising through a gold coronet positioned – atop the motto ‘Ich Dien’ (I serve), with the words ‘Longford’ and ‘Militia’ written above and below this crest respectively. The button is identifiable as part of the first series issued by the Longford Militia that dates from 1793, when the militia was originally raised, to 1829. The Longford Militia were almost certainly in Trim in 1794.

Further Information:
http://iafs.ie/
http://iafs.ie/index.php/research-resources/

1798 Sword

Item: Cavalry Sword (similar to that owned by Lord Fngal)
Date: 1798
Find Location: Killeen Castle
Current Location: Was in local hands 1998
Description:
Irish Officer’s Sword with curved fullered blade double-edged towards the tip, etched and gilt with foliage, the crowned Royal Cypher, the Royal Arms and trophies on a blued panel over the lower half, gilt-brass stirrup hilt incorporating backstrap and pommel formed as a maned lionshead, and finely chequered ivory grip, in its original leather scabbard with signed gilt-brass locket.
A similar sword formed part of the auction at Killen Castle in the early 1950s and was purchased by a local person. Lord Fingal was one of the leaders of the government forces at the Battle of the Hill of Tara during the 1798 rebellion. The Battle of Tara Hill was fought on the evening of 26 May 1798 between British forces and Irish rebels rebels involved in the 1798 rebellion, resulting in a heavy defeat for the rebels and the end of the rebellion in Meath. Lord Fingal was the Captain of the Skreen Yeoman Cavalry. During the battle one part of the cavalry, commanded by Lord Fingal, preserved the right flank of the government forces.

Further Information:
L.J. Steen, The Battle of the Hill of Tara 26th May 1798, (Trim, 1991)
Richard Musgrave, Memoirs of the Different Rebellions in Ireland (Dublin, 1802)

Robert Emmet’s Watch

NO PHOTO
Item: Robert Emmet’s Watch
Date: 1803
Find Location: Unclear
Current Location: Unknown. Was on display in Rathbeggan House when it was the home of the Wilkinson family.
Description:
Robert Emmet (1778 – 1803) was an Irish nationalist and Republican, orator and rebel leader. After leading an abortive rebellion against British rule in 1803 he was captured then tried and executed for high treason. Emmet became a heroic figure in Irish history. His speech from the dock is widely quoted and remembered.
Rathbeggan was connected to the Standish and Wilkinson families who owned Rathbeggan House for 350 years until it was sold to the Brindley family in 1990. Originally owned by the Standish family, the house and lands came to the Wilkinsons through descent. In 1876 Henry Standish held an estate of 868 acres and died in 1885 aged 71 years, his successor was John Wilkinson who died in 1904, both are buried in the graveyard near the house. The Wilkinson family were closely associated with John Philpot Curran, the lawyer who defended many of the rebels of 1798. Curran’s daughter, Sarah, was the girlfriend of Robert Emmet who was executed for his part in the 1803 rebellion. Sarah gave Emmet’s watch to the Wilkinson family. I saw the watch when the Meath Archaeological and Historical Society visited the house a number of years ago. Also in the house were portraits of Curran, Emmet and Lord Kilwarden, who was killed in the 1803 rebellion.

It may be interesting to note that the present owner of the property Mr Wilkinson is married to a great grand niece of “John Philpot Curran”. The house and lands wer formerly in the possession of a paymaster in Cromwell’s army and a letter written by Cromwell himself is still in possession – I believe – of Mr Wilkinson. schools

Penal Cross

Item: Penal Cross
Date: 1806
Find Location: Moymet, Trim, c. 1950.
Current Location: Locally held
Description:
This penal cross was discovered when Smith’s old house at Moymet, Trim, fell about 1950. A new hay barn is on the site. This family of Smith’s founded J & E Smith in Trim. The cross has on the back the date 1806. A considerable number of these small wooden crucifixes have survived from the early 18th to the mid 19th centuries. They are all alike even in the technique of carving which suggests that they were produced by a family of hereditary carvers in County Donegal for sale to the pilgrims visiting St. Patrick’ Purgatory in Lough Derg. These wooden crucifixes measure 10 cms long, the face is without features, the torso is very long, the loincloth is indicated by strokes, the legs are fused, the feet only are indicated by strokes, a very large nimbus and INRI over the head.
There are similar penal crosses from Meath in the Diocesan Museum in Mullingar, the Museum at Maynooth College and the National Museum of Ireland, Castlebar. It was once said that the crosses had short arms so they could be more easily hidden in sleeves but probably the more realistic answer is that longer arms would have easily been snapped off by accident.

Copper Collecting Box

Item: Copper Collecting Box
Date: 1820
Find Location: Navan
Current Location: Navan
Description:
A church collecting box with turned wood handle and engraved inscription “Navan Church” and dated 1820. This unusual type of collecting box were thought to have been used mostly by the Church of Ireland. Presumably the long handle allowed them to be handed round and up to the balcony with ease. Copper collecting boxes, with long handles, were sometimes irreverently referred to as “warming pans.” They have quite gone out of use, and are preserved merely as curiosities. It is to be feared that many were be lost, an example from Moynalty was sold at auction in England.

Further Information:
David Hall Irish Brass Bronze and Copper 1600 – 1900
John Healy History of the Diocese of Meath, (Meath, 1908)

County Meath Deputy Lieutenant Epaulettes

Date: 1830
Find Location: Associated with Moynalty
Current Location: Sold at Auction
Description:
A very fine pair of box pattern County Meath Deputy Lieutenant epaulettes, attributed to Captain John Arthur Joseph Farrell of the Royal Meath Militia, Deputy Lieutenant and High Sheriff of County Meath. Silver bullion strap edged with corded inniskillen. Within the silver crescent are gold corded bullion shamrock leaves. The crescent, supports fine twisted tassels. The underside is lined with plush crimson silk and edged with red velvet and leather. Contained in their original crimson lined, velvet padded storage box.
John Arthur Joseph Farrell was born in Dublin in the year of 1825. He was a Captain in the Royal Meath Militia, and also Deputy Lieutenant and High Sheriff of County Meath. He and his family resided at Moynalty House, County Meath and were landowner’s of over 4,000 acres. His son was also commissioned into the Royal Meath Militia. Captain Farrell died on the 27th of November 1904.

Kells Lace

Item: Kells Lace
Date: Nineteenth Century
Find Location: Kells.
Current Location: Some in National Museum of Ireland. This example is in private hands.
Description:
Emma Colston née Hubbard established a similar lace venture in Kells, County Meath, in 1825, patterning Nottingham twist on tambour frames in a manufactory which employed 80 children aged between 8 and 15 by the end of its first year. Her family owned a lace manufacturing business in Nottingham.
As well as Kells lace, Carrickmacross lace pre-dated Limerick by almost a decade and there was a long hand-made lace tradition. Of Kells lace, it was reported to the 1836 Poor Law Commissioners that “the lace is sent to Nottingham for sale and it is only the cheapness of labour that enables it to withstand English competition”. However, Reynolds, Kells Lace, p. 51, states that Kells lace was made by girls in the country “and pedlars go round to the cabins to buy lace off them”.

Further Information:
Mairead Reynolds, Kells Lace, Irish Arts Review, 2, (1985) pp. 50-54.
Pamela Sharpe & Stanley D. Chapman, Women’s employment and industrial organisation: commercial lace embroidery in early nineteenth-century Ireland and England, Women’s History Review, 5:3, (1996) pp 325-351

Bust of James McDonnell

Item: Bust of James McDonnell (1763 – 1845): Physician – ‘Father of Belfast Medicine’
Date: 1841
Find Location: Kilsharvan
Current Location: The Royal Victoria Hospital – a bronze copy is in the Ulster Museum
Description:
The McDonnell family inherited Kilsharvan in the mid nineteenth century. The McDonnells originated in County Antrim and were a noted medical family. In 1920 Penelope McDonnell Stevenson offered to donate to the Ulster Medical Society a bust of her great-uncle, Dr James McDonnell. When the society disposed of its building in 1965 the bust was offered to the Royal Victoria Hospital but it vanished a short time later. In 1937, Dr Robert Marshall gave to the Royal Victoria Hospital a bronze copy of a bust of McDonnell. The marble original dating to 1844 is now on permanent loan to the Ulster Museum. Another copy of the bust was on display at Kilsharvan House while the family were in residence. It is possible that the Kilsharvan bust was the original bust, and that after its exhibition at the RA in 1842, copies were made for other branches of the family.
James McDonnell become a leading figure in medicine and medical education and also in literary, scientific and cultural activities. McDonnell pioneered the use of anaesthetic in Ireland and also blood transfusion. In late 1846 MacDonnell, a surgeon at the Richmond Hospital in Dublin, decided to try out the use of ether as an anaesthetic but was determined to see its effects first before using it on a patient. He had a vaporizer made and tried it on himself “rendering myself insensible for several seconds some five or six times” The patient was an 18 year old girl Mary Kane from near Drogheda who had developed suppurative arthritis of the elbow after getting a thorn in it whilst collecting firewood. She had deteriorated rapidly and was admitted to the hospital two weeks after the injury. After four weeks of treatment she had lost weight and had developed a sacral bed sore. MacDonnell decided on 31st December that she needed an amputation and that he would do it the next day. On Friday morning the 1st January 1847 he gave her the anesthetic and proceeded with the amputation. Twice during the procedure “she gave evidence of suffering” but when she woke up as the last sutures were being put in place she declared that she had felt no pain.

Further Information:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1891779/
http://www.impalapublications.com/blog/index.php?/archives/3109-James-McDonnells-bust,-by-James-OFee.html

Maharajpoor Star 1843

Item: Medal
Date: 1843
Find Location: Oldbridge, Drogheda
Current Location: Unknown – Sold at Bonhams Auctions
Description:
Medal fitted with replacement rear fitting, and quality gilt-metal suspension and buckle, engraved (Captain Fitzherbert Coddington H.M. 40th Regt).
The Kingdom of Gwalior, whose capital lies south of Agra in the north of modern India, was ruled along with Ujjain by the Maratha Scindia dynasty from 1731, although after the defeat of the Maratha states in the in 1818 it was forced to recognise British suzerainty. In 1843 however Maharaja Jankojirao II Scindia died, with his appointed heir Jayajirao still an infant of 10 years, and the Maharaja’s widow, not Jayajirao’s mother, was party to the instalment of a regency under the Prime Minister, that opposed the succession of the British-supported Jayajirao. The British campaign then ousted Dada Khasgee Wala and emplaced the young Maharajah on his throne; it culminated in a decisive battle at Maharajpur. For participation in that battle, this star was issued by the Honourable East India Company.
Major Fitzherbert Nicholas Coddington, was born in Meath, he was the third son of Nicholas Coddington of Oldbridge Co.Meath.Dangerously wounded at the muzzles of the Maharatta’s guns, leading his men he was the Officer responsible for capturing four of the Maharatta’s regimental standards. He was mentioned in despatches from Major General Valian to General Sir H.Gough. Entitled to Candahar, Ghuznee Cabul medal. He died at Brighton on the 6th April 1853 aged 45, from the wounds suffered at Maharajpoor.

Further Information:
https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21707/lot/8/

Drogheda Harp

Item: Harp played at O’Connell’s Monster Meeting Tara, 1843 (Photo: History Ireland)
Date: 1843
Find Location: Drogheda
Current Location: Private Hands
Description:
One of the Drogheda harps, played by the student William Griffith at the Tara monster meeting in 1843, that has remained in the ownership of a Drogheda family for several generations. Daniel O’Connell held a ‘monster meeting’ on 15 August 1843, was held at the Hill of Tara. Five students from The Drogheda Harp Society played a welcome to O’Connell at the meeting. One of the harps, played by the student William Griffith, still survives. This extraordinary instrument has remained in the family for several generations. The Drogheda Harp Society was started on 15 January 1842 by Fr Thomas Burke, OP, who appointed Hugh Frazer as teacher for the school. The Drogheda Harp Society was the last remaining institution to teach the Irish harp. Timber for the Drogheda harps was supplied by Mr Ball of Ballsgrove House, and a local craftsman, Francis Flood, oversaw their construction and decoration, with the boys working on their own harps. Strands of plump shamrocks in a figure-of-eight pattern fill the upper area, and wreaths of shamrocks encircle patriotic inscriptions in Gaelic. On the left (facing) is the popular slogan ‘Eiren go-bragh’ (‘Ireland forever’), still found on today’s souvenir t-shirts from Ireland. On the right side is ‘Eire óg’ (‘Young Ireland’), for the group of young activists led by Thomas Davis, who founded The Nation newspaper to assist the Repeal campaign. The inscription underneath, ‘Inis na Naein’, is less clear.

Further Information:
http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/a-drogheda-harp-instrument-and-icon/
Patrick Cooney’ Drogheda Harp Society’, The Journal of the Old Drogheda Society (1976) Vol 1.

Repeal Salver

Item: Silver Salver
Date: 1843
Find Location: Hilltown, Bellewstown.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks.
Description:
A tray of Irish silver was presented to Nicholas Boylan in 1843 by members of the Movement to record their dismay at his dismissal by the government from his position as commissioner of peace. This ornamented silver salver, raised on three feet, was made by Dublin silversmith Samuel Walker in 1759
A framed hand-written address to Boylan from Daniel O’Connell, describing him as “a patriot and a truehearted Irish gentleman” dated Richmond Prison, 6th September 1844, was also acquired. O’Connell and his associates had been imprisoned for sedition and this address is dated the day of their release.
Other prominent members of the Repeal Movement including Thomas Ray, secretary of the Repeal Association and Charles Gavan Duffy, editor of the Nation newspaper also signed this address.
The meeting on the Hill of Tara on 15th August 1843 was chaired by the MP for Meath, Nicholas Boylan of Hilltown House, another supporter of the Repeal Movement The Nation newspaper said there were three quarters of a million people present on the hill that day. The Times, no supporter of nationalism, recorded one million. The Illustrated London News had just 100,000 on Tara that day. O’Connell’s procession from Dunshaughlin included a trumpeter on horseback, drummers, a harp playing ‘The Harp that Once’ from atop of an open carriage drawn by six grey horses, footmen six deep, horseman four deep, and banners and flags bearing the emotive word ‘Repeal’. The Repeal Movement of 1842-43 demanded the repeal of the Act of Union of 1800 and the restoration of a separate Irish parliament. The tray was acquired by the National Museum in 2005. Thank you to Fiona Ahern and Bellewstown Heritage Group for this item.

Further Information:
Riocht na Midhe Vol. XXIV 2013.
Bellewstown Heritage Group History of Hilltown and the Boylan family (Bellewstown, 2011)

Hypodermic Syringe

Item: Hypodermic syringe
Date: 1844
Find Location: Dublin
Current Location: Worldwide
Description:
Hypodermic syringes (hypodermic means ‘beneath the skin’) consist of a hollow needle attached to a syringe. They pierce the skin and inject substances into the bloodstream. They are also used to extract liquid such as blood from the body. The hollow metal needle was invented by Irish physician Francis Rynd and is generally credited with the first successful injection in 1844 .
Dr Rynd was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1801 to James Rynd and his third wife Hester Fleetwood, of Ryndville, County Meath. Ryndville House stood in the parish of Rathcore, near Enfield in southwest Meath. The house was demolished in the 1970s.
Dr Rynd became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1830. In 1836, he took a surgical post in the Meath Hospital. Dr Rynd, who had a lucrative private practice, also served as medical superintendent of the Mountjoy Prison.
In an article in March 1845 he outlined how he injected fluids into a patient with a hypodermic syringe, which he had done on a female patient in May 1844. This was eight years before Alexander Wood, who has mistakenly been credited with inventing the first hypodermic syringe in 1853. Rynd died in Dublin in 1861 after suffering a heart attack aged 60.

Further Information:
http://our-ireland.com/dr-francis-rynd-irish-inventor-of-the-hypodermic-needle-and-syringe/
https://nagp.ie/prof-william-shannon-awarded-dr-francis-rynd-innovation-award-2016/

Famine Pot – Loughcrew

Item: Famine Pot
Date: 1847
Find Location: Loughcrew
Current Location: Loughcrew
Description:
Famine pots are giant cast iron vessels, which were created to cook large volumes of soup to feed the starving in 1847, the bleakest year of Ireland’s Great Hunger, now known as ‘Black 47′.
Prior to 1847 famine relief was provided through employment schemes. Recognizing the need for farmers to be free to work the land, the British government abandoned the work schemes, and replaced them by providing the starving Irish with ‘soup’ through the Soup Kitchen Act of January 1847. Soup was cooked in large cast iron cauldrons which have come to be known as famine pots, soup boilers or workhouse pots. These durable pots were made in a Quaker iron foundry owned and run by the Darby family in Coalbrooke in the Severn Valley of England. Initially 600 of these durable cost iron pots were supplied by the British government. An additional 295 pots were provided by the Society of Friends or the Quakers. Soup was made in the famine pots using a variety of recipes or from whatever scraps the people could afford. The nutritional value of these soups was very questionable. By October of 1847 all of the government soup kitchens had closed. The Irish were expected to live off the new potato harvest, which was ready to be picked in autumn of 1847. Unfortunately this harvest was merely one quarter of a normal Irish potato harvest, and the three million people who depended upon the soup kitchens for survival were left to fend for themselves.

Further Information:
Cecil Woodham-Smith The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849 (1962, London)
Christine Kinealy This Great Calamity: the Irish Famine, 1845-52 (Dublin, 1994)
Christine Kinealy Private Charity to Ireland during the Great Hunger. The Kindness of Strangers (London, 2013)

Wellington Death Mask

Item: Deathmask
Date: 1852
Find Location: London
Current Location: Privately Summerhill. Mask came from the Castle Leslie.
Description:
Wellington Death Mask by George Gammon Adams plaster cast of death-mask, 1852 9 3/8 in. (238 mm) high. This is the death mask of the Duke of Wellington, a plaster model of his face taken on the day he died, on 14 September 1852. The Duke was 83 years old at the time of his death, probably from a stroke. Although over 30 years had passed since the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and his political career had not been popular, the Duke was still a national hero, and his death led to widespread mourning.
During the 19th century it was common to make a model of the face of someone who had recently died. This could be used to produce plaster casts, like this one, as a memento or commemorative item for the friends and admirers of the deceased. This cast, unlike some, was not widely distributed – perhaps because it shows the Duke as an elderly and fragile man, rather than as the young, dashing war hero of popular imagination.
The Duke died in Walmer Castle, Deal, England, which had been his official residence as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. This post was the last of many military and government offices he had held since his victory at Waterloo in 1815. The Duke had been, in turn, Warden of the Tower of London, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, and Prime Minister. In the last position, he became for the first time ever unpopular with the public, by opposing attempts to reform the British system of parliamentary representation.
The Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley grew up in Trim and spent most of his childhood at Dangan castle. The young Arthur Wesley was educated in Trim and at Drogheda Grammar School before going to Eton. In 1789, he was elected MP for Trim.

Further Information:
http://www.patrickcomerford.com/2015/04/wellington-irish-hero-at-waterloo-who.html
http://atriptoireland.com/2013/11/11/the-wellington-monument-a-controversial-statue-in-a-small-irish-town/
http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/the-duke-of-wellington-s-drunken-dublin-years-1.2244707

Flagon

Item: Flagon
Date: 1855
Find Location: Trim
Current Location: Trim
Description:
Flagon inscribed “The gift of the Very Rev. Richard Butler, Dean of Clonmacnoise and for 35 years vicar of Trim. Easter 1855”.
Richard Butler, Dean of Clonmacnoise, was born near Granard, County of Longford, in1794. He was educated at Reading; in 1814 he entered Oxford, and in 1819 received priest’s orders, and was inducted vicar of Trim. There his life was passed in attendance on the duties of his cure, and in literary and antiquarian investigations. He was intimate with the best minds of the day in his own party: Maria Edgeworth was an occasional visitor at his house. He was one of the founders of the Irish Archaeological Society, for which association he edited Clyn and Dowling’s Annals. Before 1840 he had brought out two editions of his work on the Antiquities of Trim. Possibly one of the first books to have been produced on the medieval history and antiquities of an Irish town which was first published in 1835. Four editions of Butler’s book were published in his lifetime and it has remained an important source on medieval Trim. He died in 1862, aged 67, and was interred beside the church where he had ministered for forty-three years.

Further Information:
Martina Quinn, Dean Richard Butler Historian of Trim 1794-1862 150th Anniversary of his Death (Trim)

Rules of Croquet

Item: Rules of Croquet
Date: 1850s
Find Location: Oatlands, Durhamstown, Navan
Current Location: Worldwide
Description:
Croquet is a game that involves using a mallet to hit a ball through a hoop. The origins of the game of croquet are obscure; but it is clear it was developed in Ireland in the early part of the nineteenth Century. The Field of 1858 (quoted by Betty Prichard in The Croquet Gazette of April 1976) mentions “meetings of the County Meath Croquet Cracks”. They were mostly young and met at each other’s houses, and the reporter was George Annesley Pollock of Oatlands and Newcastle, Co Meath. Later that year he sent a copy of his rules under the pseudonym of “Corncrake” and called them “The Rules of the Oatlands Club”. That is the first mention of a croquet club.” The noted croquet historian Dr Prior, in his book of 1872, makes the categoric statement “One thing only is certain: it is from Ireland that croquet came to England and it was on the lawn of the late Lord Lonsdale that it was first played in this country”. This was about 1851.
George Pollock held Oatlands, Durhamstown, Navan. George Annesly Pollock was the son of Arthur Hill Pollock of Mountainstown. George married Louisa McKay of Stephen’s Green, Dublin in 1846. George died in 1867 leaving three sons and three daughters.

Further Information:
http://www.croquetireland.com/node/4

Medal for Gallantry

Item: Papal Medal for Gallantry
Date: 1860
Find Location: Clonalvey
Current Location: In private hands
Description:
In 1860 the Pope faced the loss of his territory to the emerging state of Italy. An Irish Battalion was organised and despatched to the Papal States. The war lasted less than a month. The Papal War of 1860 ended with the fall of Ancona where as many as 100 Irish soldiers in the Battalion of St. Patrick were killed or wounded during those few weeks in September. For their service, each officer and enlisted man was awarded the Medal for Gallantry “Pro Petri Sede Medaglia” by Pope Pius IX. The medal is a circular, silvered nickel-silver medal with hollow centre with inverted Latin cross. With a circular ring in the form of a scaled mythical creature swallowing its own tail, on ornate swivel suspension with ribbon bar; the face circumscribed ‘PRO PETRI SEDE’ (literally ‘for the seat of Peter’, meaning for the Vatican) above and ‘PIOIXPMA*XV’ (= Pius IX Pontifex Maximus 15th year, for the 15th year of the reign of Pope Pius IX = 1860); the reverse circumscribed ‘VICTORIA OVAE VINCIT MUNDUM FIDES NOSTRA’ (The victory of our flock conquers the world with our faith). One such medal is recorded in Clonalvey in 1993.

Further Information:
http://www.elegantetruria.com/history-page/irish-soldiers-in-italy-1860/
Olive C. Curran, History of the Diocese of Meath 1860-1993 (Mullingar, 1995) Vol. 1 p. 108

Letter from American Civil War

Item: Sympathy letter

Date: 1862

Find Location:

Current Location: National Archives of America

Description:

James Briody was part of an emigrant family from Castlerahan area, Co. Meath, who left Ireland for North Andover, Massachusetts. An express driver before his enlistment, he joined up the 20th Massachusetts on 11th August 1862. The 24 years-old was described as 5 feet 7 inches tall, with blue eyes, light hair and a fair complexion. On the night of 9th December, two days before the fight for the streets of Fredericksburg, he wrote to his widowed mother, seemingly with little idea of what was to come. On the evening of 11th December 1862 the 20th Massachusetts Infantry – the “Harvard Regiment”– was one of the units engaged in driving the Confederates from the city of Fredericksburg. The city was eventually taken by the Federals, but for the 20th Massachusetts it had come at a staggering cost. They had suffered 97 casualties in the space of just fifty yards including James Briody.

His Captain, Henry Livermore Abbott penned the letter to James’s mother on 17th December 1862: “I don’t wish to address to you the common words of condolence merely- I feel, myself, as well as you, too much the greatness of the loss. The first time, I saw James Briody, I was struck with his honest, manly, cheery face. I found him to be one of the two best of all the recruits who joined my company. It gave me a great pang when I saw him lying dead in the street. He was killed instantly. A board with his name on it, marks his grave in a vacant lot in Fredericksburg. Believe me that I sympathize most deeply with you, in your awful loss.”

Further Information:
Widow’s Certificate WC9732 of Margaret Briady, Dependent Mother of James Briady, Company I, 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.
https://irishamericancivilwar.com/2016/12/09/communicating-death-creating-memory-on-fredericksburgs-streets/
O’Reilly, Francis Augustin 2003. The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock.
Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park.
Fredericksburg Civil War Trust Page.

A rhinoceros horn knobkerrie

Item: A rhinoceros horn knobkerrie
Date: 1863
Find Location: Associated with Dardistown Castle
Current Location: Sold at auction by Bonhams Auctioneers
Description:
Southern African oval head above tapering bowed shaft, 86cm along the outer curve Capt. Henry Osbourne, Dardistown Castle, Co. Meath, Ireland. Acquired during hunting trips throughout 1863.
This rhinoceros horn fighting club Izintonga was carved from a single horn. It would have been made only for the use of a Zulu king. The club would have been both prestigious and also powerful; the strength of the animal from which it was taken gave it enormous potency and therefore only a King, a great medicine man, could own it.
Clubs with heads of this size were outlawed by the British who passed a law stating that the diameter of the head had to be of a size small enough to fit into the owner’s mouth.

RDS Cattle Show Medal

Item: Royal Dublin Society Spring Cattle Show medal
Date: 1867
Find Location: Dublin/ Priesttown
Current Location: Sold by auction by Whytes Auctioneers
Description:
Early silver 1867 RDS Spring Cattle show medal. Engraving on reverse notes that it was awarded to “Thomas Butler Best Kerry Heifer Calved in 1865 No. 261” Thomas Butler lived at Priestown House, Priesttown, Kilbride, Dunboyne. A well known farmer and member of the RDS he was one of the principle cattle breeders in Ireland. Thomas Butler JP of Priesttown House died 19th Feb 1900 in his 77th year.

Fairy Coat

Item: Fairy Coat
Date: 1868?
Find Location: Llyod, Kells.
Current Location: Unknown
Description:
Discovered (?) during the summer of 1868 by John Abraham ffolliott as he went for a morning walk near a ‘fairy ring’ at Llyod, Kells. The coat measures 6.5 inches from collar to hem, with long sleeves 5 inches on outside, 1.75 inches across the shoulders. Coat is fully lined with a velvet collar. Coat made of brownish-grey material in a style for the late 18th century. On the left lapel, was a metal button advocating the Repeal of the Union. Coats shows sign of wear.
Further Information:
Rosemary ffolliott, ‘ffolliott of Co. Meath’ in The Irish Ancestor Vol. 1, No. 1, 1969

Trade Banners

The Brick and Stonelayers Banner

The Boyne Fishermen’s Banner
Item: Trade Banners
Date: c. 1873
Find Location: Drogheda
Current Location: Drogheda Museum, Millmount.
Description:
Situated within Millmount Museum in Drogheda, one of the first items or artefacts that the visitor is presented with on entering the museum is the Trade Banners of the 19th century which represent the various different trade societies that were in operation at this period including the banners of the Brick and Stone Masons, the Carpenters and Weavers Banners and that of the Labourers Society among others. William Reynolds painted all the Drogheda Trade Union banners along with some thirty more Guild banners. Reynolds was born in September 1842 at Dowth and lived at Oldbridge. He died at the young age of just 39 in December 1881 and was buried in Donore Graveyard. The processional banners of the ‘Boyne Fishermen’, a splendid nine by seven foot, oil on canvas, depicts three fishermen on the Boyne, at Tom Roe’s Point, downstream from Drogheda. The Drogheda Society discovered this banner in an outhouse, at Miss Murphy’s residence in Francis Street. In 1873 Bernard Finglas of Francis Street and the brothers Matthew and Edward Murphy, Scarlet Street, on behalf of the fishing community, commissioned William Reynolds.

Further Information:
Moira Corcoran and Peter Durnin The Drogheda Banners (Drogheda, 2001)
http://slanehistoryandarchaeologysociety.com/index.php/famous-people/12-william-reynolds-the-banner-artist
http://www.independent.ie/regionals/droghedaindependent/news/william-reynolds-and-trade-banners-27158828.html
http://www.independent.ie/regionals/droghedaindependent/localnotes/banner-artist-william-reynolds-27105422.html

Pewter measure

Date: Victorian
Find Location: Drogheda area
Current Location: Drogheda area
Description:
Pewter measure, Victorian quarter-gill, standard spirit measure (35ml), stamped by Inspector of Weights and Measures. The gill (jill) is a unit of measurement for volume equal to a quarter of a pint. It is no longer in common use, except in regard to the volume of alcoholic spirits measures. In Ireland, the standard spirit measure was historically 1⁄4 gill. In the Republic of Ireland, it still retains this value, though it is now legally specified in metric units as 35.5 ml. Thank you to John McCullen for this item.

Raffle Ticket

Item: Raffle Ticket
Date: 1874
Find Location: Drogheda area
Current Location: Drogheda area
Description:
Raffle ticket, 7th March 1874, with 32 prizes for raising funds to rebuild Siena Convent Chapel, Drogheda, signed on reverse by James McCullen, Beabeg. Some prizes supplied by Meath residents. The convent, dedicated to St Catherine of Siena and popularly known as Siena Convent was founded in the 18th century. The Dominican Order in Ireland wished to found a new convent of Dominican nuns so Dr Hugh McMahon, Dominican Provincial, recalled from Brussels Catherine Plunkett, a close relative of Blessed Oliver Plunkett to found a convent in Drogheda in 1722. For 200 years Dominican sisters of Drogheda were custodians of the head of St Oliver and in 1921 the head was transferred from Siena convent to St Peter’s. Thank you to John McCullen for this item.

The Empress’s Riding Crop

Item: Riding Crop
Date: 1875
Find Location: Rahinstown, Rathmolyon
Current Location: Private Collection, Channel Islands. Sold by Adam’s Auctioneers.
Description:
The Empress of Austria’s riding whip, c.1875 with ivory simulated cord grip, silver band with the imperial crest. The pommel is in the shape of an imperial crown and the whip is contained in a glazed mahogany presentation case with a silvered crest plate engraved with the imperial Hapsburg Arms on the back.
Empress of Austria presented the whip to the Master of the Meath Hunt, Captain Robert Fowler, during a visit in 1879.
In February 1879 Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, popularly known then and since as Sisi, arrived in County Meath. In the early spring of 1880 the Empress again visited Ireland, going straight to Summerhill Unhappily married, restless and inclined to melancholy, she found distraction in hunting and it was this sport which brought her to Ireland. Throughout her six-week stay in the country she followed the hounds almost daily with the Ward Union and the Meath and the Kildare Hunts. Her own animals not proving suitable for the Irish terrain, local owners lent or sold the Empress their mounts. During her 1879 visit and on a second occasion the following year the Empress stayed at Summerhill House.

Further Information:
http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/erin-cordially-welcomes-the-empresselizabeth-of-austria-hungary-in-ireland-1879-and-1880/
http://www.mkheritage.co.uk/eoa/docs/Summerhill.html
https://theirishaesthete.com/tag/summerhill/
https://archive.org/stream/elizabethempres00burggoog/elizabethempres00burggoog_djvu.txt

Daniel O’Connell Centenary Medal

Item: Daniel O’Connell Birth Centenary Medal
Date: 1875
Find Location: Drogheda area
Current Location: Drogheda area
Description:
Daniel O’Connell (Centenary of Birth)- Bust to right; Inscribed Daniel O’Connell M P,; Born Aug 6TH 1775 Died May 1847. Reverse.- Round tower, harp, and wolf-dog, with sun rising over the sea. Back: Catholic Emancipation Repeal / Centenary 1875. Daniel O’Connell born 6 August 1775 was often referred to as The Liberator or The Emancipator. He campaigned for Catholic Emancipation—including the right for Catholics to sit in the Westminster Parliament. Thank you to John McCullen for this item.

Rules of Polo

Item: Rules of Polo (Photo: John Watson on polo horse)
Date: 1870s
Find Location: Bective
Current Location: Worldwide
Description:
In 1891, John Henry Watson, one of the most famous equestrian sportsmen in Ireland and to this day known as the ‘Father of Polo’, went to live at Bective Demesne, later purchasing the estate. Watson pursued a military career as a Cavalry Officer and in 1874 travelled to India where he saw the game of polo as it had been played in India for centuries. It is said that his commander-in-chief, General Frederick Roberts, asked Watson to formulate a set of fundamental rules for the game. It was actually in Meath that the first ever game of polo was played in Ireland on Gormanstown Beach in 1870 between a Meath team and a team from the 9th Lancers. . Watson is said to have played in this game.in 1870. After Watson retired from the army in 1884 he returned from India to Bective and devoted himself to equestrian sports, breeding hunters and polo ponies, and set up polo playing pitches at Bective. His passion for the sport let him to teach players a new way of playing the game of polo, introducing the now familiar ‘riding off’ and the positional play that is still used today. He achieved international status when he memorably captained the winning All Ireland Polo Club at the inaugural Westchester Cup final in Rhode Island in 1886. He was Master of the Foxhounds and used Bective Demesne as home for the Meath Hunt, erecting kennels within the demesne that are still in use today. His polo playing career came to an end in 1905. He died suddenly at Bective in November, 1908. His remains were interred at Bective Church.

Cheque to Parnell

Item: Cheque to Charles Stewart Parnell
Date: 1880
Find Location: Drogheda area
Current Location: Drogheda area
Description:
Cheque to Charles Stewart Parnell, 1880 in support of the Land League. Signed on rear by Parnell. Meath launched Charles Stewart Parnell onto the political stage in 1875 when he was elected as Member of Parliament for the county. John Martin, M.P. for Meath died in 1875 and Parnell sought the vacancy. Parnell visited Kells to see the Bishop of Meath, Dr. Nulty, who gave him his support. Parnell canvassed in all the towns and villages of the county and was accompanied on many of these visits by the Kells Brass Band. Parnell topped the poll and bonfires blazed in celebration and the successful candidate was carried around Market Square, Trim in triumph.
In his maiden speech he declared that Ireland was not a geographical fragment of England but a nation in its own right. By 1879 Parnell, M.P. for Meath had become the leader of the Irish Home Rule Party. In that year Parnell’s success was greeted by a crowd of twenty two thousand supporters in Market Square, Navan and a banquet.
Parnell became heavily involved in the land reform, perhaps influenced initially by Bishop Nulty. Parnell advised tenant farmers to “keep a firm grip on their homesteads.” The Land League was formed in 1879 with Parnell as President, perhaps an unusual position for a Protestant landlord.
In 1880 Parnell was elected for three constituencies, Meath, Mayo and Cork and he selected to represent Cork. The following year Parnell was imprisoned in Kilmainham Jail for his Land League activities. Various tenant purchase acts were passed which eventually sorted out the land problem. Thank you to John McCullen for this item.

Irish National Land League membership card

Item: Irish National Land League membership card
Date: 1880
Find Location: Drumconrath
Current Location: Sold by Whyte & Sons Auctioneers
Description:
Letterpress with manuscript on card. A scarce Land League membership card issued by the Drumconrath Branch to James Lynch. With objects of the League printed on reverse.
The Irish National Land League was an organisation of the late 19th century which sought to help poor tenant farmers. Its primary aim was to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. The Irish National Land League was founded at the Imperial Hotel in Castlebar, Co. Mayo, on 21 October 1879. At that meeting the MP for Meath Charles Stewart Parnell was elected president of the league, As a result of the Land War, the Irish National Land League was suppressed by the authorities in 1882.

Further Information:
Bull, Philip. Land, politics and nationalism: A study of the Irish Land Question (Gill & Macmillan, 1996).
Cashman, D.B. & Davitt, Michael The Life of Michael Davitt and the Secret History of The Land League (1881)

The Ashes

Item:
Date: 1882
Find Location: Associated with Athboy
Current Location: The Lords MCC
Description:
Ivo Bligh, the eighth earl of Darnely, was captain of the England cricket team in 1882 and made the throwaway remark joking that he had come “to regain the ashes”.
A mock obituary had appeared in the Sporting Times, following Australia’s inaugural Test match victory in England. “In affectionate remembrance of English Cricket,” it read, “which died at the Oval on 29th August 1882. Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances. RIP. NB The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.”
A fellow passenger on the long voyage had been Sir William Clarke, a wealthy Australian who’d been in England collecting his knighthood from The Queen. Clarke invited the England team to Rupertswood, his estate near Melbourne, to play a friendly prior to the Test matches. And it was at Rupertswood where Lady Clarke and her close friend Florence Morphy, the Clarkes’ music teacher, playfully handed Bligh a small urn. Here, they told him, were the ashes he’d come for.
Bligh took a considerable fancy to the young music teacher who had handed over the urn. He returned to England a few months later not just with the Ashes, by now deserving of a capital A, safely in his luggage, but also to ask his parents to approve his proposed marriage to Florence. They refused. So he returned to Australia the following year and married her anyway.
Florence was the present Lord Darnley’s grandmother, and she later told his mother, her daughter-in-law, that it had been a veil, easily enough mistaken for the word “bail”, that she and her friend Lady Clarke burnt that day. As for the venerable urn itself, Lord Darnley thinks it was a scent bottle, probably taken from Janet Clarke’s dressing table. “Grandfather stayed in Australia for a few years after getting married,” he added. “My father was born there in 1886. But shortly after that he came back to England, and the Ashes sat on his desk until he died in 1927. Two years later, Grandmother gave them to Lord’s, basically for safe keeping.”

GAA Sporting Cup

Item: Co. Meath G.A.A. 1887 Sporting Cup
Date: 1887
Find Location: Associated with Kells
Current Location: Meath County Library

Description:
An unusual Chalice type Cup, with bright cut design and inscribed “Kells G.A.A., 1887,” approx. 21cms (8 1/4″) high, not marked. This may have been presented by the Meath G.A.A. Council to the members of the Kells Team, beaten in the First County Championship (under the G.A.A. auspices) to mark the occasion. The first Meath County Final took place on 17th April 1887, and was won by Dowdstown who defeated Kells 1-0 to 0-0

Virtual All Ireland Medal

Item: All-Ireland medal
Date: 1896
Find Location: Navan
Current Location: Whereabouts unknown. Sold at Auction by Whytes Irish art Auctioneers.
Description:
9 ct rose gold by Moore & Co. Grafton Street Dublin. PC monogram to obverse surrounded by shamrock and floral decoration, “Virtual Championship of Ireland 1895” engraved on reverse. Medal presented to Peter Clarke of Pierce O’Mahony’s club from Navan for the 1895 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final, played on 15 March 1896, the first final to be played in Jones’ Road (later Croke Park) and also Meath’s first appearance in a final. Peter Clarke, a butcher from Trimgate Street, Navan played as part of the full back line against Tipperary Club Champions, Arravale Rovers, who won by 0-4 to 0-3 in controversial circumstances. Dublin referee, J. J. Kenny noticed that he had a mistake when adding the scores and the result of the game was in fact a draw. The match was over and the result declared but the referee wrote to the Central Council and to national newspapers pointing out his error. Despite this, Pierce O’Mahony’s announced they would not seek a replay and were happy to have the result stand and an All Ireland “Virtual Championship” winners medal was presented to the members of the club who played that day. The match is commemorated by a plaque on the Hogan Stand at Croke Park.

Further Information:
http://whytes.ie/13Main1WIDE.asp?Auction=20110416&Lot=437&IMAGE=437_1

Ox Collar Ballygarth

Item: Ox Collar
Date: 19th Century
Find Location: Ballygarth, Julianstown.
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland – Country Life
Description:
The last place in Ireland where oxen were used to ploughing was the Pepper estate at Ballygarth where they worked up until 1907. This ox-collar made by Thomas Oonan of Julianstown was presented to the National Museum. Kit Traynor of Smithstown, Julianstown, who died aged 99 in 1966, remembered ploughing with oxen. Four animals were yoked to the plough and the oxen had names Bony, soldier, Ranger and Dandy. The animals were imported from France.

Further Information:
Michael Ward, ‘The Parish of Ballygarth’, Ríocht na Mídhe IV, 2, (1968) pp 79-87.

Grand Jury Plates

Item: Grand Jury Plates
Date: Late Nineteenth century
Find Location: Rahinstown House
Current Location: Various places including some in the County Library, Navan.
Description:
A Victorian Staffordshire part dinner service, ‘Persiana’ each piece printed ”Meath Grand Jury”. Some Lord Lieutenants of Meath had a set of these plates and there was a set in the Courthouse, Trim, where the Grand Jury sat.
The Grand Jury was the forerunner of the modern County Council. It was made up of members selected by the High Sheriff from the leading landowners in the County. Its primary role to raise money for a variety of local public works by means of the county cess or rates.
Catholics were not permitted to serve on grand juries until 1793. Although after that time the jury lists were still predominantly Protestant. Presentment Sessions were held prior to the assizes, at which the jurors considered presentments – grants for the construction and maintenance of roads and bridges, as well as other items. Grand Juries were in existence since Norman times. Landowners made up the Grand Jury itself, selected by the Sheriff of the County. Services provided and paid for by Grand Jury Cess, a rate payable by occupiers, included making and repair of roads and bridges, construction of courthouses and levying for support of district hospitals, schools and prisons. Meath Grand Jury, as an administrative body, was replaced by Meath County Council under the 1898 Local Government (Ireland) Act.

Further Information:
http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/environment-geography/transport/growth-of-transportation-/roads-and-toll-roads/the-grand-jurys-responsib/
http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/digital-book-collection/digital-books-by-county/westmeath/the-grand-juries-of-the-c/

Ark of the Covenants

Item: Ark of the Covenant – Not found – Photo shows excavations underway by British Israelites
Date: Associated with 1899
Find Location: Hill of Tara
Current Location: Unknown
Description:
Arthur Griffith, William Butler Yeats, George Moore and Douglas Hyde campaigned against the British-Israelites when they sought to destroy the Hill of Tara in search of the Ark of the Covenant between the years of 1899 and 1902. In a letter published in the London Times on June 27th, 1902, and signed by Douglas Hyde, George Moore and W.B. Yeats, the trio voiced objections “All we can do now under the circumstances, is to draw the attention of the public to this desecration. Tara is, because of its associations, probably the most consecrated spot in Ireland and its destruction will leave many bitter memories behind it.”
Arthur Griffith protested on Tara in the company of William Butler Yeats, George Moore and Douglas Hyde, despite being ordered off the site by a man wielding a rifle.
The British Israelites believed that the Ark of the Covenant was buried on the Hill of Tara. The Ark of the Covenant contained a copy of the Ten Commandments given to Moses by God.
In June 1899, Walton Adams and Charles Groom arrived at Tara to commence explorations. They approached the landowner of the Hill who was Gussy Briscoe of Bellinter House and he allowed them to rent part of the Hill from him on a weekly rent.
Lady Gregory and William Butler Yeats objected to the Hill of Tara being destroyed by these religious maniacs and serious archaeologists also objected but there were no laws which could have prevented the dig going ahead. Destroying the Rath of the Synods all the diggers discovered were some rock trenches and a number of bracelets which they threw into the Boyne. They also uncovered a number of wooden boxes buried by Gussy Briscoe. Apparently there was a curse on whoever found the Ark of the Covenant and when a digger came upon one of these wooden boxes everyone scarpered and only came back when they thought it was safe. Briscoe would also go up and bury pieces of coal for them to find. The excavations came to an end in 1903, largely due to the pressure exerted in the media by Maude Gonne and other nationalists.

Further Information:
Mairéad Carew Tara and the Ark of the Covenant (Dublin, 2003)

Baptismal Gown

Item: Baptismal Gown
Date: c. 1900?
Find Location: Enfield
Current Location: Enfield
Description:
This christening gown belonged to the Cosgrave family of Newcastle, Enfield. At that time, it was common to baptise babies soon after birth, as infant mortality was high and parents feared that an infant might die before being christened, and therefore be destined for limbo.
The gown is quite large for a new born but is embellished with different designs. The gown was handed down the generations and used for each new child in turn. Thank you to Marie Cosgrave for this item.

Further Information:
http://ymfashionmagazine.com/irish-christening-gowns-much-more-than-shamrocks-and-lace/

Pulsocon

Item: Pulsocon Hand Vibrator
Date: c. 1900
Find Location: Drogheda area
Current Location: Drogheda area
Description:
Macaura’s Pulsocon Hand Vibrator. The action is a plunging motion of the center disk at the end combined with a rotating eccentric weight. It is secured with one hand and the vibrating plate placed over the desired body part. Turning the handle with the other hand produces a surprizingly intense vibration over the affected area. There were also applicators that would screw into the centre disk. Marked Pat. applied for, Serial No. 6681. Could be from as early as the early 1880’s or as late as about 1920. Invented by Dr. G.J. Macaura. Thank you to John McCullen for this item.

Further Information:
http://www.royalalberthall.com/about-the-hall/news/2017/january/from-the-archives-dr-macaura-and-the-pulsocon/
https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&ved=0ahUKEwjL-sqhnK7SAhXGJ8AKHUoNCQYQFghCMAg&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thackraymedicalmuseum.co.uk%2FThackrayMuseum%2Fmedia%2FBooking-Form%2FJamie%2520Stark%2FMacaura-Pulsocon.pdf&usg=AFQjCNEeuUfIFc9hh6lp0a-Nr34SeE03dA&cad=rja

Electric Car 1900 Dunsany

Item: Cleveland Sperry System Electric Three-Seater Stanhope
Date: 1900
Find Location: Dunsany
Current Location: Whereabouts unknown. Sold by Bonham Auctioneers.
Further Information:
Elmer A. Sperry arrived in Cleveland in the later years of the nineteenth century to assist in setting up an electric street railway company. His Sperry Engineering Company built its first electric carriage in 1898 and, joining forces with the Cleveland Machine Screw Company in 1899, Sperry entered motor car production. Coachwork, chassis design and suspension followed closely horsedrawn vehicle principles but here was a state-of-the-art, self-propelled vehicle, running almost in silence, that was capable, allegedly, of 18mph. Initially marketed as Cleveland, Sperry System cars, later models were simply known as Sperry and in 1900, venturing into Europe, the Sperry won a gold medal at the Paris Exposition. This is one of two known surviving Cleveland electric vehicles listed in the Veteran Car Club of Great Britain Handbook.
This car was acquired at auction in London some 25 years ago, becoming part of a small collection of cars in Ireland from whom the present owner acquired the car in 1991. The car carries a distinctive Irish registration number, NI 3, which was first owned by Sir Horace Plunkett – founder of the cooperative movement in Ireland and son of Lord Dunsany.

Further Information:
https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21903/lot/216/

Silver Biscuit Barrel

Item: Silver Biscuit Barrel
Date: c. 1900
Find Location: Drogheda area
Current Location: Drogheda area
Description:
Silver biscuit barrel, awarded to Nicholas Connor, Irish Mile Champion c. 1900. Gifted to Annie McCullen.

Boer War Medal

Item: Queen’s South Africa Medal with Bars: Orange Free State & Transvaal
Date: 1901
Find Location: Clonalvey
Current Location: Unknown
Description:
This medal was awarded to Richard McGrane of Clonalvey, who joined the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in 1895 aged 18. He had been a messenger by trade prior to enlistment. He served at home, in India and South Africa. Appointed a corporal he served during the Tirah campaign in India before being transferred to south Africa. The Queen’s South Africa Medal is a British campaign medal which was awarded to British and Colonial military personnel, civilians employed in official capacity and war correspondents who served in the Second Boer in South Africa. The Queen’s South Africa Medal was instituted by Queen Victoria in 1900, for award to military personnel, civilian officials and war correspondents who served in South Africa during the Second Boer War from 11 October 1899 to 31 May 1902.
Mc Grane serving with the 2nd Battalion arrived in South Africa from India at the close of 1901. They were sent to operate in the Pietersburg district under Colonel Colenbrander, and did good service there. In his telegram of 13th April 1902 Lord Kitchener said: “Beyers’ laager having been located at Palkop, the force under Colonel Colenbrander moved by different routes from Pietersburg so as to block all the principal outlets. The march was successful, and at 3 pm on the 8th a half-battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, led by Colonel Murray, attacked the entrance to Molipspoort, covering the enemy’s position. The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers advancing magnificently in the face of opposition, and making skilful use of cover, by dusk had seized a hill to the east of Poort”.

Further Information:
http://www.angloboerwar.com/unit-information/imperial-units/563-royal-inniskilling-fusiliers

First ever Camogie match medal

Item: Medal awarded to ‘M. S. Uí Floinn’ for Ireland’s first ever Camogie match in 1904
Date: 1904
Find Location: Navan
Current Location: Sold at auction by Whytes Irish Art Auctioneers
Description:
This Gaelic Atlethic Association medal was awarded to M. S. Uí Floinn. Medal in the same form as All Ireland Championship medals of the period and hallmarked Dublin 1904. Engraved on reverse “M. S. Uí Floinn 1904″The efforts to found a new Gaelic female stick-and-ball game first began in 1903 when draft rules were drawn up by Máire Ní Chinnéide, Seán Ó Ceallaigh, Tadhg Ó Donnchadha and Séamus Ó Braonáin. Through the efforts of Ní Chinnéide and the other members of Keating Branch of the Gaelic League (Craobh an Chéitinnigh) the first ever camogie match in Ireland was played before the public on 17 July 1904 at the Navan Agricultural Society Grounds in County Meath between Craobh an Chéitinnigh and Cúchulainn. The Freeman’s Journal noted a few days later that “On Sunday in connection with the Aeridheacht held in the grounds of the Meath Agricultural Society at Navan, the first inter-club Camoguidheacht match took place… both teams were attired in graceful costumes, the Cuchullain colleens wearing light blue with red sashes and the Keating Gaels wearing light blue with yellow ties, the colours of the branch…. The game was fast throughout and it was within five minutes of the call of time before the first score was recorded, a goal for the Keating Club…” It was 1912 before there would be an inter-county Camogie match and 1932 before the All-Ireland Senior Camogie Championship started. In 2004 the historic match was commemorated at Pairc Tailteann where a plaque was unveiled to mark its centenary.

Photographic Albums

Item: Photographic Albums
Date: 1908 to 1926
Find Location: Bellewstown
Current Location: Bellewstown
Description:
Four large albums of family photographs 1908 to 1926 taken by the members of the Boylan family of Hilltown House, Bellewstown. Contain images of hunting; race-going; early twentieth century farming and farm machinery; First World War; Easter Week Drogheda 1916; early cars.
Hilltown House was located near Bellewstown in east Meath. A two storey house Hilltown had a courtyard of outbuildings and stables dating from a similar period as the house. Bence-Jones described Hilltown as a well proportioned house of two storeys erected by Nicholas Boylan about 1810 although another source dated a house at Hilltown to 1760. One of the demesne gates opened directly onto the Bellewstown Racecourse. Hilltown house was vacated by the Boylans in the 1980s and fell into disrepair. The Bellewstown Heritage Group recorded that the house was dismantled stone by stone. A modern house was erected on the site of the original house. According to ‘The parish of Duleek and over the ditches’ the Boylan family came from Cavan and initially resided in a house at Ratholland, which is now in ruins.

Further Information:
Bellewstown Heritage Group History of Hilltown and the Boylan family (Bellewstown, 2011)

Ballinacree Banner

Item: Banner
Date: 1911
Find Location: Ballinacree, Oldcastle
Current Location: Heritage Room, Ballinacree Community Centre.
Description:
The Banner, which is the centrepiece of the busy hall, was ordered by Ballinacree Fife and Drum Band members in 1911. Messrs. W. Ahern, J. Gibney, Ned Alwill and M. Flood paid the then substantial sum of £14 – raised locally – to a Dublin designer to acquire the piece. Ned Alwill collected it from Oldcastle railway station on his ass and cart, despite its height and massive frame. It proved an instant wonder locally. The banner received its first outing in 1913, at the unveiling at Parnell monument in Dublin. It was again on display at Tara in 1948, and in Cavan a year later. It was seen regularly at the Pattern Day in nearby Finea, and also featured at the annual Loughcrew Mass and the Oldcastle Fleadh. Some time ago, Emily Naper, Professional Gilder, was commissioned by the Ballinacree Hall Committee to repair and clean the banner at a cost of £900. The hall is only its latest home, having previously been stored in the school, as well as in Husseys and Gibneys.

Further Information:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~ballinacree/banner.htm

Ulster Covenant

Item: Covenant
Date: 1912
Find Location: Signed at Kells
Current Location: Public Records Office, Northern Ireland
Description:
The Ulster Covenant, also known as Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant, was signed by just under half a million men and women from Ulster, on and before 28 September 1912, in protest against the Third Home Rule Bill, introduced by the British Government in that same year. A number of Meath people signed the covenant.

Cigarette Box 1914

Item: Cigarette Box Photo: Marion Gilsenan, Athboy.
Date: 1914
Find Location: Western Front but associated with Athboy.
Current Location: Private Hands
Description:
The Princess Mary Gift Fund box is an embossed brass box that originally contained a variety of items such as tobacco and chocolate. It was intended as a Christmas present to those serving at Christmas in 1914 and was paid for by a public fund backed by Princess Mary. It was anticipated that the majority of eligible recipients would receive an embossed brass box, one ounce of pipe tobacco, twenty cigarettes, a pipe, a tinder lighter, Christmas card and photograph but quite early on the committee in charge received strong representations that an alternative gift should be made available for non-smokers.
Mattie Mooney from Athboy received this gift at Christmas 1914. He also wrote about his own war service. Mattie Mooney wrote that his own war service in France was at the beginning and end of the war.
“At the outbreak of war, I had two years service with the RAMC (Royal Army Medical Corps), and my unit was on manoeuvres in the south of Ireland. I was appointed to No 1 General Hospital, 1st Army Corps … the GOC in chief was Sir John French, and my CO was Colonel Dalton. We landed in France on August 18th 1914 at Le Harve and pitched our canvas hospital about ten miles northwards near the railway line, and erected an impromptu siding for loading and unloading casualties. Ten days later, we got an order to strike canvas and get going as quickly as possible. Colonel Dalton joined a medical unit at the Marne and he was killed at the battle. Our unit went to St Nazaire by sea, and after a week we returned by land to Etretat, a tourist village in the coast, and we took over some hotels as hospitals, one of which was Hotel De Roches Blanches.” Mattie recalls that before striking canvas during the retreat from Mons, they treated many casualties which were sent to the hospital ship, Austurias, at Le Harve. The wounded were in a dirty condition, and many wounds were septic.”
After the war, Matt Mooney returned to Ireland, trained as a watchmaker in Carlow and opened his own business on Main Street, Athboy, which he operated for many decades afterwards.

Further Information:
http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en/contributions/3750#prettyPhoto
http://www.meathchronicle.ie/news/roundup/articles/2014/08/09/4031910-athboy-mens-roles-in-the-theatre-of-the-great-war
http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/first-world-war-princess-mary-gift-box

Prayerbook

Item: Prayerbook
Date: 1915
Find Location: Western Front. Associated with Enfield.
Current Location: Private Hands
Description:
James McLoughlin (1895-1966) from Kilcorney, Enfield, County Meath, Ireland enlisted in the Royal Garrison Artillery, British Army, in Dublin on 3 November 1915 and served as a Corporal on the Western Front from 1916-18. He was wounded in action in March 1917 and carried a piece of shrapnel in his head for the rest of his life. He remained in the British army until June 1922 when he was serving with Q Coast Battery in Cork. The only surviving material from his war service is a crucifix and prayerbook which he had with him in France. The prayerbook shows the signs of shrapnel damage. He enlisted in the newly formed Irish Free State army in July 1922 retiring as Director of Artillery in 1955.
Further Information:
http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en/contributions/3289

Ashtray from WWI

Item: WW1 Ashtray made from Howitzer Shell
Date: World War 1 1914-18
Find Location: Western Front
Current Location: Janice Matthews, a relative of John Cunniffe who served in World War 1 currently holds the item.
Description:
Brass ashtray made from the base of a howitzer shell case. John (Jack) Cunniffe was a Private in the Royal Munster Fusiliers, 2nd/4th Battalion, 18291. Baptised Athboy, 20 January 1887. Son of Michael and Elizabeth Cunniffe, Clifton Lodge, Athboy and later of Cloughbrack, Ballivor. Father’s occupation: (1901) Land Steward, (1911) Farmer. He had passed two exams in accountancy when he joined the Dubliners in 1914. His brothers, James and Michael, also fought in the war and survived. Enlistment location: Ranelagh, Dublin. He was engaged in the battle of Beaumont Hamel in March 1918. Surviving the battle he was mortally wounded near St. Omar and died in St. Omar Hospital. Died of wounds, France & Flanders, 24 April 1918. Age: 31. His remains were repatriated to Athboy for burial in the family plot.

Prisoner of War Rings

Item: Rings made by a prisoner of war at Oldcastle
Date: 1914-18
Find Location: Oldcastle
Current Location:
Description:
Shortly after the outbreak of war in 1914, Germans and other foreign nationals living in Ireland, faced arrest and internment as “enemy aliens”. Men from all over Ireland were detained, and held at a camp in Oldcastle. The intention was to hold them in this converted building until the war concluded. There was a great deal of ingenuity among the German and Austrian Internees. The Anglo Celt reported that the prisoners “amuse themselves by making toys of all descriptions” adding, they were “adept at this type of business and have turned out very fancy toys with the aid of pocket knives”.
In 25th May 1918, the prisoners were taken from Oldcastle, by special train, to the North Wall (Dublin). There, they were put on a ship and sent to Knockaloe Camp on the isle of Man.

Further Information:
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/the-history-show/programmes/2014/0608/619146-the-history-show-sunday-8-june-2014/
John Smith The Oldcastle Centenary Book – a History of Oldcastle (Oldcastle, 2004)

Irish Tricolour Flag

Item: Irish Flag
Date: 1916
Find Location: Dublin/Drumbaragh, Kells.
Current Location: American Irish Historical Society, New York
Description:
The Irish tricolour, modelled on the original French republican emblem, dated to the nineteenth century, but only became widely used from 1916 onwards. This flag was flown in Dublin during the 1916 Rebellion.
A number of tricolours were captured by British soldiers. Sergeant Thomas Davis of Lisburn, who served with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, captured one flag during a clear-up of the city. The 53-year-old soldier was wounded in fighting before the Battle of the Somme and was sent home to Lisburn, County Antrim, to recuperate. Sergeant Davis presented the flag to Dr. George St. George of Lisburn, who was closely identified with the Ulster Volunteer Force. A note from Davis, which accompanies the flag, reads: “Captured by British Troops at GPO Dublin, April 1916, and given to Dr George St George by an old war veteran, Sgt. Davis.” Dr. St. George died in 1922 whereupon the flag passed to his only daughter, Ethelreda, whom married Captain Samuel Waring of the British Army. Samuel Waring was the youngest son of Lucas Waring, Bellbrook, Glenavy, County Antrim. The couple lived at Riverside House, Kells. Upon the death of his wife in 1951 Captain Waring presented the flag to his Kells neighbours and close friends, the Sweetman family of Drumbaragh. Grateful for their friendship and being aware of the family’s past association with Sinn Féin Captain Waring supposedly uttered the words, “You may have more use for this than I do” when presenting the flag. The flag was handed over to John Walter Sweetman, eldest son of John Sweetman, the second president of Sinn Féin.
The Sweetman family placed the flag for auction in New York in 2010. The flag failed to reach its reserve price and was withdrawn. The straightened times in Ireland meant the Irish government was unable to make a bid for the flag. The family then donated the flag to the American Irish Historical Society, New York where the flag is on display as part of a long-term loan arrangement. The flag measures 74 by 159 centimetres.

Further Information:
Noel French 1916 Meath and More’ (Trim, 2016)
https://www.adams.ie/9343/A-1916-Tricolour-An-Irish-linen-Tricolour-flag-sewn-in-three-parts-and-dyed-yellow-white-and-green-believed-to-have-flown-from-the-GPO-Dublin-1916-74-x-159cm-29-1-x-62-6-PROVENANCE-Captured-by-Br
http://irishecho.com/2011/06/1916-tricolor-to-go-on-display-in-new-york/

1916 and War of Independence Medals

Item: 1916 Rising Service Medal, 1917-21 War of Independence Medal with Active Service bar, and 1966 Rising 50th Anniversary
Date: 1916
Find Location: Newport, Tipperary.
Current Location: Sold at Auction by Whyte’s Auctioneers
Description:
Awarded to Patrick Bradley, (1893-1972) Ballymckeogh, Newport Co. Tipperary Irish Citizen Army, College of Surgeons Garrison. Accompanied by two spent FN rifle cartridges from the volley over his grave in 1972.
Patrick Bradley was born in 1893, the son of Myles and Anne Bradley, nee Henry at Newtowngirley, Fordstown. Patrick moved to Dublin and lived with his brother, Luke, in 1 St Mary’s Terrace, Sarsfield Road, Inchicore. He worked at Kingsbridge railway station for the Great Southern Railway. Patrick joined the Citizen Army and later recalled a visit by the police to Liberty Hall to seize a “seditious” publication. Suddenly James Connolly appeared with a gun in his hand and ordered the police to “Drop those or I’ll drop you.” A moment later Countess Markievicz appeared with her gun in her hand and the police left empty handed. Patrick was mobilised on Saturday evening and spent Easter Sunday night in Liberty Hall before marching out on Monday to Stephens Green. The group were under attack from the British troops stationed at the Shelbourne Hotel. He lost his job as a result of taking part in the Rising. After his release he went to work in Oldcastle and reluctantly joined the local Volunteer unit after much persuasion. He lived in Newport, County Tipperary until his death in 1972. The Bradley brothers were present on Easter Sunday and Monday in Dublin during the 1966 commemoration.

Further Information:
Noel French, 1916 Meath and More (Trim, 2016)

1916 and War of Independence Medals

Item: His 1916 medal, engraved with his name and numbered 84 verso, with ribbon and clasp bar, in original box with complimentary slip.
His 1916 Ribbon with original letter from the Department of Defence, Jan 1942, boxed.
His War of Independence medal, engraved with his name and numbered 514 verso, with ribbon, clasp and comhrac bar, in original box with complimentary slip. A linen Irish tricolour flag.

Date: 1916
Find Location: Associated with Longwood
Current Location: Sold at Auction by Whyte’s Auctioneers
Description:
Éamonn Duggan is often said to have been born in Longwood but this is incorrect. Part of his early years were certainly spent there and he had strong local connections particularly to the Giles family. Edward John, know later as Éamonn, Duggan was born on 2nd March 1878 at Richill, County Armagh and baptised two days later. His father, William, a policeman was a native of Wicklow and stationed at Longwood. In 1914 Duggan joined the First Dublin battalion of the Irish Volunteers as a private. Duggan was attached to Commandant Daly and so was serving in the North Dublin Union in the initial days of the Rising and then in Father Matthew Hall. In the autumn of 1917 Duggan was appointed as Director of Intelligence for the IRA and when the role became full-time in January 1919 Michael Collins took over the position. In September 1918 Duggan was selected to stand for Sinn Féin in the South Meath constituency.
In October 1921 Duggan was appointed as a member of the delegation, despatched by de Valera to London to negotiate a treaty between Ireland and Britain. In the 1923 election Duggan headed the poll in Meath with a large majority. In May 1926 Duggan was appointed as secretary to the Minister for Finance. Following the 1927 election Duggan was appointed as Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Executive Council and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Defence. In June 1936 he was addressing a meeting of Fine Gael local election candidates when he collapsed and he died shortly afterwards.

Further Information:
Noel French, 1916 Meath and More (Trim, 2016)

Constabulary Medal

Item: Constabulary Medal (not actual medal)
Date: 1916
Find Location: Ashbourne
Current Location: Unknown
Description:
District Inspector Harry Smyth, was posthumously awarded the Constabulary Medal (Ireland), which is the equivalent of a police Victoria Cross, following his death at Ashbourne. District Inspector Henry Smyth was born in Hertfordshire, England he joined the RIC at the age of 25. He served in Offaly, then known as King’s County, and Kildare before being appointed to Meath in 1910. Married he left a widow and four children. He was twice wounded, shot in both hands and other parts of his body. As the rebels attacked the police Smyth was shot by an explosive bullet in the last hour of the battle and died shortly afterwards. A large number of people from Navan and the surrounding districts attended his funeral in Ardbraccan Churchyard.
The Constabulary Medal was a decoration of the Royal; Irish Constabulary (RIC). The medal was established on 15 April 1842, by the Inspector General of the Royal Irish Constabulary and approved by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The medal is circular made of silver, and 36 mm in diameter. The obverse of the medal depicts a crowned harp within a wreath. The first version of the medal has the inscription “REWARD OF MERIT – IRISH CONSTABULARY” while the second version has the inscription “REWARD OF MERIT – ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY” This change is in recognition of the addition of “Royal” to the name of the Irish Constabulary in 1867. The reverse bears a wreath half in olive leaves and the other half in shamrocks. The centre is plain to allow for the engraving of the name of the recipient

Further Information:
Noel French, 1916 Meath and More (Trim, 2016)

Credence Table

Item: Credence Table
Date: 1916
Find Location: Navan
Current Location: Navan
Description:
A credence table in memory of Alexander Gray whioo died as a result of wounds received at the battle of Ashbourne in 1916. A credence table is a small side table in the sanctuary of a Christian church which is used in the celebration of the Eucharist.
County Inspector Alexander Gray was the most senior police officer killed in the Easter Rising in 1916. County Inspector Alexander Gray was born in Tyrone in 1858 and joined the RIC in 1882. He served in various counties including Kerry, Donegal, Armagh, Dublin, Antrim, Kildare, Roscommon and Westmeath before taking up the position of County Inspector for Meath in 1912. He is mentioned in Peig Sayer’s autobiography Peig where she called him “Baby Gray” on the account of his boyish looks. Terence Dooley wrote an article on Gray in Riocht na Midhe 2003. At Ashbourrne a convoy of more than twenty cars led by County Inspector Alexander Gray and District Inspector Harry Smyth, came under fire from the Volunteers. Wounded in both hands and his hip at the Battle of Ashbourne Gray died in the Navan Infirmirary on 10th May. He was 57 years old and had served 32 years in the RIC. Following a funeral service in St. Mary Church, Navan, he was buried at Esker Cemetery, Lucan, as he had lived at 8 Cooldrinagh, Lucan.

Further Information:
Dooley, Terence (2003) Alexander ‘Baby’ Gray (1858-1916) and the battle at Ashbourne, 28 April 1916. Riocht na Midhe, 14. pp. 194-229 http://eprints.maynoothuniversity.ie/775/

RIC Inspector’s Uniform

Item: RIC Inspector’s Uniform
Date: 1916
Find Location: Trim
Current Location: Dunshaughlin
Description:
The uniform of Mr. David Murnane, District Inspector, R.I.C. Trim Barracks has been preserved by his family and held locally. On Easter Monday 1916 District Inspector Murnane was in charge of the police at Fairyhouse Races. On his return journey that evening he called at Dunshaughlin barracks where he received a coded message to arrest all Volunteer leaders.
At the following Trim Petty Sessions District Inspector Murnane said: ‘His sympathy went out to the widow of Sergeant Young, (one of the men killed at Ashbourne) who had been married only three years, and was now left with two young children. Every man from his station had done their duty nobly and well, and he was glad to say that the entire sympathy of the people of the district was with them.’
He died in 1939 aged 82 and had had served in Cork, Dublin, Clare, Roscommon, Tipperary, Fermanagh, Down and Meath.

Further Information:
Bureau of Military History: WS Ref #: 324 , Witness: John Murnane, Son of RIC Inspector, Trim, Meath, re Robert Monteith, 1916

Penknife

Item: Penknife
Date: 1916
Find Location: Drogheda area
Current Location: Drogheda area
Description:
Penknife of William McQuillan, Drogheda and Laytown. The Irish Volunteers in Drogheda were small in number. William McQuillan was arrested on Thursday 5th May following the 1916 Rising and imprisoned in Richmond Barrack but was released on 24th May. He later took a court case against D.I. Carberry for wrongful arrest. T.M. Healy acted for McQuillan. Carberry retired from the police in 1921 after 42 years service and remained in the Drogheda area. Thank you to John McCullen for this item.

Further Information
John McCullen, “William McQuillan of Drogheda: An Unlikely Rebel” in County Louth and the Irish Revolution, 1912–1923 (Dublin, 2017)

First World War Letters from the Front

Item: First World War Letters from the Front
Date: 1916-1918
Find Location: Kilsharvan
Current Location: National Library of Ireland, Dublin
Description:
Letters from Lt. Col. John McDonnell (1878-1918) of Kilsharvan, Co. Meath, serving in France during the First World War to his wife; mainly referring to family matters and his health, with some descriptions of conditions near Ypres; letters of condolence to Mrs McDonnell after her husband’s death, with a correspondence relating to the removal of his body to Ireland; with photographs.
c. 110 items in 8 folders.

Further Information:
Bellewstown’s Forgotten Heroes, the stories of the 35 men from the Bellewstown area who fought in World War One, Bellewstown Heritage Group 2014.

Ledwidge Death Penny

Item: Death plaque sent to Frank’s mother, Anne.
Date: 1917
Find Location: Slane
Current Location: Francis Ledwidge Museum, Slane.
Description:
Born on the 19th August 1887 Francis was the eight of nine children born to Patrick and Anne Ledwidge. He was the first child born in the family’s new home, at Janeville just outside the village of Slane.Despite the initial hardship the literary talents of Francis flourished from an early age. Described as an “erratic genius” by his schoolmaster Francis joined a literary society for juveniles. Francis undertook a variety of jobs in the Slane area including groom, farmhand, roadworker and miner. He continued to write poetry and had many of his poems published in the local newspaper the Drogheda Independent. Many of these poems were taken to the newspaper office by Ellie Vaughey, the younger sister of his friend Paddy. Their relationship soon developed into love and Ledwidge wrote numerous poems which spoke of Ellie’s beauty.
During this time Ledwidge acquired a patron in the form of a local aristocrat, Lord Dunsany. Dunsany ensured that the poetry of Ledwidge would find a wider audience as his poems began to be published in the literary magazine Saturday Review. The poet was a keen political activist. While employed in Beauparc copper mines Frank organised a strike for more tolerable working conditions. Both Frank and his younger brother Joe were founder members of the Slane corps of the Irish Volunteers founded in 1913. Frank enlisted in the Royal Inniskilling Fusillers at Navan and was sent to Richmond Barracks in Dublin. It is impossible to say why Ledwidge enlisted in the army. Frank’s first introduction to the war was at Gallipoli. Ledwidge had a badly inflamed back and eventually reached Western General Hospital in Manchester. He was in Manchester when news reached him of the the 1916 Easter Rebellion in Dublin and the execution by the British of his good friend and fellow poet Thomas MacDonagh. In July 1917 having survived the Battle of Arras, Ledwidge’s unit was ordered north to Belgium in preparation for the third Battle of Ypres. On 31 July the 1st Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, of which Frank was a member, were repairing the road. In the afternoon of that day a shell exploded beside them, killing one officer and five enlisted men, among them Ledwidge.

Further Information:
http://www.francisledwidge.com/

Victoria Cross

Item: Victoria Cross Medal
Date: 1917
Find Location:
Current Location: Military Museums, Calgary, Canada.
Description: Frederick Maurice Watson Harvey was born in Athboy in 1888, the son of the clergyman. Alfred T. Harvey served as rector of Athboy from 1885 until 1898. He had previously served as curate in Trim. Educated at Portora Royal High School and Ellesmere College, Harvey played rugby for both Wander’s and Ireland. Harvey emigrated to Canada in 1908 and worked as a surveyor. In 1915 he joined the Canadian Mounted Rifles. Harvey was posted to the Western Front in 1916. He was awarded the Victoria Cross following an incident in March 1917 at the village of Guyencourt. During an attack by his regiment on the village, a party of the enemy ran forward to a wired trench just in front of the village, and opened rapid fire and machine-gun fire at a very close range, causing heavy casualties in the leading troop. At this critical moment, when the enemy showed no intention whatever of retiring, and fire was still intense, Lt. Harvey, who was in command of the leading troops, ran forward well ahead of his men and dashed at the trench, jumped the wire, shot the machine-gunner and captured the gun. His most courageous act undoubtedly had a decisive effect on the success of the operations. Harvey was initially awarded the Distinguished Service Order but this was later upgraded to a VC. For an action in 1918 Harvey was awarded the Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre. After the war Harvey remained on with the Canadian Army, reaching the rank of Brigadier General in 1939. He died in Calgary, Alberta in 1980 aged 91. His Victoria Cross is displayed at the Military Museums, Calgary. It is the only V.C. currently on display in the world that shows both sides of the medal.

Further Information:
http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/gal/vcg-gcv/bio/harvey-fmw-eng.asp
http://www.victoriacrossonline.co.uk/frederick-m-w-harvey-vc/4586936247

Wooden Memorial Cross

Item: Wooden Memorial Cross
Date: 1918
Find Location: Ypres
Current Location: Kilsharvan Cemetery
Description:
This wooden cross was erected over the grave of Lt. Colonel John McDonnell of Kilsharvan in the Reservoir Cemetery, Ypres following his death in September 1918. In 1924 a permanent stone memorial was erected at Ypres and the family brought back the original wooden cross.
John McDonnell, Lieutenant-Colonel, Leinster Regiment, 5th Battalion, Secondary Regiment: Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. Attached to 1st Battalion, Killed in action, Ypres, France & Flanders, 29 September 1918. Age: 40. Memorial: II.D. 32; Ypres Reservoir Cemetery. Drogheda War Memorial.
Son of Dr. Robert and Susan McDonnell, nee McCausland, Kilsharvan and 89 Merrion Square, Dublin. Born Dublin, 2 November 1878. Educated King’s College Cambridge (BA). Succeeded his uncle, James, to the Kilsharvan estate in 1904. In 1911 living at Kilsharvan. Married 30 July 1914 to Eva Margaret Senta, daughter of Robert D’Arcy Jameson, Esq., Delvin Lodge, Balbriggan, Co. Dublin. Their son, Robert Edward McDonnell, was killed in World War II. Letters from Lt. Col. John McDonnell to his wife while serving in France are now available in the National Library, Dublin. The letters mainly relate to family affairs and his health with some descriptions of conditions near Ypres. Some memorabilia belonging to John McDonnell is on display at Millmount, Drogheda.

Lee Enfield Rifle

Item: Lee Enfield carbine rifle (Photograph: National Museum of Ireland)
Date: 1919
Find Location: Ballivor
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
Lee Enfield carbine rifle , R.I.C., c.1910. Royal Irish Constabulary carbine captured at Ballivor, Co. Meath. Lee Enfield Serial No. 4445. Stamped on brass plate on butt “2. 05/R.I.C./9022”. Traces of inscription in wood. “Ballivor” cut into wood at other side of butt. RIC police number 7878. Bolt missing.
On 31 October 1919 the Trim and Longwood IRA Companies attacked the police barracks in Ballivor to obtain arms. Ballivor Barrack was situated in the middle of the village in the middle of a row of inhabited houses and occupied by one sergeant and four constables.
Reaching Ballivor the main body approached the Barracks and divided into two sections, some of them succeeding in getting into the rear. The others went to their posts at the road junctions and ensured that nobody would leave the village while the attack was going on. Paddy Mooney, Pat Fay and Stephen Sherry went boldly to the door, knocked and on being challenged gave the name of one of the locals who was in the habit of calling to the barracks in the evening. Constable William Agar was shot through the heart and died instantly. In the meantime the Volunteers at the rear led by Harry O’Hagan and Joe Lalor attacked the back door and the barracks was taken. Mooney’s first act was to attend to the policeman but he was already dead.
In the spring of 1920 the small police barracks such as Ballivor were abandoned and the police moved to the larger towns. Ballivor Barracks was burned by the IRA on Easter Sunday, 3 April 1920.
This could possibly the rifle presented by Captain Giles to James Finn for Kilmainham Gaol in March 1964 but it was said to have been captured from Trim Barracks.

Further Information:
Noel French, 1916 Meath and More, (Trim, 2016)

Mortar

Item: Mortar
Date: 1920
Find Location: Batterstown
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland
Description:
In 1920 durign the War of Independence Matt and Joe Furlong undertook construction of a mortar for attacking British forces.
When the mortar was complete in October 1920, testing began. Experiments with dummy shells were successful, a test site Beggstown, Dunboyne. was selected, and Matt Furlong, Peadar Clancy, Tom Young, Sean O’Sullivan and Patrick McHugh began the trial, with Matt as the operator. Difficulties arose with the firing of live shells, and adjustments were planned. Another trial at Kells took place where, after a number of tests, Matt decided to use a live shell which fired but landed unexploded. After further adjustment another shell was tested; this time it exploded inside the base of the mortar, blowing off the bottom half of the cylinder. Matt Furlong was very badly wounded, particularly along the left hand side of his body which had been closest to the mortar. He was brought to the Mater Hospital where his left leg was amputated, but he later died of his injuries at the age of 28. Sean Boylan was seriously injured in head and was taken to the Mater Hospital but left that night to attend a meeting in Trim and another at Blessington, all by bicycle. The ‘big gun’ itself was hidden in the River Tolka for some years before it was recovered by John Connell of Lustown, Co. Meath, after his release from Arbour Hill Prison. He and Padraig O Huigin later deposited it in the National Museum of Ireland in 1937 for display in its 20th Anniversary exhibition in Kildare Street. It remains the only known example of an IRA Big Gun.
Further Information:
: https://thecricketbatthatdiedforireland.com/2015/05/17/the-ira-big-gun-and-the-death-of-matt-furlong-1920/
1060 , Witness – Bureau of Military History
ROINN COSANTA. BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21 …
www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/reels/bmh/BMH.WS1043.pdf

Bloody Sunday Football

Item: Football
Date: 1920
Find Location: Dublin and then Navan area
Current Location: GAA Museum
Description:
An original laced leather Football, said to have been used at Croke Park during the memorable Football Challenge/Match between Tipperary and Dublin on 21st November, 1920 at which Black & Tan soldiers opened fire on the crowd with automatic weapons, killing thirteen people, including a Tipperary player, Michael Hogan. Now mounted in a custom made display case. Provenance: Jim Loughran attended the great challenge match on November 21st 1920, aka ”Bloody Sunday” along with his son Jack Loughran. As they escaped the young Jack grabbed the ball, unaware of the danger that was unfolding as the Black and Tans opened fire. Jack Loughran left all his G.A.A and other historical memorabilia to a close relative, whose son inherited it on the death of his father.
On the morning of 21 November 1920 fourteen members of the British intelligence staff, known as “the Cairo gang”, were assassinated by Michael Collins’s Squad. Later that day a match was being held at Croke Park between Tipperary and Dublin A force of Auxiliaries and military were organised to go to Croke Park to search for gunmen and weapons among the attendance. Once the police convoy arrived at the Canal Bridge, it halted and the men in the leading cars got out. While Major Dudley was directing traffic, the Black and Tans from the leading cars rushed down the passage to the Canal End gate, forced their way through the turnstiles onto the field, and started firing rapidly with rifles and revolvers. Six spectators and one player, Michael Hogan, were shot dead. Five more were fatally wounded. Two people were trampled to death. The inquiry concluded that shooting lasted only ninety seconds. When it was over, six spectators had been shot to death. Of those killed in Croke Park, three were children, aged ten, eleven and fourteen years old.

Further Information:
https://www.adams.ie/12675/Unique-Memento-of-Bloody-Sunday-1920-Tipperary-V-Dublin-An-original-laced-leather-Football-said-to-have-been-used-at-Croke-Park-during-the-memorable-Football-Challenge/Match-between-Tipperary-an?high_estimate=350000&ipp=All&keyword=&low_estimate=0&view=lot_detail

Grenade

Item: Grenade (Photo: National Museum of Ireland)
Date: 1920
Find Location: Meath
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland.
Description:
A grenade of the G.H.Q. Pattern bearing “P. Reilly, 1 Bat. Capt. 3 Meath Brig. I.R.A.”. Patrick O’Reilly was Captain in the Moynalty company and Vice commandant in the Kells 4th Battalion of the Meath Brigade.

Further Information:
http://www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/
WS Ref #: 1650 , Witness: Patrick O’Reilly, Captain IRA, Meath, 1921

Effects of IRA Man

Item: £1 Sterling Note Found on Body of Patrick McDonnell.

Date: March 1921

Find Location: Stonefield, Oldcastle

Current Location: Meath County Library

Description:
This banknote was found on the body of Commdt Patrick McDonnell, Intelligence Officer of the Stonefield/Oldcastle battalion, 3rd Meath Brigade of the IRA, after he was killed by RIC (Black and Tan) forces in a raid on his home in Stonefield on 22 March (“Spy Wednesday”), 1921. Patrick and his brother Thomas were out in the fields near their family home when the Crown raiding party arrived looking for Patrick. The two brothers, unarmed, were fired upon repeatedly as they ran across the field towards a neighbouring house; Patrick was shot and fatally wounded by one of the Black and Tan gunmen. The official RIC report merely stated that he was “shot while attempting to evade arrest”.
According to Seamus Finn, 3rd Brigade Adjutant, Patrick was engaged in important intelligence operations at the time and was close to discovering the source of leaks of information which had caused some IRA operations in the area to be aborted. Patrick’s brother, Thomas (father of the well-known All-Ireland-winning Meath footballer Mattie McDonnell) narrowly avoided being shot and managed to escape but was arrested soon afterwards and imprisoned by the Crown forces. Patrick, who had been a brilliant student, a B.A graduate from Maynooth and a fluent Irish speaker, was buried with full military honours in Ballinlough cemetery in the Republican plot beside his comrade and friend, Commdt. Seamus Cogan, killed in July 1920. There was a huge attendance at the funeral on Easter Monday, 28 March. These were the only officers of the Volunteers/IRA killed in Meath during the War of Independence.
Patrick’s body was brought to the British military post in the old workhouse in Kells (near the Fair Green at the top of Carrick St), where an autopsy was performed and a closed military inquiry “in lieu of inquest” was held before the body was released to the family. The doctor who performed the autopsy, it is believed, gave the banknote, which had been found by the military on the body, to the family. It is not certain who wrote the note inscribed on the banknote stating “Property of Patrick McDonnel (sic) I.R.A. native of Stonefield, shot by British Police at Stonefield on Holy Thursday 1921. R.I.P.”. Banknote property of Angela McDonnell, Kells (widow of the late Mattie McDonnell, Ballinlough); given for safe-keeping to Frank Cogan, nephew of Seamus Cogan, Clonasillagh and for subsequent presentation to the Decade of Commemorations archive, Meath County Library, Navan. (Information note by Frank Cogan)

Further Information:
See article by Frank Cogan in the 2016 edition of the journal “Riocht na Midhe”, Meath Archaeological and Historical Soc.

Members Badges

Item: Members badges for Proudstown Racecourse, Navan.
Date: 1921 and 1922.
Find Location: Navan
Current Location: Navan
Description:
Ladies and Gentlemen badges for 1921 and 1922 for the Proustown Racecourse, Navan, now in the possession of the Murtagh family. These were the first two seasons of racing at the course.
Albert Lowry, the proprietor of Oatlands Stud, purchased the lands from the Fitzherbert family, in 1919 with the purpose of setting up a racecourse. In late 1919 a company w as established to develop and run the course. Navan Racecourse set on 181 acres is primarily a National Hunt track and plays host to up to sixteen meetings a year. Its main meeting the “Troytown Chase” in November, is named after the famous Aintree National winner who was bred close by. In 1924 a special railway platform was erected at Proudstown Park to cater for the race goers.

Army Uniform

Item: Army Uniform
Date: c. 1922
Find Location: Dunboyne
Current Location: Mullingar?
Description:
In 2010 Sean Boylan and his family handed over the uniform and greatcoat of his father, General Sean Boylan, to the community museum at Columb Barracks, Mullingar. The Boylan family with the uniform and greatcoat of Sean’s father, also Sean, who was a general in the Irish Army in the first part of the twenties: Sean Boylan, his wife Tina, and family, Seán, Ciarán, Daire, Doireann, Aoife and Orán.
General Boylan (1880-1971) was a leading member of the IRA from 1913 until joining the Free State Army in late 1921. In 1922 Boylan took over Naas Barracks from the British forces. Early in 1922 Boylan’s health failed until in 1925 he had a breakdown in health due to exposure, hardship, lack of sleep and what he had gone through. Also in 1920 Boylan was injured in the head when a Stokes gun exploded killing Matthew Furlong. Given a year to live Boylan turned to herbalism to cure some of his ills. Seán Boylan died in 1971 at the age of ninety one.

Further Information:
Noel French 1916 Meath and More (Trim, 2016)

Military Shell

Item: Shell Case
Date: 1922-3
Find Location: Millmount, Drogheda.
Current Location: Drogheda area
Description:
Shell Case – found at Millmount 1923, (removed by Fr. V. McQuillan O.P. ), now in private ownership.
On 4th July 1922, the Free State Army began shelling the place from near St Dominick’s Bridge as it had been taken over by the Irregulars and it caused quite a bit of damage. The fort at Millmount was shelled by 18 pounder guns. The fort was held by Anti-Treaty forces who endured cannon fire by their former comrades who were Pro Treaty. The tower was destroyed and the Anti Treaty forces were routed. This was the last attack in history by cannons on a castle or Fort in Ireland or Britain.

Olympic Medal Paris 1924

Item: Olympic Gold Medal (Not actual medal)
Date: 1924
Find Location: Paris
Current Location: Trim
Description:
John O’Leary was born in 1880. A noted shot he competed at three events for Britain at the 1924 Olympics in Paris including Men’s Running Target (Deer), single shot and team; Men’s Trap and Men’s Trap Team. The men’s 100 metre team running deer, single shots was was held on 2 July 1924 at the shooting ranges at Versailles. 25 shooters from 7 nations competed. Every shooter fired 10 shots with points from 0 to 5 (5 was the best) so a maximum of 50 points was possible. The scores of the four shooters on each team were summed to give a team score. The team came fourth in the running target event but the IOC medal database lists also John Faunthorpe and John O’Leary as gold medallists for Great Britain.
O’Leary worked with the Marconi Company as an engineer and was involved in the erection of the first radio station for Marconi in the United States and a number of other sites. He represented Ireland in the Elcho Shield, a triangular competition between England, Ireland and Scotland. He was the highest scorer in the Denar Shield in Canada in 1949. He and his wife lived at St. Mary’s Abbey, Trim. O’Leary died in 1967.

Further Information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_at_the_1924_Summer_Olympics

Tobacco

Item: Tobacco grown at Randalstown (Photo: Weekender, 1993)
Date: c. 1925
Find Location: Randalstown, Navan.
Current Location: Unknown
Description:
Brigid (Biddy) Reilly worked as a maid in Randalstown House during the First World War. Biddy kept some of the original Randalstown tobacco in a custard tin which she showed to a reporter from the Weekender newspaper in 1993. Biddy passed on in March 2000 aged 102.
From 1898 to 1938 the Randlestown area of Navan was central to plans to introduce tobacco growing on a commercial basis in Ireland. The industry centred on the 300-acre Randlestown estate, the ancestral home of Sir Nugent Everard. The estate had its own tobacco plantation and also acted as a rehandling station – taking in tobacco from the local growers and processing it for sale to factories. At its peak, the industry provided almost 100 jobs and played a vital part in the local economy.
Over a period of more than thirty years, from 1898 to his death at the age of eighty in 1929, Everard devoted his energy, enthusiasm and financial resources to the cause of tobacco growing. After his death the local growers formed the County Meath Co-Operative Tobacco Growers Society. The Co-Operative continued into the 1930s, and closed in 1939, the last year in which tobacco was grown in the county.
Harry Everard (great-great grandson of Sir Nugent T Everard) is growing tobacco in Ireland again.

Further Information:
Liam Nevin, The Tobacco Fields of Meath (Navan, 2010)
http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/environment-geography/flora-fauna/the-tobacco-growing-indus/
http://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/death-and-taxes-tobacco-growing-in-ireland/

Emancipation Centenary Badge

Item: Centenary of Catholic Emancipation Badge
Date: 1929
Find Location: Drogheda area
Current Location: Drogheda area
Description:
Bronze Catholic Emancipation Badge, Liberty bell with “Saoirse Creidimh”/ Religious Freedom 1829-1929
An unusual Irish badge issued in 1929 to commemorate the passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 (Catholic Emancipation). The badge’s design is centred on an image of the American Liberty Bell with an Irish high-cross roundel superimposed on it, symbolic of the Catholic faith. The Gaelic text SAOIRSE CREIDIM translates as freedom to believe. The elongated suspension loop suggests this badge could also have been worn with a ribbon and pin.
Catholic Emancipation was an on-going political process to achieve a relaxation and dismantling of the Penal Laws enacted against Catholics and non-Conformists, culminating in the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 which applied equally throughout Britain as well as Ireland. The main personality behind Catholic Emancipation was Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847) who founded the Catholic Association in 1823 for the purpose of repealing all discrimination against Catholic, the Penal Laws and the Act of Union of 1800. Thank you to John McCullen for this item.

Scott Medal for Valor

Item: Scott Medal for Valor (Not actual medal)
Date: 1930
Find Location: Associated with Oldcastle
Current Location: Unknown
Description:
A silver Scott medal was awarded to Sgt. Arthur Cullen, Oldcastle in 1930.
The “Scott Medal for Valor” is not a State award, it is entirely the gift of the Commissioner. The only involvement by the Irish Government is the formal presentation of the medal by the Minister for Justice. In 1923 Colonel Walter Scott, an Honorary Commissioner of the New York City Police and a well known philanthropist, presented An Garda Síochána, then the world’s youngest Police Force, with a $1,000 gold bond. It was Scott’s intention that one medal should be awarded annually to the member of the Garda Síochána who had “specially distinguished himself for valour in the performance of duty”. In 1942, the condition was amended, and medals are now awarded for “most exceptional bravery and heroism involving the risk of life in the execution of duty. The silver and bronze medals were first issued in 1925. The medal is in the form of a Celtic cross, 44mm in diameter, was designed with a blue and yellow ribbon but that was changed to a 34mm wide ribbon in the form of the Nation’s tricolour with equal stripes of green, white and orange.
Arthur Cullen was the 21st recipient of a Scott medal in 1930. He had just recently been moved to Oldcastle. The Minister presenting the medal described how Cullen had won it. “A young lady residing in the Cappawhite district had been keeping company with a youth who proved a reluctant suitor. The young lady desired a marriage at an early date and three armed men took the young man and the lady in a motorcar out to Sologhead Catholic Church. They were pursued by the Gardai in another car; and found the young man seated on a wall near the church between two men who had revolvers pointed at his breast. The Gardai rescued the kidnapped man, although only one of the Gardai was armed. Sgt. Cullen moved to foxford in 1944.

Further Information:
Gerard O’Brien An Garda Síochána and the Scott Medal (Dublin, 2008)
http://www.garda.ie/Controller.aspx?Page=71&Lang=1
http://www.policehistory.com/smdesign.html

Eucharistic Congress

Description:
The 31st International Eucharistic Congress, held in Dublin 22–26 June 1932, was one of the largest Eucharistic congresses of the 20th century. An incredible one million people attended the main pontifical High Mass on June 26. A highlight of the High Mass was the voice of famous Irish tenor John McCormack, a papal count since 1928, who sang the offertory motet, ‘Panis Angelicus.’ Ireland was then home to 3,171,697 Catholics and was selected to host the congress as 1932 was the 1500th anniversary of Saint Patrick’s arrival. The chosen theme was “The Propagation of the Sainted Eucharist by Irish Missionaries.” Thank you to John McCullen for these items.

Further Information:
http://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/on-show-to-the-world-the-eucharistic-congress-1932/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKR7olqpL80
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/modern-ireland-in-100-artworks-1932-eucharistic-congress-skywriting-over-dublin-1.2129019

Tailteann Medal

Item: Prize Medal, Tailteann Games
Date: 1932
Find Location:
Current Location: National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks
Description:
Prize medal for literature, Tailteann Games, 1932. By the Irish Jewellery Company. A small circular bronze medal, inscribed on reverse “Aonach Tailteann Baile Atha Cliath, the obverse is decorated with head and shoulders of a young queen and inscribed An Bhainrioghan Tailte, and with some Celtic design motifs
The Tailteann Games, involving athletic and artistic competition, had their origin in the Oenach Tailten of pre-Christian Ireland, an annual assembly at which racing and athletic contests took place, and held at Teltown, County Meath, for a week each year around 1st August, which was the feast day of the god Lug. The Oenach Taiten were presided over by the king of Tara, and having broadened their scope to include artistic competition, eventually went into abeyance just prior to the Norman invasion, in 1169. The games were revived as an “Irish Olympic” following independence, in 1924, with further contests in 1928 and 1932 that attracted many foreign competitors. However, due to financial difficulties, the games were then discontinued.

Bullet or Bowl

Item: Bullet or Bowl
Date: 1930s
Find Location: Navan area
Current Location:
Description:
Bullets or bowling is a game which now survives in South Armagh and West Cork but it was a game which was played in Meath in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Since 1954 it has been organised in Ireland under a national controlling body, Bol Chumann na hEireann. The All-Ireland championships happen every August between the bowlers of Cork and Armagh.
In the Irish Folklore Schools Collection from the 1930s a student at St. Columban’s Abbey N.S., Navan, recorded memories of bullet throwing in the Navan area. Pilib Mac Nichol recorded that in previous times a number of men gathered on a Sunday at a crossroads. They used a ball of iron weighing about twenty ounces and played from one crossroads to another. Sometimes they played singles and other times they played doubles. Sometimes wagers were made involving money or drink. In the Navan area men played from Windtown crossroads to Oristown crossroads. The Hands of Windtown and the Stapletons were very good players. In the 1930s James O’Rourke of Rathaldron remembered the game well. One of the bowls was in the Davises house until the 1930s when it was taken by Mr. Tallon, C.C., Ardcath.
The game may have developed in Ireland but it may also have been introduced from Scotland or England. Bowling lore has a reference to William of Orange and his soldiers introducing the game when he came to Ireland in 1690. The earliest written reference to the game is in 1714 in Derry city. Some suggest that the game originated with the throwing of small cannon balls. Dean Swift referred to the game as “Long bullets” in a poem written at Markethill, Armagh in 1728.
The bullet was formerly made of stone but cast iron metal was then introduced and the bullet usually weighs about 28 ounces. There is a smaller and lighter 14 ounce version for younger players. The game has its terminology. A score is a game of bullets. A shot is a throw. Single-handed match is two players while a double handed match is four players. A butt is usually a piece of grass placed on the road to mark the starting point or finishing point of a shot. The course is a country road and the bullet is thrown along the road for a fixed distance of two to three miles.

Ballivor German Spy Rucksack

Item: German Rucksack
Date: 1940
Find Location: Ballivor
Current Location: Held Locally
Description:
A German spy landed in Ballivor in May 1940. A local family have preserved his rucksack.
In May 1940 Herman Goertz was parachuted into Ireland to liaise with the IRA. His intended landing site was Tyrone. When Goertz landed outside Ballivor on 12th May he was wearing his Luftwaffe uniform and medals in the mistaken belief that he would be shot if caught in civilian attire. Goertz who was in his late 40s asked a startled local if he had landed in Northern Ireland. The farmer asked the German agent “You wouldn’t happen to know Ballivor?” Goertz made an unsuccessful search for the ‘Ufa’ radio transmitter which was attached to the second parachute. The IRA sent out a team of men to try to discover the radio.
Goertz made his way on foot to Laragh, County Wicklow where he met Iseult Stuart, daughter of Maud Gonne and sister of Sean McBride. Goertz went into hiding, staying with sympathizers in the Wicklow area and purposefully avoided contact with IRA safehouses. Goertz was arrested in Clontarf on November 12, 1941. He was initially detained in Mountjoy jail, but transferred to a small prison in Athlone Military barracks and continued to be held there until the end of the war.
When he was paroled in 1947, he went to live with his friends, in Dublin but was soon informed he would be deported to Germany. Goertz was terrified of being sent home to Germany, where he feared he would be tortured or executed by Allied or Soviet investigators. On May 1947 Goertz reported to Aliens Registration Office in Dublin. He swallowed a cyanide capsule right in front of the Garda Officerand died at Mercer’s Hospital soon after.

Further Information:
Enno Stephan “Spies in Ireland”
Mark M. Hull. “Irish Secrets: German Espionage in Wartime Ireland, 1939-1945”
James Scannell ‘Major Hermann Goertz and German World War 2 Intelligence Gathering in Ireland.’ in the Greystones journal of 2004

Coffee Alternative

Item: Coffee Alternative

Date: 1939-45
Find Location: Drogheda area
Current Location: Drogheda area
Description:
Paper cups for Coff-o-era, a milled dandelion root drink, alternative to coffee, produced at Kilsharvan in Second World War.
Col. John McDonnell of Kilsharvan, was killed in World War I in 1915, his widow, Senta, nee Jameson of Delvin Lodge, married Captain Edward (Ted) Woods of Milverton Hall, Skerries and spent alternative halves of the year at Kilsharvan and Milverton. She adapted the old mill at Kilsharvan to produce a coffee substuitute during the World War, produced from the roots of the dandelion plant. Mrs. Woods died in 1969.

Boyne Coracle

Item: Coracle
Date: c. 1943
Find Location: Sheephouse, Donore.
Current Location: Millmount Museum, Drogheda.
Description:
Round basket–type boat made from ox-hide on frame work of hazel wands. Used for salmon fishing on the River Boyne into the mid 20th century. This example was made by Philip McCormack of Sheephouse, Donore. The hide used was the skin of a black polly bullock which won a prize at the Drogheda Fat Stock Show in 1943. Presented to the Old Drogheda Society in 1965 by Philip J. Tiernan of Oldbridge. The Boyne coracle was made with hazel rods, willows and cowhide to form a steep-sided oval bowl. Willow was sourced from the river islands at Oldbridge. The boat was rowed with a short paddle of larch which allowed the boatman to manoeuvre the boat with one hand while the other arm was free to handle the salmon net.

Further Information:
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/a-bygone-craft
Claidhbh Ó Gibne, The Boyne Currach- from beneath the shadows of Newgrange (Dublin, 2012 )
http://www.boynecurrach.com/boyne-currach-centre.html
http://www.tcd.ie/library/manuscripts/blog/2016/10/a-lost-craft-coracle-building-on-the-boyne/

Bronze Medal London Olympics 1948

Item: Bronze Olympic Medal (Not actual medal)
Date: 1948
Find Location: Associated with Dunboyne
Current Location: Unknown
Description:
In 1948 Letitia Hamilton from Dunboyne was awarded a bronze medal in the arts section of the Olympic Games for her painting of the Meath Hunt Point to Point Races, the only Irish medal that year, and one of the last Olympic medals for art to be awarded. She was 69 years old. The whereabouts of the painting is now unknown but it is believed it may be in private ownership in the United States.
Letitia Marion Hamilton was born in Hamwood house, Dunboyne, in 1878. Hamilton first exhibited in 1902 she would go on to become a prolific painter of the Irish countryside. After some travels to Italy and Continental Europa Hamilton she became one of the founders of the Society of Dublin Painters in 1920. She mainly painted landscapes of the Irish countryside. Letitia Hamilton led a very active life until her passing in 1964, continuing to travel abroad. Her sister, Eva, died in 1960, and they are buried in the family burial plot at the Church of Ireland cemetery in Dunboyne.

Further Information:
http://www.meathchronicle.ie/news/roundup/articles/2012/07/25/4011589-last-medalwinner-at-a-london-olympics-was-a-dunboyne-woman/print
https://thebookstheartandme.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/women-in-art-2-letitia-hamilton/

Sam Maguire Cup

Item: Sam Maguire Cup(s)
Date: 1949, 1954, 1967, 1987, 1988, 1996, 1999.
Find Location: Croke Park, Dublin
Current Location:
Description:
Sam Maguire was born on a small farm in Dunmanway, County Cork, the son of John and Jane Maguire, in 1877. He joined the post office in London and became prominent in GAA circles as player and as an administrator. Playing both hurling and football Maguire was on the London Hibernians team that lost the “away” All Ireland finals of 1900, 1901 and 1903. He initiated Michael Collins into the IRB in 1909. Maguire would like to have fought in the Rising but it was felt that he better served the cause by remaining at his job as it gave access to communications. He was Michael Collin’s chief agent in London during the War of Independence. He supported the Treaty and joined the Irish civil service. He was dismissed from his post by Kevin O’Higgins as a result of a mutiny in the army. He appealed his dismissal but was not successful. He returned to Dunmanway where he died from tuberculosis in 1927. In 1928 a number of his friends presented the Sam Maguire Cup for the Football All Ireland championship. The cup was presented to the Kildare captain in 1928. The original cup is now on display in Croke Park and a replica has been used since 1988. Meath are the last county to have their name inscribed on the original cup after beating Cork in 1991. Meath has won the All-Ireland Senior championships on seven occasions: 1949, 1954, 1967, 1987, 1988, 1996, 1999. Sam Maguire was my second cousin.

Further Information:
http://www.dohenygaa.com/page/sam-maguire-12.aspx
http://meath.gaa.ie/

Head of Caughoo

Item: Stuffed head of Caughoo – winner of the Grand National in 1947
Date: 1961
Find Location: Donore, Drogheda.
Current Location: Whereabouts unknown
Description:
The head of the horse that won the 1947 Aintree Grand National was preserved in Frank Godfrey’s Country Cottage in Donore. The 1947 Grand National was won by 100/1 Irish outsider Caughoo. The eight-year-old was ridden by 35-year-old jockey Eddie Dempsey and trained by Herbert McDowell, for owner John McDowell who had bought Caughoo for £50.
Godfrey purchased the head from an apprentice taxidermist in Dublin. In 1987 on the 40th anniversary of Caughoo’s win Godfrey travelled over to Aintree and brought the head. The head was saved from destruction when the cottage was burned down in 2008 by a piece of galvanise which fell on top of it and prevented it from being totally destroyed.
Caughoo was trained at Wheatfield in Malahide. The horse was ridden by Eddie Dempsey and he had quite a day. A mist descended on the course and much confusion followed. But Caughoo clearly enjoyed the conditions and came in at 100-1 to win. Some say the 23 length win could have been put down to the horse only running one circuit of the course but that has since been disproved. Jockey Dempsey was accused of hiding behind a fence at the fog-bound Aintree course, only re-joining the race towards the end. But two photographs of Caughoo and Dempsey going over Becher’s Brook on two different occasions were discovered . After his win, Caughoo became a well known figure in the Malahide area and died in 1961.
Caughoo is actually a townland in Cavan but his name lives on in Gibney’s of Malahide where a bar is dedicated to him.

Further Information:

Crannac Chairs

Item: Edwards Designed Chairs from Crannac
Date: 1962
Find Location: Associated with Navan
Current Location: Unknown
Description: In 1945 John Hogg and Co. Ltd. furniture manufacturers was founded in Navan. Wilfrid S. Elliott joined John Hogg as joint manager in 1957 and in 1960 the Elliott family purchased the company. In 1961 with the assistance of Coras Trachtala Teo John Hogg and Co. changed over the style of furniture it was producing. In April 1961 the firm employed Arthur Edwards to design a new style of chairs and settees. This new style, Crannac, was launched in Dublin in early 1962 on the home and export market. The word “Crannac” is derived from the Irish word for “a little copse or wood.” The designs were aimed at the hotel, public lounges, public buildings and offices but were also suitable for private homes. The Crannac frames were made from afromosia, a wood which was imported from Ghana. The finish was not stained or varnished but oil finished by hand which preserved the natural features of the wood. The seats and backs were of special quality polyester, the seats resting on Vitaweb rubber strapping. The coverings were in specially designed Irish tweed, woven by Magee of Co. Donegal. Nine shades of tweed were selected from 500 different combinations. The tweed was 100 percent wool and moth proof. John Hogg and Co. were positioning themselves as specialist chair manufacturers. In 1972 the factory was taken over and run as a co-op until 2003. Crannac was the longest running worker’s co-operative in Ireland.

Nelson’s Pillar

Item: Piece of Nelson’s Pillar
Date: 1808 Associated with 1966
Find Location: Dublin
Current Location: Asigh, Bective.
Description:
A piece of Nelson’s Pillar, which once stood on O’Connell Street, and was blown up in 1966 by a group described as ‘socialist republicans’ now sits in John and Lorraine McDowell’s rockery at Asigh, near Bective.
The statue of the British admiral Horatio Nelson standing 134 feet above the main thoroughfare was blown to smithereens at 1.32am on 8th March 1966. All that was left was a 70 feet high stump, blown up by the Irish Army later in the week in a controlled explosion. John McDowell’s uncle, Jack, was running the family jewellery business, the Happy Ring House, at the time. The stone arrived at his home at Sutton, Warren Villa, and was used as a base for a sun dial.”Jack McDowell had a racehorse, Caughoo, which famously won the 1947 Aintree Grand National. When Caughoo died, he was buried at Warren Villa. The piece of the pillar was used to mark his grave. Later, the property was sold for development, and Caughoo’s remains were moved to Fairyhouse, where Peter McDowell was living at the time. The farm is now the Tattersalls complex, and Caughoo still lies in the front garden. The stone remained in Sutton until the house was cleared and some of the contents were moved to Asigh.
Nelson’s Pillar was designed by Francis Johnson and erected in 1808-’09 to commemorate Nelson’s victory and death at the great naval battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The pillar was a Doric column topped by a 13 feet tall statue in Portland stone by Cork sculptor Thomas Kirk. All the outer and visible parts of the pillar were of Wicklow granite. One of the men believed to be responsible for orchestrating the demolition job, barrister and maverick republican Joe Christle, founder of the Rás Tailteann, lies in Kilmessan Cemetery.

Arkle Skeleton

Item: Skeleton of Arkle
Date: 1970
Find Location: Associated with Dunboyne and Ashbourne
Current Location: National Stud, Kildare
Description:
The famous racehorse, Arkle, was bred at Ballymacoll Stud, Dunboyne. Arkle, bred by the Bakers of Malahow House near Naul in County Dublin, was born at Ballymacoll Stud, then managed by Charlie Rogers for Dorothy Paget, in 1957, and present at the birth was the late Dan Daly of Dunshaughlin, the stud groom at the time.
The bay gelding was owned by Anne Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminister, and trained by Tom Dreaper. His jockey was “Pat” Taaffe a National Hunt jockey who rode Arkle to win three Cheltenham Gold Cups between 1964 and 1966. In 1965 Arkle won the Gold Cup beating Mill House by an incredible 20 lengths. However the following year, he won again by an amazing 30 lengths even though he ploughed through one of the fences.
Sadly in December of 1966, his hoof hit a guard rail during the King George VI Chase, but the horse gamely finished the race with a broken pedal bone. He still came in second. He did recover but never raced again, and was used as a hack by his owner. He died at the early age of 13 from advanced arthritis.
He became a star and gained a following just like the Kennedy’s, the Beatles and other celebrities and stars of that era. Arkle finished first in 27 of his 35 races, but his most outstanding race, and the one which elevated him to almost mythical proportions was the Gallaher Gold Cup run at Sandown in 1965.
A life size statue of him was erected at Ashbourne in April 2014, the nearest town to his trainer Tom Dreaper’s base at Kilsallaghan. At the time there was a suggestion of an Arkle Museum in Ashbourne.

Further Information:
http://www.meathchronicle.ie/news/roundup/articles/2014/04/18/4029694-unveiling-of-arkle-statue-in-ashbourne

Stamp

Item: Stamp
Date: 2002
Find Location:
Current Location: GPO, Dublin.
Description:
Peter ‘The Man in the Cap’ McDermott (1918 – 2011) was an inter-county Gaelic footballer for County Meath. During his playing career he won 2 Senior All Ireland medals (1949 & as captain in 1954) as well as 6 Leinster medals. He played in 4 All Ireland Finals. He refereed the All-Ireland senior football final between Kerry and Armagh, in September 1953. Peter McDermott had the unusual distinction of participation in five All-Ireland final matches in the four years between 1951 and 1954. He played in the 1951, 52 (draw and replay) and 54 finals and refereed the 1953 final. He is also the only man to referee an All-Ireland final both before and after winning one. In the sixties he was coach on the Meath team and held this position when Meath won the All-Ireland title in 1967.
He is jointly credited with starting the International Compromise Rules Series. McDermott collaborated with Harry Beitzel of Australia to arrange a two-match tour by an Australian Rules side, which played (and defeated) reigning All-Ireland Champions Meath at Croke Park in October 1967 under Gaelic football rules. When the International series started formally in 1984 Peter was manager of the Irish Team.
In recognition of his skills and long-running contribution to the sport, McDermott was awarded the 1989 All-time all-star award as no GAA All Stars Awards were being issued at the time of his playing career.
Peter McDermott was nominated for induction into the GAA Hall of Fame in 2002. He joins the 15 footballers from the Millennium Team and the two inductees in 2001.

Further Information:
http://www.hoganstand.com/meath/ArticleForm.aspx?ID=112885
http://www.meathchronicle.ie/news/kells/articles/2008/08/06/29630-a-legend-at-90

Maple Cross

Item: Maple Cross
Date: 2011
Find Location: Navan, Ontario.
Current Location: Navan, Meath
Description:
Celtic cross of maple presented to St. Mary’s Church, Navan, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Navan, Ontario. It symbolises the links between the two Navan towns. The shape at the centre of the cross is a Trillium, the provincial flower of Ontario.
Navan2Navan is a Volunteer Community Group dedicated to developing social and economic links between Ireland and Canada using the two towns of Navan, County Meath, Ireland and Navan, Ottawa, Canada as the central hub for development. Navan, Ontario, Canada was given its name by Michael O’Meara from Navan, County Meath, who set up a trading post in Canada in the 1840s which became a Post Office called Navan. Navan, Ontario is now a village on the outskirts of Ottawa with an approximate population of 3500 people. The Navan2Navan Community Initiative was set up in 2012 to develop links between the two towns.

1916 Proclamation

Item: 1916 Proclamation
Date: 2016
Find Location:
Current Location: County Library, Navan.
Description:
Donal O’Hannigan, the commander of the Louth /Meath forces for the 1916 Rising, was told by Padraig Pearse, three weeks before the Rising, to mobilise all the Volunteers on the Hill of Tara on Easter Sunday at 7.00 p.m. and he was to read a copy of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic on the Hill. Later on Good Friday O’Hannigan pointed out that Tara was an inconvenient place for mobilisation but Pearse said that Tara was all important for historical reasons and he wanted a copy of the Proclamation read there.
The Volunteer companies of Carnaross and Drumbaragh, Kells, arrived on the hill of Tara on Easter Sunday night 1916 but there was no-one from Louth or the rest of Meath there. The men were sent home by Sean Boylan. O’Hannigan and the Louth men did arrive at Tara later that week and went on to join the Dunboyne men at Tyrrelstown House at Blanchardstown. The Proclamation was not read on Tara in 1916 as Pearse had meant it to be.
The members of Comhaltas Ceolteóirí Eireann from County Meath came together on Easter Monday, March 28th 2016 to finally carry out the wish of Pádraig Pearse. An Aeríocht was organised with a collection of community groups under the flag of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann. The highlight of this event was Ann Finnegan Uachtarán CCE and Donal O Hannigan, grandson of the man, who received the orders from Pearse in 1916, reading the Proclamation to all assembled. A copy of the proclamation was signed by those who attended the event which was then lodged in the County Library.

Payphone

Item: Last payphone in Trim
Date: 2017
Find Location: Market Square, Trim.
Current Location: Eir Company.
Description:
The last payphone in Trim was removed from Market Square in January 2017. If a pay phone is used for less than a minute a day over a six month period then Eir will remove the phone. At the end of 2015, there were some 900 public payphones remaining in Ireland, but 621 were being used for less than a minute per day on average, with less than 30 seconds of this usage relating to freephone and emergency services calls. Eir is permitted to remove a payphone unit if the average usage over a period of six months falls below these thresholds.

Further Information:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/object-lesson-phone-booth/515385/
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/10/26/as-line-goes-dead-for-payphones-fans-mourn-a-lost-era.html