The Famine Warhouse 1848, also known locally as Ballingarry Warhouse or the Widow McCormack’s House stands on a high point of the Slieveardagh Hills overlooking a small village known as The Commons. It was the site of a skirmish in the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 and one of the earliest times the Irish Tricolour was flown. The Young Irelanders were influenced by the multidenominational nature of the United Irishmen and Wolfe Tone of the 1790s. They demanded an Irish Parliament and did not rule out the use of force if necessary. The leading newspaper of the 1840s and an exponent of the Young Irelander’s vision was ‘the Nation’, it had been founded by two Catholics and one Protestant, again showing the multidenominational nature of Irish Nationalism throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The three men who established the paper were Charles Gavin Duffy, Thomas Davis and John Blake Dillon. In 1848 the leader of the Young Irelanders was William Smith O’Brien, an Irish protestant aristocrat and MP for County Limerick. The Young Irelanders had become increasingly radicalised by what they witnessed during the Famine and were inspired by the revolutions that began to sweep across Europe in 1848. Revolutions had broken out in many prominent European cities such as Berlin, Prague and Rome, and in February the King of France was overthrown and a republic was declared. William Smith O’Brien and another leader of the Young Irelanders Thomas Francis Meagher led a delegation to Paris to congratulate the revolution and establishment of the republic in France and returned to Ireland with the tricolour flag (now Irelands national flag) which epitomised the joining together of orange (protestant) and green (catholic) in peace and hope of the establishment of an Irish State.

The Young Irelanders set about preparing for a rising in autumn of 1848 however on the 22^nd of July 1848 the English authorities announced the suspension of the ‘Habeas Corpus’ which meant that all Young Irelanders could be imprisoned without trial. O’Brien felt that his hand had been forced and that the members of Young Ireland needed to rebel. On the 23^rd of July 1848 Meagher, O’Brien and Dillon raised the tricolour as they travelled from Co. Wexford through Kilkenny and into Tipperary, raising an ‘army’ of 600 peasants but only 50 of whom had muskets. O’Brien drilled the men in the streets of The Commons, practicing firing muskets and Dillon explained manoeuvres and combat drills. On Friday 28^th of July O’Brien and Dillon met with fellow Young Irelanders in the pub in The Commons to discuss strategy. Present were Thomas Francis Meagher, Terence Bellew MacManus, James Stephens, John O’Mahony, Michael Doheny, Maurice Leyne, James Cantwell, Patrick O’Donoghue and Thomas Devin Reilly. They realised that more troops with significantly more arms needed to be raised and being aware that the authorities would soon be on to them, Meagher went towards Waterford to rally more troops with O’Brien, MacManus and Stephens remaining.

On Saturday the 29^th O’Brien had gathered around 300 people before a Young Irelander named John Kavanagh arrived with the news that 47 Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) led by a Thomas Trant were making their way from Callan in Kilkenny to Ballingarry. Barricades had been erected to prevent their egress and once the RIC got closer they panicked and changed course heading towards the Widow McCormacks. Mrs Margaret McCormack was out of the house at the time of the RICs approach however her five young children were present, the RIC barricaded themselves into the house and told the children to remain under the stairs. The rebels led by O’Brien advanced on the house and surrounded it, taking position in outbuildings and behind the surrounding wall. Mrs McCormack then returned to the house and found O’Brien in one of the outbuildings, she begged him to help her get her children out safely. O’Brien and Mrs McCormack approached the parlour window of the house and O’Brien asked for the RIC to lay down their arms and they would be free to go. Things appeared to be going well but as O’Brien shook the hands of one of the constabulary a shot was fired at him and he was wounded. This then led to a barrage of shooting between the police and the rebels. James Stephens and Terence Bellew MacManus were wounded as they pulled the injured O’Brien out of the line of fire. The shooting went on for a number of hours and with a huge amount of people crouched behind the exterior garden wall of the house one man, Thomas Walsh, was forced to cross the front gate of the house to the other side and at this point he was shot dead by the police. Seeing that the position of the RIC was impenetrable O’Brien directed some of the supporters to leave as it was only a matter of time before military reinforcements arrived. One man, Patrick McCabe who had been standing near the gable end of the house when the firing began, jumped over the wall and ran to follow some of the other rebels who were scattering across the hills, at this point he was shot and fatally wounded. Soon it became evident that a party of Cashel police under Sub Inspector Cox was making their way to reinforce the RIC barricaded in the house. The rebels fired at them as they were seen arriving over Boulea Hill but their ammunition was low and the call was made for the rebels to flee across the fields. This all but ended the 1848 Uprising.

Subsequently William Smith O’Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher, Terence Bellew MacManus and Patrick O’Donoghue were captured and tried with high treason. Even though the jury had recommended mercy they were sentenced to death, this was to be by being hung, drawn and quartered. All four refused to appeal or ask for clemency. Due to public and parliamentary pressure their sentences were commuted to penal imprisonment for life in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) in Australia. Meagher, MacManus and O’Donoghue all eventually escaped to America. Twenty-one locals from the Ballingarry area were also arrested and jailed in Ireland. Though their rebellion had been rushed and ultimately failed it did lead many in Ireland to see that the Crown would only ever grant independence to Ireland by the use of rebellion and physical force. This in turn inspired the Fenians in 1867 and the IRB in 1916.

The Famine Warhouse 1848 is certainly one of the more unusual properties in the ownership of the OPW and great effort has been made to restore and present its story in the long context of Irish Rebellion. It is not hugely known and on the day of my visit I was the only person who had dropped by all day, the guide however was more than helpful and we spent a good hour talking about the history of the house and its influence on the course of Irish History. I would certainly recommend a visit to the Warhouse and its undoubtedly worth the short spin down to the village of The Commons to see the memorial to the Young Irelanders.

GPS: 52.61924, -7.52251