‘Returning Ghosts’: The Unsolved Murder of James Donovan
‘Was it not the fact that the evicted tenant and the caretaker were on extremely bad terms, the tenant having on one occasion struck the caretaker on the face?’ – Arthur Smith-Barry, 1st Baron Barrymore, House of Commons, 1894[1] Castleisland District Heritage has acquired a copy of the travelogue, Now and in Time to Be […]
‘I have never felt terror like it’: The Murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier
‘Many of us around here are worried that there is some psychopath at large’ – Sunday World, 29 December 1996 Why boots? Why no lights? These baffling ‘head-scratching’ clues might have bothered the famous TV detective Columbo had he been called to the murder scene of Sophie Toscan du Plantier at Dunmanus, West Cork on […]
Spex On: A Look at the Family of Corkman, John Fergus O’Hea
For more than a quarter of a century, the cartoons of John Fergus O’Hea formed a picturesque and striking record of the second half of the nineteenth century.[1] He signed his work ‘Spex,’ a nickname he inherited in his (bespectacled) schooldays. O’Hea was born in Cork in 1841, son of barrister James O’Hea (1809-1882) […]
‘O’Donoghue of the Hills’: The Knocknaboul Eviction
On 18th May 1881 about sixty police under the command of Sub-Inspector Davis assembled at Knocknaboul near Kingwilliamstown on the Cork/Kerry border with land agent Arthur Edward Herbert JP of Killeentierna to evict Denis O’Donoghue and his family of nine children. The scene was described by one who witnessed it: There was no […]
‘Intensely Irish’: Probing a Kerry Claim on Celebrity Minstrel Denis O’Sullivan
He came to Ireland with a concert party in the flush of his great success and sang from Cork to Portrush some of our loveliest melodies as, without exaggeration, they were never sung before In 1901, American tenor and actor Denis O’Sullivan, described as ‘intensely Irish,’ was approaching his zenith, wowing audiences with his baritone […]
At Home in Ireland: Lt-General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart
A childhood of shifting scene and a mixed nationality may be responsible for my useful knack of growing roots wherever I happen to find myself – Happy Odyssey (1950) It is always of interest to the local historian, in this case one in Castleisland, to learn about the background of famous people. In this respect, […]
‘Three Cheers for Castleisland’ – The Innocence of John Twiss
When John Twiss was arrested on 25 April 1894, within days of the brutal murder, at Glenlara, of caretaker James Donovan, he explained to officers that he and his sister Jane were financially dependent on the tolls of a local Kerry fair.[1] The fair, he informed them, was imminent, and he asked if he could […]
‘Where is Glenlara?’: John Twiss of Castleisland, from a Cork Perspective
‘The dogs in the street knew John Twiss was innocent’ As the descendants of John Twiss, and the Michael O’Donohoe Memorial Heritage Project, await the outcome of the application for the Presidential Pardon of Twiss, hanged in 1895 for a crime he maintained he did not commit, a space is given here to reflect on […]
Dancing with History: Carriganedy Castle, otherwise Hyde Castle (Castle Hyde), Fermoy, Co Cork[1]
A series of dances was held in Fermoy, Co Cork, in August 1847 ‘to cheer every heart so long clouded by the distress and gloom now rapidly passing away,’ an account of which is held in the Castleisland O’Donohoe Collection.[2] None of the dances, however, surpassed the fete champetre in the grounds of Carriganedy […]
Death before Dishonour: John Twiss’s Speech from the Dock
I did not think that there was a juryman ever put a coat on his back would find me guilty A reporter of the trial of John Twiss in 1895 made the following assessment of him from his speech from the dock: He was an ignorant man in the sense that he got no […]
