A series of public lectures on the revolutionary decade from 1913 to 1923 with a particular focus on the Easter Rising Happening on the last Tuesday of each month, at 8 p.m. in Teach Diarmada, Castledermot. Entry 2 euro/members free. More events will be added to the programme over the course of 2016. Organised by Castledermot Local History Group. Grant-aided by Kildare County Council
- ‘Remembering War & Revolution’, Brian Hanley, Tuesday September 29th 2015.
This talk will look at the different ways the 1913-1923 revolutionary era and the First World War have been remembered and how that remembering has been the source of controversy. Brian Hanley is the author of a number of books including: ‘The I.R.A. 1926-36’, ‘A Guide to Irish Military Heritage’, ‘The I.R.A.: A Documentary History 1916-2005’ and is co-author of ‘The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official I.R.A. and the Workers’ Party’.
- ‘Eleanor Hope Shackleton: more than Ernest’s sister’, Sharon Greene, Tuesday October 27th 2015.
Eleanor was the youngest of the Shackleton children to be born in Kilkea House. She became a nurse in her twenties at the outbreak of the First World War and as her brother headed out on his famous expedition to the South Pole, she became a military nurse, ending up in Salonika.
- ‘Memories and Memorabilia’, Tuesday November 24th 2015.
Your opportunity to bring along stories and/or artefacts from the 1913-1923 period.
- ‘The Archaeology of the Easter Rising’, Franc Myles, Tuesday January 26th 2016.
What archaeology can tell us about the Easter Rising, particularly looking at investigations at Moore Street and Henry Place, adjacent to the G.P.O., but also asking what these sites mean to us today.
- ‘Ireland and India: shared histories.’, Kate O’Malley, Tuesday February 23rd 2016.
Looking at the links between Irish and Indian nationalists in the early twentieth century. Kate O’Malley is the author of ‘Ireland, India and Empire: Indo-Irish Radical Connections, 1919–64’
- ‘Kildare and the 1916 Rising’, James Durney, Tuesday March 29th 2016
James Durney is a local historian and author of many books including ‘The Civil War in Kildare’, ‘The War of Independence in Kildare’ and ‘On the One Road: Political Unrest in Kildare, 1913-1994’.
‘The Kildare ANZACs and their contribution to the First World War’, Jackie Greene, Tuesday April 26th 2016
The story of Kildare-men who, after migrating to Australasia, joined the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps and subsequently fought in Gallipoli and Palestine.
- ‘After the Lock-Out: the workers’ movement 1916-23′, Terry Dunne, Tuesday May 26th 2016.
The Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union didn’t go away after 1913 and this is the story of it, and its more militant offshoots, and their role in the 1916 Rising, the 1918. Conscription Crisis and in organising rural workers in Leinster and East Munster generally, and particularly in south Kildare.