Volunteer Edmond (Ned) Creedon

Volunteer Edmond (Ned) Creedon (aged 20) of Clogheen (Mourne Abbey near Mallow)

Date of incident: 15 Feb. 1921

Sources: CE, 17 Feb. 1921; IT, 18 Nov. 1921; Military Inquests, WO 35/148/43 (TNA); George Power’s WS 451, 17 (BMH); Richard Willis and John Bolster’s WS 808, 12-13 (BMH); Tadhg McCarthy’s WS 965, 9-11 (BMH); Leo O’Callaghan’s WS 978, 15-18 (BMH); Jeremiah Daly’s WS 1015, 6-8 (BMH); Tadhg Looney’s WS 1196, 9-14 (BMH); John Ronayne’s WS 1269, 7-10 (BMH); John O’Sullivan’s WS 1376, 9-11 (BMH); O’Donoghue (1954, 1986), 136-37; Last Post (1976), 80; ‘The Irish Rebellion in the 6th Division Area’, Irish Sword, 27 (Spring 2010), 143; http://homepage.eircom.net/~corkcounty/Timeline/Mourne%20Abbey.htm; http://www.tameside.gov.uk/museumsgalleries/mom/objectfocus/razor (17 Sept. 2015); Mourne Abbey Memorial, Knockmourne, Mallow.  

Note: Creedon was one of the four Volunteers who were killed at Mourne Abbey or died later of wounds received there. Mourne Abbey was ‘the most serious reverse suffered by a battalion of the Second Cork Brigade’ during the war. It occurred on 15 February 1921 a few miles from Mallow. The trap laid for the Mallow Battalion of the Cork No. 2 Brigade, which was getting ready for an ambush a mile south of Mourne Abbey, was noticed by Siobhan Lankford as she cycled to her job at the Mallow Post Office. She alerted the intelligence officer of the Mallow column, but his efforts to get word to the ambush party did not succeed in time. Though most of the column was able to break through the British encirclement, the British, equipped with machine guns and armoured vehicles, inflicted serious casualties on the eastern sections of the IRA column. At Mourne Abbey three Volunteers—Edmond Creedon, Patrick Dorgan, and Patrick Flynn—were killed. A fourth Volunteer—Michael Looney of Island—died of his wounds within a week. Eight Volunteers were taken prisoner, of whom two—Patrick Ronayne (aged 24) of Greenhill and Thomas Mulcahy (aged 18) of Toureen—were executed after court martial in Cork. See O’Donoghue (1954, 1986), 136-37.

Edmond Creedon was in 1911 one of the five living children (six born) of the Clogheen farmer Patrick Creedon and his wife Mary. He was the youngest child (then aged 10), with one older brother and three older sisters. 

The IRA eventually discovered that news of its planned ambush at Mourne Abbey had been given away to British intelligence officers. The informer was allegedly Daniel Shields or Shiels; he ‘was also responsible for a raid two weeks later on two republican columns at Nadd near Banteer [in the Boggera Mountains] in which three Volunteers lost their lives’. See ‘Serious Reverse for I.R.A. at Mourne Abbey’ at http://homepage.eircom.net/~corkcounty/Timeline/Mourne%20Abbey.htm (accessed 17 Sept. 2015). 

It was reportedly the Nadd reversal that finally led to the exposure of Shiels. ‘No suspicion’, recalled Tadhg Looney, Vice O/C of the Mallow Battalion and brother of dead Volunteer Michael Looney, ‘rested on him [Shiels] at the time nor until the events at Nadd on the morning of March 10th, 1921, when the brigade staff together with the Mallow and Kanturk Battalion columns were encircled under much the same circumstances as at Mourne Abbey. It then came to light that Shiels was seen drinking in Kanturk public-houses and had in fact called to the R.I.C. barracks there on the eve of the round up at Nadd. He was, I believe, identified by Tom Bride, the owner of the public house at Nadd, where he was dressed in the uniform of a Black and Tan. He disappeared after this incident and was never traced.’ See Tadhg Looney’s WS 1196, 13-14 (BMH).