Volunteer Denis Hegarty Jr

Volunteer Denis Hegarty Jr (aged 30) of Clashfluck [sic] near Timoleague (Barryshall)

Date of incident: 19 Jan. 1921

Sources: II, 20 Jan. 1921; CWN, 29 Jan. 1921; CCE, 19 March 1921; Military Inquests, WO 35/146A and WO 35/151A/53 (TNA); Charles O’Donoghue’s WS 1607, 9 (BMH); John O’Driscoll’s WS 1250, 20, 36 (BMH); Rebel Cork’s FS, 207; Last Post (1976), 79; Barry (1949, 1989), 67, 103, 236.

Note: Hegarty, aged 30 and employed as a ploughman by Protestant farmer John Good of Barryshall near Timoleague, was found in a lane a couple of hundred yards from Good’s residence with gunshot wounds to his head. See CWN, 29 Jan. 1921. He appears to have died of his wounds on 21 January 1921—the date of what Tom Barry branded as his murder by Essex Regiment soldiers. His comrade John O’Driscoll recorded that Hegarty had been ‘taken from his bed and shot dead’ by British forces. See John O’Driscoll’s WS 1250, 20 (BMH). As local historians suggest, the killings of Volunteers Denis Hegarty and Patrick Donovan may have led to the IRA executions of John Good and his son William Good as suspected spies on 10 and 26 March 1921 respectively. Volunteer Hegarty was buried in Templequinlan Graveyard in Cloghgriffin townland near Clonakilty.

Denis Hegarty was in 1901 one of the eight co-resident children of small farmer and fisherman Denis Hegarty Sr (then aged 66) and his wife Ellen (aged 42) of Lehenagh (Abbeymahon) in the Timoleague district. These children (five sons and three daughters) ranged in age from 6 to 22. Of the five sons, Denis Hegarty Jr (then aged 10) came in the middle. At the time of the 1911 census it became clear that Denis Hegarty Sr and his wife Ellen were the parents of nine living children (ten born).