2015 Press Releases

Easter Rising Roadshow arrives in Tralee

25 Sep 2015
The Square in Tralee Image courtesy of WikiCommons

The School of History, UCC, Kerry County Council and Kerins O’Rahilly GAA club, Tralee, are pleased to announce that that an ‘Easter Rising Roadshow’ will be held in Tralee next week. 

The Roadshow will be held the Kerins O’Rahilly club house, Strand Street, Tralee on Saturday 3 October 2015, from 11am-4pm.  

The event – which is free, open to all and for which no pre-registration is required– follows on from the success of previous roadshows, which were held in Cork city and county, and Muckross House Killarney, and which attracted international attention as a result of the discovery during them of the last known photographs of Michael Collins, taken just minutes before his death in west Cork on 22 August 1922.

The event is aimed at anyone who has an interest – whether personal or familial – in the history of the ‘revolutionary decade’ in modern Irish history, 1912-1923, and more specifically the 1916 Easter Rising. Anyone who has any documents (eg official correspondence, private letters, diaries, pictures, etc.), stories, artefacts from the Rising or revolutionary decade – or indeed are simply interested the events that took place during it - are invited to meet to meet and discuss same with professional archivists and expert historians, in a friendly, informal setting.

Also present on the day will be a number of local & national historical groups with a particular specialism in this period, including the Irish Volunteers Commemorative Organisation and the Women’s History Association of Ireland, among others. Members of the public can browse their exhibits, purchase commemorative items, register as members, and so on. Others stalls will offer for sale books relating to the period. Members of historical re-enactment groups, dressed in period attire, will also be present, as members of the IRA, Crown forces etc., and will deliver short talks ‘in character’ about their aims, their equipment, and so on. Finally, there will be a special participatory session devoted to younger members of the audience.

The event organisers say: ‘The event is being organised in response to public demand following the earlier roadshows. We are very keen to emphasise that the event is not just for the public, but it is by the public, for it is they – their memories, their artefacts, their documents, their interests – who are the stars of the show. In many ways Kerry was one of the epicentres of the ‘revolutionary decade’ in modern Irish history, and it is no accident that many of the key individuals from that period haled from the county, or had connections to it. So we wish to invite all the residents of the county to come and talk with us, and with each other, about the role of the people of Kerry during those momentous years in the life of the county, and the country.’

For more information contact Gabriel Doherty in the School of History, UCC, at 021 4902783, or g.doherty@ucc.ie

 

 

University College Cork

Coláiste na hOllscoile Corcaigh

College Road, Cork T12 K8AF

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