The red blob marks the village of Kilbrittain, population 216. I went there more than a decade ago for a birthday party which went on for three inebriated days and nights.
In the meantime, my West Cork Correspondent has been keeping me abreast of what’s up in this small rural community. My WCC is a part-time political anthropologist, making him especially informative and insightful, always, and a bit squiffy, sometimes. His most recent undiplomatic bag contains Vol. IV from the Kilbrittain Historical Society.
You are looking at a photograph of Coolmain Castle and Old Head, taken by Brian Madden. The high production quality of this 180 page journal is matched by the scholarship and variety of its content. As the society was only founded in 2015 it has done well to produce four volumes. The articles demonstrate how much more comfortable the people of Ireland are now with their history.
So there is an account of the killing of RIC Constable, Edward Bolger, by the Kilbrittain IRA in 1919. Bolger was a Catholic but his zeal in breaking-up IRA meetings earned him enmity and assassination. Then there is Dorothy Stopford, a Dublin Protestant, who was a foundation scholar at St Paul’s. Her sister recalls – “we children were brought up in the true Irish Protestant social and cultural tradition. We attended church regularly with governesses or parents. Socially, we consorted only with other little Protestants, the children of our parents’ friends”.
Dorothy studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin and worked as a dispensary doctor and GP in Kilbrittain during the Troubles (1919 – 1921). Unexpectedly, she was a Protestant, woman doctor, she acted as medical officer to an IRA brigade. Like many educated Irish Protestants she had become an ardent republican. Again, there is an insightful article about the Hurleys, a West Cork family who served in the IRA in the Troubles.
It would be monotonous, perhaps, if the journal only picked over the history of 100 years ago. An article about an Aer Lingus flight from Cork to Heathrow in 1968 is a reminder of the days when safety on the roads and in the air was nowhere as good as today. All 61 people on board perished, 36 of them from Co Cork. The cause of the crash has never been established; there were no black boxes then and accident investigation procedure was in its infancy.
If you would like to join the Kilbrittain Historical Society, receive their journal and perhaps attend their monthly meetings, send an email to info@kilbrittainhistoricalsociey.com – it’s a bargain at Euros 20.
As Ireland now punches well above its weight as a place of culinary excellence Kilbrittain plays its part as home to Auld Cratur Marmalade. Ask for it at F&M or any high-end victualler and you might be lucky, but it is a small batch production line and demand outstrips supply.
