By Colum Kenny In a small village in the Pyrenees they handed me a faded manuscript. The French owners of the house at Gouaux (as high as the top of Ireland’s highest mountain) had found it among papers in their library. Unfolding it gingerly, I saw first the signature of Richard Nagle, attorney-general of Ireland … Read more
West Street, Drogheda, Co. Louth By Aisling Durkan Little is known about the early life of Alderman James Barlow (d. 1759), who left a very fine legacy in Drogheda in the form of an elegant red-brick-fronted townhouse in West Street. How he made his fortune is uncertain but he must have accumulated considerable wealth, as … Read more
By Amy L. Harris Thomas Dingley (Dineley), an English antiquarian, visited Ireland in 1680–1. In his journal he recorded Swift Nicks (Nix) as one of eight army captains whom he met in Limerick. A literature search finds ‘Swift Nicks/Nix’ classed as a nickname associated with the English highwayman John Nevison, who lived in the latter … Read more
By John Miles La Trinidad Valencera of the Spanish Armada was in trouble. The ship weighed 1,000 tons and had a complement of 360 men. She was leaking badly and had taken on more water than could be pumped out. Nevertheless, as she approached the Irish coast, she managed to rescue 264 men from another … Read more
By Éamonn Toland Charles Blount, the eighth Lord Mountjoy, was distraught. As commander of Queen Elizabeth’s forces in Ulster, he had ordered his troops to end the Nine Years’ War by starving Irish rebels into submission, at a cost by 1603 of tens of thousands of mostly civilian lives. Senior English officers had witnessed children … Read more