Qualla: Clonfin Ambush https://qualla.com/clonfin-ambush en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/d/9/clonfin-ambush-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Clonfin Ambush https://qualla.com/clonfin-ambush Clonfin Ambush: Introduction https://qualla.com/clonfin-ambush/ Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. The lorries came around the bend just before midday on 2 February 1921, two of them, carrying members of the British Auxiliary Division along the lonely road between Ballinalee and Granard. Twenty-one men were waiting for them. The IRA's North Longford Flying Column had picked their ground carefully — a townland called Clonfin, a name almost no one outside this corner of Ireland would ever have heard, until the hours that followed turned it into a byword for both the savagery of guerrilla war and the strange dignity that can survive inside it.

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/d/9/clonfin-ambush-wp/gcd9-clonfin-ambush-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Clonfin Ambush: The Blacksmith of Ballinalee https://qualla.com/clonfin-ambush/ Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. The man giving the orders was Seán Mac Eoin, a 27-year-old blacksmith from Ballinalee whose forge had become an unlikely command post for the IRA in County Longford. He had built the flying column the previous autumn, twenty-one volunteers who had already killed four Royal Irish ...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/d/9/clonfin-ambush-wp/gcd9-clonfin-ambush-the-blacksmith-of-ballinalee.mp3 0:06 2 full Clonfin Ambush: A Lengthy Gun Battle https://qualla.com/clonfin-ambush/ Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. The ambush opened with rifle fire from the embankments above the road. The Auxiliaries were veteran soldiers and they fought back hard, turning what Mac Eoin had hoped would be a short engagement into a sustained gun battle. Four of the IRA volunteers worked their way around the ...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/d/9/clonfin-ambush-wp/gcd9-clonfin-ambush-a-lengthy-gun-battle.mp3 0:06 3 full Clonfin Ambush: Water From the Nearby Houses https://qualla.com/clonfin-ambush/ Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. What happened next is why people still argue about Clonfin a century later. Mac Eoin walked among the surrendered Auxiliaries and congratulated them on the fight they had put up. He stopped his own men from beating the prisoners. He had water brought from nearby farmhouses for th...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/d/9/clonfin-ambush-wp/gcd9-clonfin-ambush-water-from-the-nearby-houses.mp3 0:06 4 full Clonfin Ambush: The Houses Burning Behind https://qualla.com/clonfin-ambush/ Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. There is no story of the Irish War of Independence that ends cleanly, and Clonfin is no exception. In the days after the ambush, British forces returned to the surrounding townlands and burned a number of houses and farms in reprisal. They shot dead an elderly farmer in the proce...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/d/9/clonfin-ambush-wp/gcd9-clonfin-ambush-the-houses-burning-behind.mp3 0:06 5 full Clonfin Ambush: Quiet Country, Loud Memory https://qualla.com/clonfin-ambush/ Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. The land around Clonfin is the soft drumlin country of north Longford, low rounded hills cut by hedgerows and pasture, the kind of landscape that looks too gentle to have ever held an ambush. The townland itself is barely a place by modern standards — a stretch of road, a few far...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/d/9/clonfin-ambush-wp/gcd9-clonfin-ambush-quiet-country-loud-memory.mp3 0:06 6 full