Qualla: Fermoy

Fermoy: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC0. On 7 September 1919, the Reverend Wesley's parishioners in Fermoy were on their way to a Sunday morning church parade when the Irish Republican Army drove out of the side streets in motor vehicles and opened fire. The off-duty soldiers of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry, attending the Wesleyan Church in uniform but unarmed, lost one of their number: Private William Jones from Talog in west Wales. Four others were wounded. The IRA disarmed the rest, took their weapons, and disappeared. Their commander that day was Liam Lynch, head of the Cork Number Two Brigade. The ambush became infamous on both sides of the Irish Sea - one of the first major IRA actions of the War of Independence, executed against the largest British military establishment on the island of Ireland in the town it had built around it.

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Image: CC0

Fermoy: The Scotsman Who Designed a Town

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Seighean (talk), Public domain. In 1791, a Scottish entrepreneur named John Anderson bought the lands around what was then a few cabins and an inn on the Blackwater. Anderson had built his fortune developing roads and creating Ireland's mail-coach system. He had vision; he had cash; he had the surveying skill t...

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Image: Seighean (talk) | Public domain

Fermoy: Largest Garrison on the Island

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Valdoria~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. By the 1830s, with both barracks complete, Fermoy could accommodate 14 field officers, 169 officers, 2,816 men, and 152 horses. It was the largest military establishment on the island of Ireland. The town grew around the garrison economy. Pubs, shops, drapers, tailors, butchers, ...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Valdoria~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Fermoy: The Reprisal

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Seighean (talk), Public domain. After the Wesleyan Church ambush of September 1919, the British soldiers responded as they often did. The jurors at the coroner's inquest on Private William Jones refused to return a verdict of murder. In retaliation, two hundred KSLI soldiers launched an unofficial reprisal on t...

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Image: Seighean (talk) | Public domain

Fermoy: Bypassed, At Last

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit E Turk, CC BY-SA 4.0. For most of the 20th century the main Cork-Dublin road - the N8 - ran straight through Fermoy's town square. The bottleneck was famous. Lorries from the south struggling up Pearse Square, tourists trying to find parking near the river, the entire town effectively a roundabout on ...

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Image: E Turk | CC BY-SA 4.0

Fermoy: Joyce's Father, Boston's Mayor, Northern Ireland's First Minister

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Seighean (talk), Public domain. Fermoy's roll of natives and connections is unusually mixed. John Stanislaus Joyce, father of James Joyce, was educated here. Patrick Collins, a US Representative from Massachusetts and mayor of Boston, was born nearby in 1844. Kenneth MacKenzie, the 18th-century Scottish Gaelic ...

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Image: Seighean (talk) | Public domain