Background

This project takes a fresh look at the famous Coolgreany Evictions Photographs which were taken around the Croghan area of North Wexford in 1887. In this instance we do not re-visit the photographs to raise questions regarding tenant rights, social injustice or the like, but instead we look at a personal relationship which one man has with these photographs.

 

The Coolgreany Evictions Album, as it is now referred to, was compiled and possibly photographed by a Mr. T Mallacy, who later presented it to a Father Farrelly who was very active in the Plan of Campaign in Wexford. In August 1992, Mrs Brigid Hogan of Queensland, Australia, donated the album to The National Library of Ireland.

 

 

One of the images from The Coolgreany Evictions Album is continuously featured in documentaries and historical publications with regard to life in rural Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century. This iconic photograph is of a man standing defiant and proud in the doorway of his home, as his mother and father hold his two young children. Quite often this image is used in documentaries about The Great Famine. However, this image was not taken in West of Ireland; instead it was taken at the Kavanagh family home in Croghan, Ballyfad, in the old Gaelic territories of North Wexford. The man standing in the photograph is Michael Kavanagh. His parents Maggie and Michael Kavanagh sit with Michael’s two children, also Maggie and Michael. What is integral to this story is that one of the two participants conducting this project, Mike Kavanagh, is the grandson of the man standing in the door; the two children are his aunt and uncle.

 

 

The artist, Michael Fortune, has known both Mike and Oliver for a couple of years, having previously worked with them in Rosslare Harbour. Michael knew of Mikes connection to the photograph. The fortuitous nature of this collaboration with The National Library has allowed Mike the opportunity to tell his side of the story.

 

Both Oliver and Mike work with cameras on a daily basis and although the project is focused on the Kavanagh link, without the input of Oliver as a photographer, many of these new moments unearthed would not have been documented. Although, the original photographer of the collection is not known for sure, Oliver Doyle was there to mark some of the newly found steps in this particular story.

 Another factor which spurred Mike’s interest in this project, stemmed from a review written in The Irish Press by Donagh Diamond on the 9th of May of 1994, regarding the publication Treasures from the National Library of Ireland which featured this photograph. Here, Donagh spoke about this particular photograph, and at the end of the article he posed a series of questions as regards to what happened the people in the photograph.

 

“Did the children die of accumulating sickness as the biting wind whipped them to the roadside?”

 

Mike had read this at that time, and as a result kept the article on file, hoping that some day he’d have an opportunity to make the answers known.

 

 

The Discoveries

 

Along the journey, Oliver and Mike discovered many wonderful things. Both had seen copies of the prints, but never the original collection. As a result of accessing the original collection in the library’s archive, Mike for the first time saw prints which included two portrait photographs of his grandfather.

 

 

Although Mike lives in South Wexford, he had grown up in Co. Meath and had never visited the Kavanagh graves in Ballyfad. As a result of the project Oliver and Mike re-visited the family home in Croghan and while there, Mike discovered the grave of his grandparent and great-grandparents in Kilninor Cemetery.

 

 

Seeing the photographs in their original format also allowed both to engage with the images in a way previously un-imaginable. By reading various accounts of the evictions and re-visiting the places in which they took place, the story became real in the minds of both participants. No longer were they looking at people frozen in the late nineteenth century Ireland, instead they were looking at men, women and children with whom they could empathize and relate to. The past had become alive.

 

 

In the following weeks, Oliver and Mike produced a family tree, which details Mike Kavanagh’s family lineage from the 1887 photograph. A welcome addition to the family tree was the arrival of Mike’s new grandchild, born on the 1st of April 2009.

 

 

The Eviction

 

On Friday the 8th of July 1887, Captain Edward Hamilton, Agent for the Brooke Estate, on which the Kavangh’s were tenants, arrived with the Sheriff and ten Emergency Men to evict Michael Kavanagh Jnr. of Croghan, Ballyfad. His father Michael Kavanagh Snr. aged 87 at the time, was certified unfit to move by a Dr. Maloney from Arklow and as a result of this decision, the family were not evicted. The Kavanagh family remained in their home, however other families were not so fortunate, and as a result the Kavanaghs decided to provide temporary housing for the ten evicted families in their outhouses.

 

 

Determined to get their money’s worth, George Freeman, Head Bailiff of the Estate, accompanied by seventeen Emergency Men arrived at the farm of Michael Kavanagh, two and a half months later, on the 28th of September 1887. The evicted families, who were still based in Kavanagh’s farmyard, had gathered inside Kavanagh’s gate to view the party who arrived armed with fifteen revolvers, two repeating rifles and one sniper.  

 

 

On approaching the yard gate, John McCabe, the leader of the Emergency Men asked to see Michael Kavanagh Jnr.  When Michael appeared McCabe told him that he had a warrant for the seizure to the worth of £57, to which Michael asked to see. Defiant as ever, Kavanagh told McCabe he would not allow him to take the £57 worth unless he saw a copy of the warrant. In the middle of this a shot was fired into the crowd, and one of the evicted tenants, John Kinsella aged 64, was shot dead.

 

On taking the body of the dead man indoors, the Emergency Men saw their opportunity and seized fourteen of Kavanagh’s cows. In the coming weeks, Michael Kavanagh Jnr. took an action against the landlord for the wrongful seizure of his cattle. Kavanagh won his case and was paid the full amount claimed, however no-one was every prosecuted for the killing of John Kinsella. When visiting the Kavanagh family grave Oliver and Mike came across the grave of John Kinsella and a headstone which was erected by his neighbours.

 

  

Sacred

TO THE MEMORY OF

JOHN KINSELLA

 

OF CROGHAN WHO WAS FOULLY SLAIN IN DEFENCE

OF HOME AND COUNTRY BY THE BULLETS OF THE PROPERTY DEFENCE ASSOCIATION ON THE 26th OF SEPT 1887 IN THE 64th YEAR OF HIS AGE

 

 

THIS MONUMENT WAS ERECTED BY THE MEN OF WICKLOW AND WEXFORD

AS A TESTIMONY OF THEIR RESPECT FOR HIS MANY CHRISTIAN VIRTUES AND AS AN INDIGNANT PROTEST AGAINST THE CRUELTY AND INJUSTICE OF THOSE

WHO BEFORE GOD ARE GUILTY OF HIS INNOCENT BLOOD

 

 

R.I.P.

 

 

 

 

The objects on display in the National Library which relate to this project are:

 

Article from The Irish Press by Donagh Diamond written on the 9th of May of 1994

 

Mike Kavanagh’s Family Tree

 

Facsimile of Portrait Photograph of Michael Kavanagh (The Coolgreany Album 1887: National Library of Ireland’s photographic collection in the National Photographic Archive)

 

Facsimile of The Kavanagh Family outside their home  (The Coolgreany Album 1887: National Library of Ireland’s photographic collection in the National Photographic Archive)

 

The Coolgreany Evictions by Peggy Doyle

 

 

 

All above images are copyright protected by The National Library of Ireland,

The National Photographic Archive, Michael Fortune, Oliver Doyle and Mike Kavanagh

Text by Michael Fortune