A West Cork Pilgrimage: Farewell and Remembrance
All Ireland Sunday, what better day to create this post.
A recent visit to West Cork for a sad occasion offered one of those unexpected chances to touch base with some of the deeper threads of Irish history—threads that run through bog and bóithrín, through grief and pride, and through the lives of people who changed the course of this great nation.
I was in no rush, so I made a small pilgrimage to three evocative sites—Béal na Bláth, Sam Maguire’s grave in Dunmanway, and the site of the Kilmichael Ambush. Each place stands as a marker in the story of Ireland’s struggle for independence, bound up with courage, controversy, sacrifice—and West Cork’s fierce sense of identity
Béal na Bláth – The Ambush of Michael Collins
The road to Béal na Bláth winds through a peaceful valley, but history clings to it like mist. Here, on 22 August 1922, Michael Collins, Chairman of the Provisional Government and Commander-in-Chief of the National Army, was killed in an ambush during the Irish Civil War. It’s hard to believe he was just 31.
A memorial cross marks the spot where his armoured car was stopped and the fatal shot was fired. The setting is still and rural—sheep and dairy cows graze nearby, unaware of the turmoil once played out on this narrow road. It’s hard to reconcile the serenity of the place with the trauma of that day. Collins was a national hero and a signatory of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, after which he said ‘he had signed his death warrant’. It’s hard to imagine the bitterness and sadness of the Civil War that pitted brothers against each other. Surely some of the darkest days in our long history of suffering.
There’s something sobering about standing where he fell, in the quiet hush of the West Cork landscape that shaped and ultimately claimed him. (The Current cross isn’t the exact location of where he was killed; it was slightly south of it).
Miscellaneous fact: a lot of us in Éire Óg have a great interest in Collins as we were asked to take part in the film of Michael Collins as the Tipperary team in Croke Park playing against Dublin, represented by Kilmacud Crokes!
Sam Maguire’s Grave – A Forgotten Patriot Remembered
In the churchyard of St. Mary’s in Dunmanway, I stopped at the grave of Sam Maguire—a name familiar to every follower of Gaelic football, though few know the man behind the famous cup given to the winners of the All Ireland SFC.
Born in 1877, Maguire worked in the British Civil Service in London, where he became involved with the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He later played a crucial role in intelligence-gathering for Michael Collins during the War of Independence. A passionate advocate for the GAA, he helped foster Irish identity in exile and on the field where he captained London in the 1901 and 1904 All Ireland Finals. It was he who recruited Michael Collins into the IRB. He was Collins’ chief intelligence officer in London but he had to flee as his cover was blown and he returned to Dublin, joining the new Irish Civil Service. But because of his anti treaty views he clashed with his superiors and was dismissed.
Sadly, Maguire died penniless and in obscurity in 1927, just five years after Collins, and was buried in his hometown, Dunmanway. Today, a statue and the Sam Maguire Cup—awarded annually to the All-Ireland Senior Football Champions—keep his name alive. But his grave is a quiet one, and worth visiting to remember the man behind the silverware: a patriot, organiser, and believer in Ireland’s potential.
Kilmichael Ambush Site – Turning the Tide
After leaving Dunmanway I passed out by the birthplace of Sam in Mallabraca.
Not far from the back roads of Dunmanway lies Kilmichael, the scene of one of the most significant—and controversial—engagements of the War of Independence.
Just one week after Bloody Sunday in Croke Park, when the Auxiliaries killed fourteen civilians, including one player Michael Hogan, on the 28th November 1920, Tom Barry led a flying column of the IRA in ambushing an Auxiliary patrol. Seventeen Auxiliaries were killed, along with three IRA volunteers. The event was a turning point in the guerrilla war, demonstrating that the British forces were not invincible. The Auxiliaries, like the Black and Tans, were notorious paramilitary type forces who tried install fear into the civilian population with their cruel tactics and reprisals against local populations, such as burning homes, looting shops and shooting civilians. They are well characterised in the great film ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’. They bookended this cruel chapter with the burning of Cork City in reprisal.
A stark monument, stands at the ambush site. Various Panels at locations around the site tell the story, but it’s the landscape that speaks loudest: boggy fields, rocky outcrops, and that same mix of calm and sorrow that haunts much of Ireland’s rebel history.
The Kilmichael Ambush has been the subject of historical debate, particularly around claims of a false surrender, but it was a defining moment in West Cork’s memory and in the folklore of resistance. The surviving Auxiliaries feigned to surrender and killed three local IRA men who had dropped their weapons. Barry gave the order to open fire and not to cease until he gave the order to do so.
In the modern Ireland, we have forgotten the sacrifices and hardships of generations of Irish men and women who gave their lives so we have our freedom today. Cruel hard times; that opened scars that have taken generations to heal.
West Cork wears its history proudly, if quietly. These sites are not huge tourist destinations—they’re tucked away, often signposted with a kind of modesty, as if to say, “We remember, but we don’t boast.”
Each grave, each cross, each quiet roadside plaque reminds us that history is never really in the past. It’s under our feet. And sometimes, when we need it, it rises gently to meet us. Gone but not forgotten.
It was time to head home.
