FROM THE ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY TO THE IRISH ARTILLERY CORPS

 From the Royal Field Artillery to the Irish Artillery Corps

Liam Kenny

Kildare has been associated with military training and operations since the ancient times when Finn MacCumhaill and his Fianna warriors roamed the slopes of the Hill of Allen. In the modern era the military presence reached its zenith in the triumphant years of the British Empire when the county was one of the pivots around which wheeled the imperial military machine. The main cog in that machine in Ireland was the Curragh camp which accommodated a fair amount of the manpower, and of the horsepower, of the British army. Not to be left out of the reckoning was the barracks at Kildare home for almost a century to the artillery or big guns branch of the military. Built and occupied by the British it was rebuilt by the Irish after independence and, up to its closure in 1998, was the home of gunnery in the Defence Forces of the modern Irish state.

While the story of the Curragh Camp was documented comprehensively by Col. Con Costello in his book “A most delightful station”, the barracks at Kildare has been waiting for a historian with the breadth of knowledge needed to do justice to its record in the military and social life of the locality. Such a historian has now come along and published a book which draws together all the threads in the story of Kildare barracks. Mark McLoughlin, author of “Kildare Barracks – from the Royal Field Artillery to the Irish Artillery Corps” blends together social and military history to provide a compelling and comprehensive account of the barracks. It was no easy task – while the elite cavalry units who occupied the Curragh camp left copious memoirs by officers regaling their prowess on the hunting fields of the county — there was no similar body of memoir on the more workmanlike artillery units at Kildare. As the author notes in his introduction outlining the difficulty of finding sources on Kildare barracks: “There are no great memoirs written, nor are there unit records of any substance.” However through perseverance in the limited archives that were available – and through reinforcing the formal records with a rich body of local history – the author has succeeded in producing a book of great substance running to over 350 pages with a strong text interspersed with many photographs, most seeing print for the first time.

There is hardly an aspect of the Kildare barracks not covered in this volume which will be the reference book for many years to come on military life in an artillery installation. Big ticket episodes such as the Curragh Crisis of 1914, the Garda Mutiny of 1922, and the killing of Lt. Wogan-Browne, already the subject of books and articles, are now put in the context of the military presence in Kildare barracks.

Mark McLoughlin researches have taken him back to the time when the large site on the eastern side of Kildare town was acquired from the Duke of Leinster in 1900 when Britain was reeling from reverses doled out by the Boer rebels in South Africa. Recognising their deficiency in artillery the British government decided on a programme of camp construction where the drills and sciences of gunnery could be practised. While the Curragh camp was undergoing a transformation from wooden huts to the familiar red-brick terraces and barrack rooms, the urgency was such in relation to Kildare barracks that it was built as a camp of wooden huts and drill halls. The contract for the earthworks went to Patrick Sheridan of Eyre Street, Newbridge. Eighty men were to be employed on the contract with an estimated 1,700 gunners occupying the barracks when completed. Not surprisingly the Leinster Leader of the day reported that “The townsfolk of Kildare are naturally jubiliant at the prospect of the increased commercial activity which will arise from the presence of a big military station in their midst.” The Kildare Observer went further and said that such was the surge of energy in Kildare town which was getting new water, sewage, and, at that early stage-electricity-works that “Naas, Newbridge and Athy had better look to their laurels.”

Even the most optimistic pundit could not have envisaged the impact on Kildare when the first gunners arrived in April 1902. Almost 1,000 men, hundreds of horses, dozens of big guns, and all the paraphernalia of an army on the move, descended on the new barracks directly from their previous bases in England. The clatter of horses hooves, the rattle of tack and bridle, and the clamour of commands, transformed the “quiet and plod-along town” (Kildare Observer). If their arrival was a shock – albeit a welcome one for the locals – it was also a shock for some of the soldiers coming to rural Kildare from the terraces of English cities. The author quotes a gunner writing home to say that his home town in Somerset was fifty times bigger than Kildare and that he doubted if the folks at home would like to come to visit. A strength of the author’s approach is the way in which personal anecdotes is woven among the detail of military organisation. Some military history authors lose the general reader in a torrent of terminology on battalions, brigades, and batteries, known only to those with a close interest in the subject. In “Kildare Barracks” the experience of the individual soldier is centre stage and chapters on discipline, crime and punishment and sports and enterainment bring alive the vibrancy of the population that lived within and in the environs of the barracks.

This is a big book, necessarily so because it spans two government administrations. The first twelve chapters deal with the barracks when occupied by the British artillery; fourteen chapters cover its occupation by the army of independent Ireland. And the latter period throws up as many stories as the earlier phase. Local people will be pleased with the recounting of characters and stories associated with the barracks in the late twentieth century. The author relates the experience of the Burke sisters – Mary, Paula and Katheryn – who grew up in the barracks where their father Comdt. Denis Burke had been stationed since 1954. The Burke sisters and the two telephonists at the barracks – Monica Moore and Dorothy Doyle – were among the very few females present on the property in the 1960s. The author reminds us of bygone courtesies by noting that “the children were saluted by the personnel in the barracks.”

The book takes the story of the barracks up to its closure in 1998 and includes reference to its accommodation of Northern refugees in 1969 and to refugees from Bosnia in the early 21st century. In between was the shock announcement of the barracks’ closure in 1998 and the transfer of the Artillery school to the Curragh Camp. It is one of the indictments of the lack of forward planning in this country that one of the finest pieces of State property has been all but abandoned and left to deteriorate in the years since it was vacated by the army.

Whatever about the physical survival of the barracks, Mark McLoughlin’s book ensures that the story of the gunners who occupied the installation from 1902 to 1998 is given permanent form in a thoroughly well-researched book which weaves military and social history together to create a comprehensive narrative of the artillery in Kildare. Book reviewed: “Kildare Barracks – from the Royal Field Artillery to the Irish Artillery Corps” by Mark McLoughlin, and published by Merrion/Irish Academic Press, 8 Chapel Lane, Sallins. Leinster Leader 1 July 2014, Looking Back, Series no: 388.