By John Fitzgerald
(Part one)
Garryricken House is located just inside the County Kilkenny border, a mile from Poulacapple and about four miles outside Callan. It stands in a tranquil wooded area, a haven of peace where people love to walk and enjoy picnics. Birds chirp, cattle graze contentedly, and rabbits play in the fields around this relic of another age.
Even in our fast moving hi tech world, with traffic never far away, you can relax in this idyllic rural setting. The cars and juggernauts pass non-stop on the main Kilkenny-Clonmel road a mile from the house, but all is calm at the site of the grand old mansion.
Thus it has been since the beginning of the century-except for one terrible day in 1921.
At that time, the mansion belonged to the Earl of Ossory, though nobody had lived in it for decades. Adjoining it was a smaller house occupied by its fulltime caretaker John Luttrell, and his three young children. About a hundred yards behind the big house was a farm, where John Luttrell’s father, mother, three brothers, and three sisters lived under the one roof.
Two doors in the caretaker’s residence allowed access to the mansion. Behind it was a row of outhouses, fronted by a high wall, and a field that extended towards the wood.
In the early hours of March 12th 1921, six members of the Callan IRA Flying Column sought shelter at the Luttrell farmhouse: Paddy Ryan, Ned Aylward, Jimmy Leahy, Paddy Luttrell, Sean Quinn, and Jim McKenna. The Luttrell family greeted them with warm embraces and handshakes. Paddy Ryan fell into a deep sleep, worn out after days of hectic anti-Crown activity, but his comrades drank tea and played cards.
Owing to lack of space in Luttrell’s house, the IRA men opted to spend the night in the unoccupied mansion. At about 3 A.M., they entered Garryricken House and bedded down. Two Coolagh volunteers, Cody and Kearney, agreed to serve as lookouts while the group slept.
Quinn, Leahy, and Aylward were shown to a room on the mansion’s top floor that the Luttrells had set aside for IRA fugitives. The family had got the word out on the grapevine that the room was there for any patriot on the run.
Jim McKenna and Paddy Luttrell slept on the bottom floor. Though keen supporters of the Flying Column, John Luttrell and his wife in the adjoining house were unaware that any rebels were in the mansion as they had been soundly asleep when they arrived.
Meanwhile, the Tans in Callan had learned of the rebel presence at Garryricken House. British forces in Kilkenny were alerted, and at 5.30 A.M. a combined police and military force set off in their Crossley Tenders to apprehend or kill the Irish fighters. The Tans were confident: They had the element of surprise, overwhelming numerical superiority, better weapons, as well as having the law and the full might of the empire on their side. They drove to Garryricken whistling “Rule Britannia” and joking about how they would annihilate the “gang of rebel bastards.”
Commanding this force was an RIC District Inspector from Callan, a Kilkenny-based British army officer, and a Corporal of the Devonshire Regiment.
Reaching the big house, they decided to exploit the considerable firing cover provided by a sunken ditch that encircled the front of it. Troops and police crept into positions along the ditch, while others moved around to the rear of the mansion.
Fortune seemed to favour the British at this point: One of the Coolagh lookouts, Cody, had left his post to attend a fair, and the other one, Kearney, was captured by Tans as he searched for firewood near the house. The British now held all the aces-or so they thought. With no one to warn them, the rebels appeared doomed to die fighting in a bloody siege-or face the hangman’s rope like Kevin Barry for their defiance of English rule.
RIC Inspector Baynham, the army officer, and the corporal walked up to the caretaker’s house and banged loudly on the door. John Luttrell awoke and looked out his bedroom window to see what the racket was about. Thinking quickly, he asked his wife Annie to see if any rebels were sleeping in Garryricken House and, if so, to warn them that the Tans were outside.
She immediately ran into the adjoining Mansion; while John went down to open the front door. The Inspector demanded to know if he were concealing wanted men in his house. The caretaker denied any knowledge of strangers in his home. Ignoring his denial, Baynham and his men produced their guns and rushed past him into the hallway. They forced Luttrell to walk ahead of them up the stairs.
He had to play for time to give Annie a chance to alert the rebels and return to the bedroom. Feigning a twisted ankle, he stopped halfway up the stairs, obstructing his unwelcome visitors. Luckily, Annie had got back before the Inspector entered the bedroom. He and his men searched the room and then pushed open the door leading into the mansion.
They found themselves in a long corridor in Garryricken House. The officer and the Corporal tiptoed along the corridor until they reached the door of the room they assumed the rebels might be hiding in. They quietly opened the door, and then charged into the room, shouting “Hands Up!”
Aylward aimed at one of them in the semi-darkness, and fired. A bullet streaked past his own head as he loosed off several shots at the intruders. The Tans retreated into the passageway. Quinn, Leahy, and Aylward threw themselves to the floor and emptied their guns into the opened doorway. Their enemies had run for cover.
Pulling open a shutter on the bedroom window, Aylward saw that the area surrounding the house was crawling with Tans. Judging their position to be almost hopeless, he suggested that they might as well attempt a breakout rather than die inside the house. It seemed to him that they had nothing to lose by trying.
To be continued…
