Page 38 - Garda Journal Winter 2019

HISTORY | Cork’s Collins Barracks
Victoria Barracks (now Collins Barracks) in Cork in 1897. On left is original entry gateway and arch (Old Youghal Road / Military Road). In centre is Barracks’ chapel. On right is guardroom. (Now houses museum)
British troops pulling out of Victoria Barracks (Collins Barracks) in 1921.
(second only to Sydney as the largest natural harbour in the world), with access to Ireland’s rail network, to be able to serve as a significant staging post for units of the British Army setting of to defend some far-off colonial outpost of the Empire. To become known as ‘Cork Barracks ‘ it had an important continuous role, along with the city’s provisioning agents, merchants and contractors, in providing the necessary commercial logistical sustainment to the many military expeditions preserving the ‘Pax Britannica’ around the world. It was also to bring great wealth to the city’s
per cent of the British Army in the Crimea was made up of Irishmen. Interestingly, for the first time, the Crimean War was to place the private soldier into the public consciousness as the unnecessarily appalling conditions experienced by them had for the first time been reported by from on-the- scene war correspondents, the most famous among them being Irishman William Howard Russell of The Times. The hardships and suffering of the troops were due to a mixture of supply shortages, poor equipment, inadequate medical facilities and tactical folly. Inquiries and reports were called for and the Cardwell Reforms resulted. These extended into improvements in the spartan living conditions of garrisoned soldiers including those in Cork Barracks, which were previously austere and harsh. Frugal barrack-room furniture had been basic with rudimentary beds, benches, and tables. Sheets were now changed monthly while the straw in the mattresses was replaced every three months. Places for recreation were constructed and this had a physical impact on the barracks.
This however was not all that was ‘entering’ the barracks, the influence of the ‘Bold Fenian Men’, also infiltrated the barracks, sufficient in number to facilitate and plan an attack. The plan was uncovered by spies, agents and informers. A number of Court Martials associated with Fenianism took
“business class.
In the wake of Wellington’s victory at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, Europe enjoyed a prolonged period of peace. Success had set the standard, ‘modernisation’ was deemed unnecessary, and with much of the British standing army dispersed and stationed abroad, there was little collective tactical training witnessed and less change or innovation. Notwithstanding, the decades passed, and after forty years of relative peace, a more major war in Crimea had made demands of the British Army to a degree far above and beyond the martial requirements involved in the many ‘little wars’ around its colonies, mostly characterised by the quelling of unrest among native peoples. At least forty
Equipped with wireless, and they also had the assistance of spotter planes. It was to become an intense and
ferociously lethal competition of wits and will. One of the most spectacular clashes was an attempt to trap Tom Barry’s West Cork flying Column,
“place and garrison members found guilty were punished.
In 1882 the Clock-tower was added. The turn of the century saw Britain engaged in the Boer War and large troop movements to South Africa contained a number of Irish Regiments, there were also those Irish involved on the Boer side. The death of Queen Victoria in 1901 was the catalyst for a name change from Cork Barracks to Victoria Barracks. If the Crimean War was an important wake-up call from a misplaced reliance on Napoleonic warfare tactics and, some forty five years later, the Boer War would force that point home even more dramatically, the brutality of the battlefield ‘industrial-scale’ warfare of the Great War which erupted in Belgium 1914 was to reinforce this dramatically where the horrendous carnage was something new again, indeed something that had never been imagined.
It was envisaged to be a swiftly-fought war of mobility, a war of free movement and manoeuvre, but instead it
The formal handover of Victoria Barracks (and other military barracks countrywide) brought home to Cork
people more than anything else the reality that the British were actually finally leaving Ireland.
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