An Cosantóir

26 | THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE GLEN BY GNR TERENCE O'REILLY PHOTOGRAPHS BY CPL GREG DORNEY I n July we looked at the little known history of the Glen of Imaal started with the massacre of an Elizabethan force in Glenmalure and ended with the surrender of Michael O'Dwyer in 1803. This month Gnr Terence O'Reilly continues the tale… A few hundred metres to the northwest of Leitrim OP is the site of the old Leitrim Barracks, constructed during the summer of 1803 to guard the mountain road be- tween the Glen of Imaal and Glenmalure. Costing £8,000 to build, it was designed to accommodate 200 soldiers. When the British Army first established an artillery range in the Glen in 1899, troops were accommodated under canvas in huge tent cities. Hutted camps were subsequently established at Leitrim Bar- racks and Coolmoney, between them ca- pable of accommodating 2,500 men, 500 horses and three batteries of 18-pounders. All 800 tons of material for the camps were brought in by mule, a massive under- taking. A Royal Artillery officer stationed in Leitrim Barracks at the time recalled: 'It had been built as an outlying barracks in a troubled period of Irish history to deal with rebellious contingents operating from the hills, and confine them as far as possible to the wild region they occupied. For its original purpose it was very well constructed, with a massive wall enclosing a courtyard, which in our less disturbed time was transformed into a lawn and flower garden.' A short distance to the north of Cool- money Camp is the site of the former Coolmoney House, built by the Hutchin- son family in 1837 and purchased for use as an officers' mess by the British Army in 1912. The building featured a large gloomy cellar and several bedrooms, one of which, number 21A, had a legend attached. It was said to have been the room of a servant girl who was impregnated and murdered by a member of the aristocracy. A large stain, which proved impossible to remove, was said to be visible on the floorboards, and it was also claimed that some officers who slept in the room were terrified by a malign presence - or possibly pranksters. (Shortly before the building's demolition in February 1999, a prayer service was held in the drawing room 'to bring peace to all who had suffered in the house'.) In July 1921, Coolmoney Camp was occupied by 266 men of the 4th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, while Leitrim Barracks was occupied by 106 men of the 48th Battery. These units were withdrawn on 26th January 1922 after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Anti-Treaty forces occu- pied the two installations at the outbreak of the Civil War, but they abandoned them on the arrival of the Free State army during the winter of 1922. The newly formed Salvage Corps was tasked with dis- mantling the camps and suc- ceeded in doing so in the face of constant rain and sleet, roads "like the beds of mountainy streams" and illness brought on by drinking local water, with all salvaged material being transferred by motor transport to huge hangars at Tallaght aerodrome. In the last days of the Civil War in April 1923 the (PART 2) then unoccupied Leitrim Barracks was burned out by anti-Treaty forces. While its sturdy walls stood for some years after, today there is almost nothing to show that 100 years ago it was the centre of a hutted camp the size of Coolmoney. The Salvage Corps' pride in their achieve- ment was not shared by the Artillery Corps when the army returned to the Glen of Imaal in 1925, one officer lamenting that they found "a lovely camp levelled, even water pipes broken, houses torn asunder". The engineers began rebuilding the camp, and the artillery fired its first shell in the Glen of Imaal (from an 18-pounder) at 1000hrs on 1st September 1925. Another project for the engineers was the construction of an OP/bunker at Cris- sadaun; "built the hard way by young men in the Twenties to test gunners under fire and to practice flank observation." Two other observation posts (Hart OP and Ca- mara OP) originally stood on the northern slope of Camara Hill. In 1934 the Irish Kennel Club recognised An Cosantóir September 2011

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