McSwiney addition to Kilmurry museum
SILVER DISH RING GIVEN AS WEDDING PRESENT ADDED TO COLLECTION
THE Independence Museum in Kilmurry has added yet another piece to its already impressive collection of items celebrating the life of the former Lord Mayor of cork Terence MacSwiney.
The centenary of his marriage to Muriel Murphy in a small English village on June 9, 1917 is being marked with a public display of a magnificent wedding gift to the couple.
The silver dish ring made by famous Cork silversmiths William Egan & Sons was a present to the couple from the girls of St Ita’s School, founded nine months earlier in Cork City by the groom’s sisters Mary and Annie.
The stunning piece was purchased at auction in 2016 and generously donated to the museum where it will remain on permanent display alongside many other items remembering the life and death of Terence MacSwiney.
Deirdre Bourke, chair of the Kilmurry Archaeological Association (KHAA) which operate the museum said the dish ring was a “wonderful addition” to their expanding Terence MacSwiney collection.
“The collection places a strong emphasis on increasing awareness and appreciation of his life – not just as a political figure, but as a writer and a family man,” said Ms Bourke.
“It also further strengthens the ties between the museum and our parish with the MacSwiney family, whose support we have been very grateful for over the years.”
Terence’s father, John, and ancestors were natives of the Kilmurry parish and he was instrumental in organising Irish Volunteer companies in the area and across the wider midCork area from 1915 onwards.
His director of elections for the 1918 general election was Kilmurry man John T Murphy.
The Mid- Cork constituency was uncontested and MacSwiney, imprisoned in Lincoln Jail, was one of many Sinn Féin candidates to be deemed elected while in an English prison. Like the others, he did not take his seat in Westminster, instead becoming one of the first members of Dáil Éireann.
Terence and Muriel’s only child, Márie MacSwiney Brugha, who was born in 1918 and later married the son of her father’s friend Cathal Brugha, was the KHAA’s patron until her death in 2012.
She opened the original museum in 1965 at a small premises in Kilmurry, where the collection was housed until move to a new purpose-designed building officially opened last August by President Higgins.
The museum’s MacSwiney collection includes many of his personal items such as his own and other author’s books, family photographs and artefacts from his hunger strike and death including a wheel from the hearse that carried his coffin from the funeral in the North Cathedral to the Republican plot at St Finbarr’s Cemetery.
The museum also houses a comprehensive collection of items of local and national importance, with a particular emphasis on the Irish revolution a century ago.
These items tell the story of Kilmurry through arguably the most pivotal period in Irish history from the Easter Rising through to the War of Independence and the Civil War. These include items directly connected with the ambushes at Kilmichael and Béal na Bláth where Michael Collins died in 1922.
For more information visit www. kilmurrymuseum.ie.