How Ireland's revolutionaries used caves to hide people and arms

Analysis: guerrilla tactics during the War of Independence and Civil War included using caves as hideouts for fighters and arms

By Marion Dowd, IT Sligo

The landscape of revolutionary Ireland extended underground. At least 25 natural limestone caves scattered across Ireland hid fugitives and concealed arms during the War of Independence (January 1919-July 1921) and the Civil War (June 1922-May 1923). Such caves were typically located in remote parts of the landscape far from villages and homes. These caves were often known only to a select few and knowledge of their location was guarded with great secrecy.

Caves were ideal places for storing arms and ammunition. Weapon caches that were either forgotten about or were never retrieved survived in caves, only to be discovered years or decades later. While exploring Pollnagollum, Co. Clare in 1925, caver Ernest Baker discovered a stash of arms. This section of Pollnagollum, Ireland's longest cave at 16 kilometres, was thereafter named 'Gunman’s Cave’.

Jack Coleman, known as ‘the father of Irish caving’, made a similar discovery in Ovens Cave, Co. Cork in 1934. Inside one of the cave entrances, he stumbled upon an arms dump concealed in a butter box, including a Lewis machine gun and a Lee-Enfield .303 rifle. The arms had probably been hidden by the 3rd Battalion, Cork No. 1 Brigade, IRA which fielded a small flying column in that area during the War of Independence and Civil War.

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From Sligo County Council, Dr Marion Dowd on the archaeology and folklore of Sligo's caves

Records preserved by the Bureau of Military History provide further examples of the concealment of weapons in caves. Liam McMullan, Captain of the IRA in Antrim, recalled that rifles taken from a RIC barracks at Ballycastle were subsequently hidden in a cave a few miles away at Fairhead. Lieutenant Thomas Hallahan documented that the IRA oiled and cleaned guns in a coastal cave at Bunmahon, Co. Waterford and stored arms there during the War of Independence.

Stories and recollections about some of these hideout caves are still in circulation today. In Sligo, it is remembered that a woman took tea to her husband while he was hiding in ‘the IRA Cave’ on the slopes of Benbulbin Mountain. A coastal cave at Dunowen, Co. Cork is still remembered as a War of Independence hideout; locals took food to the men hiding there.

Cloghermore Cave, Co. Kerry is remembered as a place that was used to stash ammunition and weapons during the War of Independence. The men hiding arms there would have been unaware that the cave had been used for burial, possibly by a Viking group, a millennium earlier. Similarly, the IRA who used the Keash Caves, Co. Sligo probably did not know (or care!) that excavations in the caves 20 years previously had let to the recovery of bones of reindeer, bears and Arctic lemming.

From Corey White Photography, exploring the caves of Keash, Co Sligo which were once home to bears, reindeers and wolves

The fear and anxiety felt by those taking cover underground is palpable in some of the accounts that were recorded by the Bureau of Military History in the 1950s. Galway IRA Officer Martin Fahy provided one such vivid description: "we were in a cave in a solid rock on the Capard Mountain two miles as the crow flies from Capard House and about two miles from my own home in Dunnally.

"Soon after hearing the noise of the aeroplane we heard the voices of the British Forces as they came towards our hiding place. We could not distinguish anything they said. My brother John looked out through the heather door of the cave and said 'the mountain is swarming with soldiers'. We lay there and waited. The voices died away but we did not venture out ... We stayed in the cave until 6pm that evening when I crept out and scouted around."

We can only imagine what the men experienced during their confinement in this dark, damp and cramped space: it can't have been very pleasant.

Arguably the most successful hideout of the Civil War was a cave high in the mountains at Tormore, Co. Sligo overlooking Glencar Lake, a cave that is notoriously difficult to find. 34 members of the IRA hid in this cave for six weeks in 1922, successfully evading detection. One woman remembers that her grandmother took tea and food to the men hiding there. Shattered glass and broken crockery presently strewn about the cave floor probably relate to this period. We can only imagine what the men experienced during their confinement in this dark, damp and cramped space: it can’t have been very pleasant.

Landowners occasionally faced consequences for allowing caves on their property to be used as hideouts. Mitchelstown Cave in Co. Tipperary, the oldest commercial show cave in the country - and the adjacent Old Desmond Cave, provided shelter to members of the IRA’s Third Tipperary Brigade flying column during the War of Independence. In reprisal, the home of the family who owned the cave was burnt to the ground.

From Madra Rua, an excerpt from David Fox's 1989 Trouble the Calm documentary with Slievawaddra teacher Mary Jo O'Connor reading about the siege of Clashmealcon Caves from Dorothy Macardle's Tragedies of Kerry

Clashmealcon Caves on the north Kerry coast is probably the best known cave of the entire period. In 1923, Timothy ‘Aero’ Lyons and five IRA Volunteers occupied the cave for three days and two nights, besieged by National Army troops. One night, two of the Volunteers attempted to escape but fell from the sheer cliff face and were drowned.

The next morning, mines were detonated at the cave, followed by a gunfire and grenade attack. Eventually, Lyons surrendered. A rope was lowered down the cliff and he began climbing up, but the rope broke (or, according to some accounts, was deliberately cut) causing the National Army troops to open fire and kill Lyons. The three surviving Volunteers surrendered and were later executed. The Clashmealcon Cave event is considered one of the last acts of extreme violence of the Civil War.

Dr Marion Dowd is a Lecturer in Prehistoric Archaeology at the Centre for Environmental Research Innovation and Sustainability at the School of Science at IT Sligo. She is a former Irish Research Council awardee

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ

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