Pidgeon House Fort

Reverend Thomas Goff

Diary entry 1801

 

A page from Reverend Thomas Goff's Diary
[Courtesy: IADT Dun Laoghaire]

 

1 February 1801

I rode to the Pidgeon House & read prayers for the Garrison there - great uneasiness prevails among the Artillery officers, on account of the proposed Incorporation of the two Regiments British & Irish.

Men who have expos’d their lives in the Warfare of the Empire, & whose whole subsistence arises from their military situation, are trembling in suspense not knowing what is to be their destiny, when this union takes place –

Thus the Men who have never left the luxury of English Climate, & English Living, decide upon the fate & fortune of others, who have sweated under the scorching atmosphere of the Torrid Zone, & have met Death in all his most tremendous aspects. 

Announcement of Goff's succession to his cousin's chaplaincy.
[London Gazette, 11 Sept 1798]

Reverend Thomas Goff was Chaplain to the Royal Artillery Regiment – a commission which he had purchased on the death of his cousin Reverend Thomas Trocke on Vinegar Hill, Co. Wexford during the Rebellion of 1798.

 

The fort was originally a hotel!
Built in the days before Dublin port was safe for navigation
and Ringsend was still a peninsula.
Here's how it looks now.
It's right beside the old Poolbeg Power station.

Partly in response to that rebellion The Act of Union (1801) was bulldozed through the Irish Houses of Parliament with a mixture of state sponsored bribery and threats. Goff was decidedly cool to the Union, sharing his apprehension with many Irish people, both Protestant and Catholic.

Memento Mori

A last reflection on the Sherwood Foresters

On 4^th May 1916 Joseph Mary Plunkett was executed at Kilmainham Gaol.  

Before he died he gave his Rosary beads to Sergeant William Hand one of the members of the firing squad – again a Sherwood Forester. The beads are in the National Museum of Ireland and the image is taken from the Royal Irish Academy, Digital Repository which tells us that

‘Sometime later Hand gave [the rosary] to his cousin, Dora, before he went to fight in France. He was killed in battle there on 21^st March 1918'.

 

https://repository.dri.ie/catalog/wh24m686m

Stamp issued in 1966

 

Just one year after his sojourn in Ireland Samuel Henry Lomas would be dead. His War Office record states that on 27 April 1917 he was wounded and missing, subsequently he was 'accepted as having died' on or since that date. The same fate awaited so many of those soldiers who had stayed so briefly at Carriglea but who had such a huge impact on Irish history.

Accepted as having died 27 April 1917
[National Archives, Kew]

 

These three brave men...

From the Diary of Company Sergeant Major S. H. Lomas. 2/6 Battalion Sherwood Foresters*

Richmond Barracks, Dublin: 2nd May 1916

9pm I was warned to provide a party of 48 men and 4 sergeants for a special duty parade at 3am the following morning. I was told as a special favour I had been allowed to go as one of the party as senior NCO.

May 3rd 1916: We paraded at the time appointed, marched to Kilmainham Jail.

The signatories who were executed on May 3 1916.
 'These three brave men...'
Stamps collected by the author in 1966

At 3.45 the first rebel MacDonoghue [Thomas MacDonagh] was marched in blindfolded, and the firing party placed 10 paces distant. Death was instantaneous. The second P.H. Pierce [Pearse] whistled as he came out of his cell... The same applied to him. The third J.H. [Thomas J.] Clarke, an old man, was not quite so fortunate, requiring a bullet from an officer to complete the ghastly business (it was sad to think that these three brave men who met their death so bravely should be fighting for a cause which proved so useless and had been the means of so much bloodshed).

5am - This business being over; I was able to return to bed for two hours and excused from duty until noon.

*Mick O'Farrell, The 1916 Diaries, Mercier Press, 2014