The Easter Rising – 1916

In Louth a party of thirty volunteers left Dundalk for Dublin to join the rising. They travelled through Ardee and Collon and according to reports at the time they reached the outskirts of Dublin. Whether they actually took part in the Rising is uncertain. However, it is known that a constable named Magee was shot at Gilbertstown, Castlebellingham on Easter Monday evening. In another incident near Castlebellingham on the same night a Lieutenant Dunvillle, a guard's officer on route to Dublin was shot and conveyed to the Military Hospital in Dundalk where he subsequently recovered.

The Home Defence Corps where sworn in as Special Constables in Dundalk on Monday night to assist the police and the following day 40 rifles belonging to the Volunteers were handed into the police.

Thirteen late night arrests were made in Drogheda among them were Mr.William Mc Quillan ,Fair Street, Sack Factory owner: John Philip Monaghan , Chord Road, Science Teacher: Michael Harkin, North Strand, Reporter with the Drogheda Advertiser: T. O'Kiely, Chord Road, Gaelic Teacher: Joseph Carr, Black Bull, Assistant Town Clerk: M.Keenan, Railway Clerk: Thomas Burke, Duleek Street: Fran Bateson , James Street: Fintan Lawler, North Strand: Joseph Finnegan, Peter Street: Larry Walsh, Duleek Street: Thomas Halpin , Stockwell Lane: Thomas Galvin, Duleek Street.

A week after the Easter Rising the inquest into the events was well underway. All those arrested in Drogheda and elsewhere were released. Since the counties of Louth and Meath border on Dublin its not difficult to surmise that there was a strong spill over of activities. By far the most notable being the fierce gun battle at Ashbourne on the Meath- Dublin borders where in a carefully planed attack 400 Sinnfeiners led by Thomas Ashe ambushed a police patrol killing seven and injuring eighteen others.

The battle having been won news was brought on the following Sunday of the surrender of the Dublin insurgents reluctantly they surrendered on orders from Patrick Pearse and were brought to British barracks in Dublin. After the rising Thomas Ash received the death sentence but the sentence was commuted to imprisonment in England. He subsequently died on hunger strike in Mountjoy Jail. Today a monument stands at the battle site in Ashbourne. It depicts a man bearing a cross on his shoulders, bringing to mind the poem written by Ashe while in an English prison.

"Let me carry your cross for Ireland, Lord! Let me suffer the pain and shame,
I bow my head to their rage and hate, And I take on myself the blame.
Let them do with my body what'er they Will."