Bandon, County Cork

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Bandon
Droichead na Bandan
Town
Oliver Plunkett Street
Oliver Plunkett Street
Motto: Auxilio Dei Parva Crescunt  (Latin)
"With the help of God small things grow" [1]
Bandon is located in Ireland
Bandon
Bandon
Location in Ireland
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Country Ireland
Province Munster
County County Cork
Elevation 30 m (100 ft)
Population (2011)[2]
 • Town 6,640
 • Urban 1,917
 • Environs 4,723
Time zone WET (UTC+0)
 • Summer (DST) IST (WEST) (UTC-1)
Irish Grid Reference W488551
Website www.bandon.ie

Bandon (/ˈbæn.dən/; Irish: Droichead na Bandan) is a town in County Cork, Ireland. It lies on the River Bandon between two hills. The name in Irish means "Bridge of the Bandon", a reference to the origin of the town as a crossing-point on the river. In 2004 Bandon celebrated its quatercentenary. The town is sometimes called the "Gateway to West Cork" and it had a population of 6,640 at the 2011 census.

History

In September 1588, at the start of the Plantation of Munster, Phane Beecher of London acquired, as Undertaker, the seignory of Castlemahon. It was in this seignory that the town of Bandon was formed in 1604 by Phane Beecher's son and heir Henry Beecher, together with other English settlers John Shipward, William Newce and John Archdeacon. The original settlers in Beecher's seignory came from various locations in England. Originally the town proper was inhabited solely by Protestants, as a by-law had been passed stating "That no Roman Catholic be permitted to reside in the town".[8] A protective wall extended for about a mile around the town. Written on the gates of Bandon at this time was a warning "Entrance to Jew, Turk or Atheist; any man except a Papist".[9] A response was scrawled under the sign noting: "The man who wrote this wrote it well, for the same thing is writ on the gates of hell." [10] Buildings sprang up on both sides of the river and over time a series of bridges linked both settlements. Like other towns in Cork it benefitted greatly from the patronage of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, although he was not, as he liked to claim its "founder". In 1689 it was the scene of a clash between Jacobite and Williamite forces during the War of the Two Kings. After an uprising by Protestant inhabitants who expelled the Irish Army garrison, a larger force under Justin MacCarthy arrived and retook the town. Sir John Moore, later leader of the British Army, who was killed in the Peninsular War at Corunna Spain in 1809, was governor of the town in 1798.

During the 19th century the town grew as a leading industrial centre which included brewing, tanning, distilling, corn and cotton milling. The now closed Allman's Distillery produced at one point over 600,000 gallons of whiskey annually.[11] The industrial revolution in the 1800s and the advent of the railways had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural ecosystem of the area. Local weaving operations could not compete with mass-produced cheap imports.

File:A Portable Joanna!.jpg
Main Street, Bandon, c.1900

Major General Arthur Ernest Percival was commander of the British garrison in Bandon in 1920-21 during the Irish War of Independence. He was subsequently the commanding officer of the British troops who surrendered Singapore to the Japanese forces in 1941. In 1945 he was invited by Douglas MacArthur to witness the surrender of Japanese forces in Tokyo in 1945 which ended the Second World War. Irish army leader Michael Collins was killed in an ambush at Béal na Bláth, about 9.6 km (6.0 mi) outside Bandon.

Between 1911 and 1926 the non-Catholic population of Bandon dropped from 688 (22% of the population) to 375 (13% of the population), a decline of 45.5%.[12][13] Peter Hart argued in The IRA and its Enemies (1998) that during the Irish War of Independence, Bandon's Protestant population, which was largely unionist, suffered from Irish Republican Army (IRA) reprisals. In particular, 10 Protestant men were shot over 27–29 April 1922 (two months before the start of the Civil War), "because they were Protestant."

Niall Meehan argued, however (2008,[14] 2014,[15] that Hart was mistaken. The killings were not "motivated by either land agitation or by sectarian considerations." In Peter Hart , the Issue of Sources, Brian Murphy noted a British intelligence assessment, A Record of the Rebellion in Ireland in 1920-1921, that Hart cited selectively.[16][17] Hart wrote, "the truth was that, as British intelligence officers recognised, "in the south the Protestants and those who supported the Government rarely gave much information because, except by chance, they had not got it to give.””.[18] Murphy observed, "Hart does not give the next two sentences from the official Record which read":

an exception to this rule was in the Bandon area where there were many Protestant farmers who gave information. Although the Intelligence Officer of the area was exceptionally experienced and although the troops were most active it proved almost impossible to protect those brave men, many of whom were murdered while almost all the remainder suffered grave material loss.

Murphy therefore concluded in a 1998 review of Hart's research, "the IRA killings in the Bandon area were motivated by political and not sectarian considerations". He amended this in 2005 to "Possibly, military considerations, rather than political, would have been a more fitting way to describe the reason for the IRA response to those who informed." [19] In 2013 Bandon Mayor Gillian Coughlan described a song about these historical events by Professor David Fitzpatrick of TCD as "insulting to the memory of people who fought and to people who died".[20]

Castle Bernard, the seat of Lord Bandon was also burned during the Irish War of Independence.

Festival

  • Bandon Summer Fest is a family orientated festival run by a volunteer committee held over the August Bank Holiday weekend.[1]
  • The Bandon Music Festival takes place every June Bank Holiday weekend. In 2009 acts included Mick Flannery, Mundy, The Flaws and The Hogan Band. In 2010, Saturday night's headliners were Jack L and his band who were supported by Tupelo. Sunday night was joint headlined by both Fred and The Delerentos.

The 'Bandon Festival of Lights' took place on 1 December 2007. This event saw the illumination of the brand new state-of-the-art Christmas Lights.

Twin city

Bandon has a twin city agreement with Bandon, Oregon in the United States. That city was founded in 1873 by Lord George Bennet, a native of the Irish Bandon who named the American one after it, and who is known especially for having introduced gorse into the US ecology with some disastrous results.

Transport & communications

People

Notable local figures include :

Sports and Community Groups

  • Bandon Tidy Towns is a group of volunteers who meet up on Tuesday evenings at 7pm at Hartes Car Park from April until the end of the season. The group is actively seeking new volunteers to help with planting etc.
  • Bandon Rugby Football Club were the inaugural winners of the Munster Senior Rugby Cup in when they defeated Garryowen Football Club in the final in 1886.
  • Bandon AFC play at the Town Park on the Macroom Road. The club has active men's, juveniles and ladies teams. The Senior Men's team play in the Munster Senior League Premier division.
  • Bandon GAA are affiliated to the Carbery GAA division of Cork GAA.
  • Bandon Tennis Club has three courts at the Bandon Golf Club. The club has active men's, ladies and mixed teams that participate in leagues throughout the year. The children's section of the club is also vibrant with members on the Junior Irish Tennis Squad.
  • Bandon also boasts a fabulous 18-hole Golf course on the grounds of CastleBernard.

Education

There are four secondary schools in Bandon. One of these, Bandon Grammar School, is a fee paying Church of Ireland-ethos boarding school. The other schools include Hamilton High School, St. Brogan's and the Presentation Sisters College. Bandon Grammar School and St. Brogan's are both mixed schools,Hamilton High School is a boys only Catholic school, and Presentation College is a girls only school.[22] Hamilton High is now situated in a building near where the grammar school originally was before moving across the river to its current location in the 1950s.

In Popular Culture

In Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, Gilderoy Lockhart claims to have defeated the 'Bandon Banshee'.

See also

References

  1. Bandon.ie
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  3. Census for post 1821 figures.
  4. http://www.histpop.org
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  8. Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter by Meda Ryan (ISBN 1-85635-480-6), page 25
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  12. 1926 Census of Saorstat Eireann (Vol III, Table 7)
  13. General report, Ireland, 1911, Page 222
  14. Brian P Murphy osb and Niall Meehan, Troubles in Irish History: A 10th anniversary critique of The IRA and its Enemies, Aubane Historical Society (2008)
  15. Niall Meehan, Examining Peter Hart, Field Day Review 10 2014)
  16. A Record of the Rebellion in Ireland in 1920-1921, Jeudwine Papers, 72/8212, Imperial War Museum.
  17. Brian P Murphy osb and Niall Meehan, Troubles in Irish History: A 10th anniversary critique of The IRA and its Enemies, Aubane Historical Society (2008), ISBN 978-1-903497-46-3 p.47
  18. Hart, pp.305, 306
  19. name="Irish Political Review' V20 N7 July 2005 (ISSN 0790-7672), pp.10-11", also in Meehan, Murphy, 2008, p48./
  20. Lecturer Ballad insults victims of Dunmanway, Justine McCarthy, Sunday Times, 17 February 2013.
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External links