A Century of Recovery – and Beyond - Marking the centenary of the Four Courts fire (1922) and the launch of the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland

Archives and Memory, North and South As the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) approaches its own centenary (2023), this event on 4 May 2022 explored PRONI’s early history and the potential to reconstruct lost archives through deepening collaboration. Participants • Janet Hancock, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (moderator) • Stephen Scarth, Acting Keeper of the Records, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland • Tim Murtagh, Beyond 2022 Archival Discovery Research Fellow at PRONI • Nigel Johnston, Archivist, National Archives (Ireland) About Founded in 1923, in the aftermath of the Four Courts fire, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) has worked since its inception to build collections that compensate for the losses of 1922—materials that tell the story of Ulster and of Ireland generally since the sixteenth century. Working in partnership with Beyond 2022, PRONI is now leading in an attempt to reconstruct one of the largest collections destroyed in 1922: the records of the Chief Secretaries of Ireland from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This initiative draws strength from a deepening collaboration between archives in Belfast and Dublin, as well as major repositories in Britain. In Archives North and South, we heard about the creation and evolution of PRONI, and the scale and significance of PRONI’s pre-1900 collections relating to the Chief Secretaries of Ireland. We also learned about a major strategic project at the National Archives (Ireland) to preserve and catalogue the nineteenth-century Chief Secretary’s Office Registered Papers, which fortunately were not in the Four Courts in 1922. The panel explored how the Four Courts fire has shaped archives and memory, both north and south, in the century since 1922. This Beyond 2022 partnership event was presented by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland with the National Archives (Ireland). Hosted by the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute. 25